The meaning of being fugly

fugly

adjective

extremely unattractive. Origin: term is a contraction of "f**king ugly."

source: http://onlineslangdictionary.com/

I was in the middle of my brunch this afternoon when this family of four came into the restaurant. The husband began to place their order and the waiter, being a man in his fifties was a little slow. He became impatient when he had to repeat his fussy & super-complicated order for, like, 3 times. He was causing a scene, in a restaurant full of customers, in front of his wife and two young kids. The waiter kept apologizing and his efforts to calm him down seem fruitless.

In my heart, I felt pitiful for the kids having to grow up with a dad like that. I’m sure that he is setting very high standards of how an adult must behave for them to emulate when they grow up. Maybe he was having a bad day but I somehow felt that it was unfair for him to treat the waiter like that. Everyone out there is just trying to make a living – put yourself in his shoes for a moment, wouldn’t you feel insulted to have someone talk to you in that manner?

If, for a moment, you think that I might also sympathize with the wife, then you are absolutely wrong.

You don’t get to choose which family you are borne into but you get to choose your life partner and she chose him. Essentially, that means that she condones his actions and considers them as acceptable behaviour.

I guess some people choose to be more intimidating than others. I used to know someone who has this trait, which made me pick up the book ‘Winning through Intimidation’, a 1973 book by Robert J. Ringer. After a while, it got me thinking, is this the way I want to be remembered? Threatening? Unapproachable? Scary?

Because this is exactly how I felt about this person.

In the end, I decided that I will just be myself and whether or not the people whom I stumble upon along the way, like me for being me; well, that’s another story.

Maybe the customer was also being himself and he doesn’t find anything wrong with him being that way. His family accepts him for who he is and so does his friends, thus how can it be possible that something is wrong with him?

I guess sometimes it’s much easier to criticize others than to look within ourselves, which is exactly what I’m doing now. Maybe the next time when I’m the one being a drama queen, I shall take a few steps backwards and look back at this entry. As the Malay proverb goes: “Seperti ketam menyuruh anaknya berjalan dengan betul” (Similar to the crab asking its offspring to walk in a straight, forward motion)

Rule #1 of dining out: never be mean to the person waiting at your table as there is a likelihood that you might get “freebies” added into your dish, without your knowledge and/ or consent.

Trust me; I’ve been a waitress before and you don't want this kind of freebies.

“The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company, church or home. The remarkable thing is that we have a choice everyday regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past. We cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude. I am convinced that life is 10 percent of what happens to me and 90% how I react to it. And so it is with you. We are in charge of our attitudes.” – Charles Swindoll

The ugly duckling,