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Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Other Helpful Scarlet Letters

I think Nathaniel Hawthorne's concept needs to be expanded beyond the scarlet "A" Hester Prynne was forced to wear.

Let's start with "B". My vote would be for bores. Think how nice it would be if you could avoid people who talk incessantly about themselves, never asking a single question about you. In my Hawthornian fantasy, a "C" goes on the chest of control freaks. Some letters, like "H" for homophobe, "M" for misogynist or "R" for racist could save me a lot of angst, time and frustration - reference my post from May 1 entitled "The Right Time To Challenge".

The hard part of this fantasy is owning up to letter(s) that belong embroidered on me (or you). For me? I'll start with "A" (arrogant), "J" (judgmental), and "O" (opinionated or obnoxious or both). Probably won't surprise any regular reader of this blog to know I've already got a whole alphabet of other scarlet letters ready to assign to myself.  Still, I am curious to know which letters you would find helpful. And also which ones you'd assign to yourself.         

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