There are many things I was ambivalent about as a youth which I’ve learned to appreciate with age: collard greens, 1950s pop standards, etc…
There is one thing I’ve grown to hate more than anything else as I’ve gotten older: large crowds. Crowding has never been one of my favorite phenomena, but I used to put up with them occasionally if the event in question was worth the effort. No more…
It’s not that I have a phobia; I don’t get panic attacks or anything like that. I just get REALLY annoyed in crowds. I want to start shoving and elbowing when the flow of (pedestrian) traffic won’t move at a reasonable pace. And I start finding something to hate about everyone who gets in my way, or even looks like he MIGHT get in my way…
Crowds in bars are the worst, of course. Drunk idiots are statistically more likely to stumble into one’s path than sober idiots. And the M.O., at least in queer bars, seems to be “find the place where you can do the most damage to traffic flow and stand there with 12 of your closest friends for an hour or two”…
Of course, it’s no trick to get me annoyed anyway. I’m perpetually irritable and I’m quite comfortable with this fact, thanks. And my problem with crowds probably stems from the fact that I’m just not a “people person”. In other words, I tend to expect the worst out of most people I encounter, rather than the best. This tactic results in much less disappointment and even the occasional pleasant surprise…
Oddly enough, there was a time (say, 1985) when I was comparatively outgoing and even tolerated crowds pretty well. Then I spent ten years in customer service jobs and it was all over for me. I learned to see the worst in people simply because they all seemed so damned willing to show it. I haven’t waited on a customer in a retail store in over four years and I still haven’t recovered…
I may never go to a bar on a Saturday night, a sporting event, a parade, or a street fair again, and I really don’t think I’ll be missing all that much. Large crowds have a tendency to gather primarily to do things I’m not much interested in doing anyway…
Coming soon: why I hate crowds of Sodomites even more than I hate regular, all-purpose crowds…
