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I work down­town. As with most cities, down­town usu­ally brings an eclec­tic group of peo­ple. Any­where from home­less to the most élite. I could people-watch all day from  my desk.

The other day I was dri­ving home and noticed a man in his late 30’s with­out a shirt on and obvi­ously suf­fer­ing from Tourette Syn­drome.  He was walk­ing, by him­self, across the street. I noticed him, but not real intent until I saw a group of 20-something guys on the other side of the street loudly mak­ing fun of the guy.

I will not lie. I wanted to swerve just a bit and clip their ankles.

The man tried very hard to ignore them and just keep walk­ing. I mean it’s not like he couldn’t cuss them out!

But what good would that have done?

I do not do well with peo­ple who draw atten­tion to oth­ers who are different.

I never had to deal with that grow­ing up because Hulk­man was the town sweet­heart. I spent most of my life hear­ing, “Oh so you’re Hulkman’s sister.”

[Insert Garfield slittey-eyed stare]

Seri­ously. Hulk­man, my other brother, and myself could be stand­ing together and some­one would walk over and give Hulk­man a sucker and com­pletely ignore us. HELLO, WE AREN’T INVISIBLE HERE!!!!

But I digress.…again…sigh.

When we moved to India, every­one thought he looked Burmese so no one stared. But when we moved to Mis­souri, we couldn’t go to Wal­mart with­out peo­ple being so out­right rude to him. I would be fum­ing, but Hulk­man would just grab my arm and tell me, “Ignore them, Jenny…ignore them”.

I’m 37 and I still am very abrupt and ‘in-your-face’ when I take Hulk­man out and any­one stares rudely.  Curi­ous is one thing. Walk­ing up to some­one and block­ing their path so you can stare at their face is flat out rude, tacky and a few other words I won’t write on this blog.

I wish I could curb my “enthu­si­asm” to “teach” peo­ple the down­side of draw­ing atten­tion to oth­ers that are dif­fer­ent. It really doesn’t help. Maybe one day I’ll learn from Hulkman.