Can You Stand Up for Yourself in 2023?

Picture this. You and a friend are with your daughters at a small town carnival. Except it’s Sag Harbor so every NYC parent you know is there. There is an hour long line for something called Riptide, which is a super tall ride with one long car that fits about 20 people across and spins around in a giant circle. You and your friend have no desire to go on this ride, but your kids really want to go on it, so you tell them that you are happy to wait in line for them while they go on other things.

You wait in the line for about an hour and are finally close to the front. So close that your kids come back to wait with you. At this point, your friend sees a familiar face in the crowd, calls them over and introduces you. You briefly turn your back to the line to shake their hand, making sure your kids (the ones actually going on the ride) stay in place. Then your child taps you on the shoulder and says that the people in back of you, just cut in front.

Your friend, who is literally named Karen, immediately gets a look of indignation and goes to confront them. As is appropriate, because you have been in front of those people for an hour and they very definitely know this. But they are a quite large group of smug looking teenagers, who seem like they are reveling in their shady line cutting shenanigans and you can see this going badly. So you think, you know what? It’s no big deal. They can cut in front. You’ll all get on the ride soon enough, either this turn or the next. You gently put your hand on Karen’s arm as she is about to cry foul and calmly say, “Just let it go. It’s not worth it.”

Karen looks at you like she would rather die than let this group of teenagers get away with this behavior, but she also sees that you are serious in not wanting to escalate things, so she takes a deep breath and agrees to let it go. You feel proud of yourself for being the bigger person and successfully diffusing the situation.

It is at that exact moment that the young woman in back of you (who would technically be the young woman who was previously in back of the teenagers) accuses you of cutting. “Oh no,” you say. “We aren’t cutting. We’ve been here the whole time.”

She responds, “I don’t know where you have been, but I’ve been standing here for an hour in back of them.” She motions to the teenagers.

“Oh yes, I understand, “ you say, sweet as can be. “We were actually in front of them but then they cut in front of us and we didn’t want to make a big scene so—”

She cuts you off. “I don’t care what you’ve been doing. I only know what I’ve been doing which is waiting in back of them.”

“No, but you see, what happened was—”

She cuts you off again. “YOU ARE NOT CUTTING IN FRONT OF ME.”

So, now I’m in a bit of conundrum. Because this woman is NOT PLAYING and I really, really do not want to create a scene. There was a time in my life when I would have happily created a scene, propelled purely by principal and righteous indignation. I’m not sure if it’s my old age or just the state of the world right now, but it seems like it no longer matters if you were the wronged party in these situations. If you find yourself screaming at a carnival, you are a crazy person, regardless of what happened to bring you to that state.

I can remember moments in my childhood, where my parents got angry in public and got what they wanted as a result— maybe it was convincing a salesperson to let them return a faulty item or calling a manager when we were given poor service. These were proud moments for me. Moments where I learned that I can stand up for myself when I felt wronged or someone has taken advantage. I remember employing these strategies later in life and reporting back when I had been successful. But times have changed and now my kids think there is nothing more embarrassing than when I return a dish that isn’t fully cooked at a restaurant or tell the barista at Starbucks that they put too much milk in my coffee. “Don’t be a Karen,” Harlow always says. Because somehow “being a Karen” has become less about racially motivated incidents and more about the very act of complaining. You are allowed to return food if it isn’t cooked right, I tell them. You are paying for it, after all. Just do it graciously.

But being alive in 2023 has taught me to pick my battles carefully, and this Sag Harbor Carnival battle is definitely not one of them. So what do I do? I have already missed my opportunity to say something to the teenagers, who are still looking pretty smug and giggling like they know the domino effect they created. I could just let this woman go in front of us too, no big deal, but the problem is— she is not alone. She looks like she is with quite a large party of people, of all ages, possibly her family, that includes both older relatives and a few small children. I look behind her group and it’s so far back in the line that nobody is locking eyes with me and all of a sudden I’m envisioning every person behind her denying us our rightful space. I mean, I was fine with letting the teenagers in front of us, but after waiting for an hour, I’m not about to go back to THE END OF THE LINE.

Karen looks at me, like— do you see where you got us by trying to be nice????

So, I say, “no, no, it’s all good. I just need to explain the situation to the woman more clearly.” I take a deep breath, put on my nicest face and try again.

“Sorry, I just want to explain what happened because I feel like there has been a miscommuni—”

“I UNDERSTAND CLEARLY.”

“We’re not even going on the ride. It’s just our—”

“I DON’T GIVE A SHIT.”

And this is when I realized that nice was getting me absolutely nowhere and the only thing that could possibly change the situation is if I go Code Red and start screaming my motherfucking head off.

“WHY ARE YOU BEING SUCH A BITCH AT A FAMILY FUCKING CARNIVAL???? MY KIDS ARE NEXT IN LINE AND YOU NEED TO STEP THE FUCK BACK.”

But I did not say that. Partly because it’s just not in my nature. But also because I imagined someone whipping out an iPhone, recording the whole thing, posting it on Twitter or X or whatever the fuck, and people being like, “Hey, isn’t that the Day in the Life of a NYC Mom from Tiktok? I knew she was unhinged!” And then my whole career would come crashing down and I’d have to go back to my old advertising job who wouldn’t even have me because I’m too problematic at this point and so we’d have to move out of state or maybe even out of the country so I could regain some anonymity and perhaps after a few years had passed, get some semblance of my dignity back.

So, I held my tongue.

But I was not backing down.

Instead of trying to get this woman to understand why the space was rightfully mine, I decided that silent indignation is more powerful than being the screaming crazy person, which honestly was HER. I just continued to stand there right next to her and stare straight ahead. Eye on the prize— that ramp up to the ride, which was clearly not wide enough for two people to go up it at once. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do once we got to the front. Push Mazzy and her friend up onto the ramp ahead of her? Make sure that they went immediately behind her? And then just as the moment was upon us, the older woman behind the crazy lady, who I think was her mother, but had remained silent the whole time, grabbed Mazzy’s arm and pushed her up onto the ramp right ahead of her, so Mazzy and her friend fell right within their party.

The mom might have been quiet, but she saw the whole thing and knew we were in the right. Or maybe she wasn’t sure who was right but wanted to save her daughter from losing her shit and getting caught on camera too.

Then everyone rode that stupid ride at the exact same time.

Silent indignation for the win.