The little boy who cried “offended”…..

There was once a little boy who no one payed much attention to.  The little boy wanted so badly to be noticed that instead of just doing his job he cried out to everyone who could hear, “I’m offended!!!”  

And everyone came running to help the little boy.  Nobody meant to offend the little boy or wanted him to be hurt.  But then the friendly people realized that there wasn’t any reason for the boy to be offended and they went away scratching their heads in bewilderment.

After the attention faded away the little boy wanted people to notice him again so he cried out to everyone who would listen, “I’m offended!!!”  And everyone came running to help the little boy.  But then the friendly people realized, again, that there wasn’t any reason for the boy to be offended.  This time the friendly people left in frustration.

And a last time the little boy cried out, “I’m offended!!!”  But this time everyone ignored the little boy, the people had grown apathetic to his cries.  Of course this just frustrated the little boy even more and he began to look for something new, something even more obscure and absurd to offend him.

But what the little boy didn’t realize was that as the things that offended him became more obscure and absurd, the people who heard his cries started to become not just frustrated, but angry with the little boy.

The little boy began to complain about the name of a football team, or where people have to pee, or most recently that national forests are racist because they’re full of trees (and trees were used when people were lynched 150 years ago).

That’s when people finally started caring.  They started caring that the little boy seemed so spoiled and superficial.  They cared that they boy wasted so much of their time.  And the people became so sick and tired of the boy always crying about things that didn’t matter that they weren’t there to listen when something did matter.