I'm Too Old for This Shh...

About a half-hour ago, I had a run-in with a bizarro author by the name of Vince Kramer. He’d been on my friends’ list for quite a while, but I really didn’t know much about him. Until tonight. Here’s how it went down...

A friend asked me to expand upon my disability (as some of you may or may not know, I suffer from a rare condition of the eyes known as retinitis pigmentosa, which causes one’s vision to slowly, and sometimes rapidly, deteriorate). In turn, this friend confided in me about his lupus diagnosis and how the disease has affected his life. For a while, we had a back-and-forth about our conditions and I found it rather therapeutic. Hope he did, too.

Not long after, I decided to peruse my Facebook timeline, something I almost never do, and I came across a lengthy rant by this Vince Kramer, who expressed how hard life can be when you’re tall, good looking, blond, and well-built. How frustrating it can be when you’re so often wrongly seen as a “womanizing jock asshole” when in reality, you’re actually quite “shy and nice.”

In all honesty, my stomach turned at this. I suffer daily due to my vision loss, as does my friend due to lupus, and this Vince Kramer is whining about being too pretty? Really?? So, I left what I thought was a completely harmless, albeit snarky, comment that read as follows: “And I thought all those starving children in Africa had it rough.” Minutes later, he sends me a DM which read:

“That's a fucking retarded thing to say. Are you fucking retarded? I mean, what the fuck does that have to do with anything? You're an asshole.”

I was initially struck by how inarticulate the message was (this guy’s a published author??). Second, I thought that maybe if I explained things a little better and maybe even apologized for my surly remark, he just might see things from my perspective. But—and I’m sure this’ll come as no surprise—I couldn’t respond because he blocked me. Womp womp.

This has been quite the learning experience, I must say. Suffering daily with diseases like lupus and ailments that cause one to lose a large percentage of their vision is one thing, but when you’re a handsome, broad-shouldered guy who is often judged solely on his appearance, all else simply pales in comparison.