Define harmless

“Oh don’t worry. It’s just harmless little flirting/prank/friendship.”
Watching stuff go down in the lives around me and knowing stories of what has happened in the past for people close to me, I have heard this used a lot. And apparently my definition of harmless is a lot different than others.

Per Dictionary.com:
harm•less [hahrm-lis]
–adjective
1.
without the power or desire to do harm; innocuous: He looks mean but he's harmless; a harmless Halloween prank.
2.
without injury; unhurt; unharmed.


That’s what I thought.

It seems that soon after those words are said harm comes to someone, or has already been caused and that phrase is just a (terrible) excuse or attempt at a get out of jail free card. Usually emotional harm, sometimes physical, often financial comes of it – it is all ugly.

I also tend to hear it a lot when the person is in an unhappy situation. It is their excuse to go out of the normal bounds.

Often, the person says that the incident/event/conversation/whatever is harmless and then if you asked them to flip it around (“How would you feel if your boyfriend/girlfriend/parents/cat/whatever did that to you”) it may cause them to pause, but won’t often change the behavior unless it is done back to them.

I have been there, I have used the excuse. But I look back now and realize that it was completely unfair and I recognize it now in myself and others, and it makes me sad. Also scares the crap out of me when I hear it from the people I care about.