Joke of the Week

My best friend in Indy recently put up a Facebook post that said “girls are mean” referencing 8th grade girls.  Her friends in the know replied with “Yes they are” and went about commenting on other things. 

I just have to wonder – have we become so accustomed to cruelty that we have come to expect it?  Why are we so mean to each other?

Thinking back to my 9th grade?  I was no exception to the girls Steph described.  A friend and I created a weekly newspaper we called “Love Letters.”  We’d write our reports on heart-shaped sheets of paper stapled together at the top.  That one copy somehow made the rounds not quite as virally as today’s applications, but rather impressively still.  We wrote on who was dating who, featured the ‘couple of the week,’ and titillating break-ups.   That part was all pretty benign.  The part that was so mean was our joke section.  There were the standard funnies that were going around or that we’d heard somewhere and sometimes we'd clip a comic from the Sunday paper, but we always had “The Joke of the Week.”  The mean part was that sometimes that was followed, quite simply, with someone’s name. 

I know why I was the girl that wrote Love Letters and who featured a fellow student as The Joke of the Week.  You see, I’d been The Joke of the Week on more than one occasion.  My mother, who never understood how ‘modern’ girls behaved, often dressed me out of style at best and in my brother’s hand-me-downs at worst.  The clothes were ill-fitting, or unflattering and always too short.  To this day I won’t wear ankle length pants.  I have flashbacks to the teasing as soon as I see my pants fall short of draping over the tops of my shoes.  It really did hurt my feelings and what made it worse was that I didn’t choose it.  I didn’t have a job and couldn’t get one at that age; therefore I had no money and had no control over what I was given to wear.  The teasers, though, never took that into consideration. 

So, in response to my pain, I picked on some poor kid that was socially awkward and made him or her The Joke of the Week.  Did it make me feel better?  I suppose.  It at least put the spotlight on someone else for a while.

I wish I could go back and do that year over again. 

Today I was checking myself a bit.  Do I still do and say hurtful things?  Right off the bat, I realized I have the reflex to be mean to anyone who ever hurts my children.  When the beings I love the most are injured, I just want to lash out and make that other person hurt just as much.  But, here’s the thing.  Even though that seems somewhat justified, what purpose does it serve?  If I apply logic, it fails.  Justice is one thing.  Revenge just perpetuates the problem.  After all, isn’t that the very reason they hurt my kid in the first place?  Someone gets their feelings hurt, they hurt back, that person hurts, they hurt forward…  on and on.

I have always felt that my job as a parent is to get out of the way and let the kids become who they inherently are.  My job isn’t to ensure they become a doctor, lawyer, or head cheerleader.  My job isn’t to lord over their homework and lock in those good grades.  My job is simply toward their character.  They are under my guidance to become kind, gracious and compassionate humans.  If they fail at that, I have failed. 

When I have to explain to Dia that something she did wasn’t kind, I always remind her that we don’t need any more hate in this world.  There are enough bad guys to last us.  This world needs love and the best we can do is provide that, one person at a time. 

Advice from the Lovelorn

I have this theory that relationships are like wallpaper. 

We have a room - say the kitchen - and it needs ... "something."  We look, and think, and consider, and look some more and then?  We find it.  The perfect wallpaper.  We spend hours putting it up, smoothing it out, cursing over the inconvenience but knowing it is so very, very worth it.  We spend the next few months smiling every time we walk into that room.  "This is so right" we think contentedly. 
Eventually, though, we stop really seeing the wallpaper.  It just becomes part of the room.  Its place is appropriate and welcomed, but we don't really notice it anymore.  Then it gets a few stains, or starts peeling in a corner and we notice but we just leave it.  No time, you know?  Pretty soon, it's looking drab, dirty and that corner is really starting to come loose.  We know we should take the time to fix it, but - later.  Maybe we even put it on our 'to-do' list.  But life and everything else takes priority and we never get around to it until it's really so bad that we have no choice but to strip it altogether and start over or be forced to live around the true eyesore it's now become.

I shared this theory with my last two significant others but, obviously, to no avail.  In one case, it didn't prevent me from becoming the wallpaper and in the other, I'm afraid the wallpaper might not have been high enough quality as all attempts to repair it, failed. 

Yet if anyone is wise enough - I ask them to heed this wallpaper advice: Fix it before it's too late. 

You see, I've been experiencing this tremendous feeling of regret lately.  I'm 46 and, in the last almost 5 years, I've had all of about 9 dates with all of about 3 different guys.  Two I met online in a frustrated attempt to get back at my ex for trolling internet dating sites while we were supposed to be in counseling working things out.  Obviously that is the wrong reason to chance upon someone. Still, it led me to a couple of dates with pretty nice guys that just weren't right for me.  The other guy I dated was a very old friend of mine and was one of those cases of trying to create something that wasn't there. 

So probably because I'm a bit lonely, my mind keeps calling back to former relationships and thinking "what was I thinking when I broke up with him?"  This calls back all the way to my first ever boyfriend who is aMAzing and handsome and wonderful and who I should have stayed with barring all costs, but who I threw over foolishly.  We're talking 7th grade, but still.  Now, he's in a completely stable and very happy relationship, so I'm happy it turned out as it did, but darn it did I ever miss my chance there.  My second regret is my next serious boyfriend.  He was a complete doll who, when I called him to break up, drove all the way to Indianapolis from Sacramento non-stop to convince me not to.  We were in a long-distance relationship that had somehow survived over a year despite our relative youth, but after my father died I was just too much of a wreck to deal with the grief after every goodbye.  Ah, excuses....  Fact of the matter is I should have stayed put, but I took the easy way.  I ended up married, and I suppose, exactly where I needed to be as Tim and Cheyanne were results of that detour. 

Obviously that marriage didn't last and on I went to the next set of relationships.  Of them, only two do I truly grieve having lost.  Of the two, one left me so I had no control there.  The other I was just stupid, stupid, stupid to ever let go.  I suppose I had my reasons, but I guarantee they were petty and now I sit with no time or opportunity to pursue active dating; with a less-than-optimal dating pool to dip my feet into should I find the time; and basically having to rely on an act of God to produce my true love.

So, I land here, on my blog today, to give my friends out there some advice from the lovelorn.  Don't replace the wallpaper - Repair it.

I know (though I can hardly be called upon as an expert) how hard it is to live with someone for a very long time.  I know it's hard to call back that feeling of love that you once had.  I know it's easier to look at the stains and the torn corners and to be lulled into a sense of ordinary (perhaps even boredom).  But as someone who has been there and wish she didn't do it - it's worth the time and it's worth the effort.  It's even worth the investment if there needs to be one.  The grass isn't greener.  It's just different grass.

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DISCLAIMER:  This is NOT to say stay in bad relationships.  I have NEVER regretted leaving the two I should have never been in to begin with.  If it makes you cry, hurts (physically or soulfully) or if you get nothing in return, bail out.  It's scary to be alone sometimes, and I for one miss a plus one, but on my worst days it's better than being in either of those relationships. 

I also would like to disclaim that life often detours us in a very correct manner (and there will likely be a blog post on this fairly soon as I've been working on one for awhile).  So, while I wish I'd stayed with my high school long-distance boyfriend, I'm not sure I'd have ended up with the children that I did and that was far more fulfilling to my soul than any man has ever been (no offense to anyone out there). So in reality I probably have no idea what I'm talking about and you can feel free to ignore my advice altogether.