Not yet a saint

Good morning. This is Thursday, October 23, 2014 and I (who am Not-John) am making my first blog entry on this site.

I am working on my personal and spiritual growth and development. This is a source of great merriment for everyone since, frankly, I am not very good at it.

Here is an example from yesterday:

In times of personal crisis, my children turn to facebook to vent their spleen. I love them, but this is not pretty. Yesterday one of them had a “bad country Western song” moment. If he’d had  enough money for a Margarita, he could have salted it (yea verily) with his tears.

A friend of his made a comment (innocuous so far).

My child made a comment back (it was intended to be funny).

His friend did not grasp the subtleties of a “yo momma” joke.

His friend became righteously indignant about my child’s disrespect for his momma, (who I am sure is a fine woman and would not approve of what I considered a rather emotionally immature response consisting of such choice phrases as “I hope you burn in hell motherfucker. You are a dick.”)

The poor bastard didn’t see it coming. I am on edge. I did not have sufficient coffee in my system to think first and write later. The following is my deeply spiritual response:

“ *Sigh* You know what? I've said this before when there's facebook drama and I will say it again. And D.M. you live in fucking Michigan. You have no idea what is going on here. Your argument is invalid and you can un-friend me if you like. I got enough shit on my hands to start a pig farm without having a pile-on festival. I love my kids - all of them - even when they hate each other. Even when shit gets real. Even when they do things that are dumb. I know I've done plenty of dumb things myself. Just because my dumb things are different from [insert son’s name] dumb things does not make me spiritually superior. I am trying to put out positivity because you do get back what you give out. If you can't say something even remotely useful, stay the hell off my pig farm. You are not helping and I refuse to continue to be everyone's fucking collateral damage. Think for one minute about being a mom or a dad who loves two kids who are at each other's throats over stuff you will never know the whole truth of. Then think about other people in public saying really shitty things and just fanning those flames. You know who gets hurt? Not you. You aren't family and you aren't even in Florida. Who gets hurt is [insert son’s name]’s kids and his mom and dad and the people who are working really hard to bring some light and healing into this situation. THAT is who gets hurt. Your target is just going to get mad. But everyone else around that person feels like they've just been hit with a fucking axe. Because everything we've said or done, every prayer that is being said, every act of kindness and forgiveness we have been working and throwing out to the universe just gets blown to shit. You are not involved. You can sit up in Michigan being self-righteous and not one turd will land in your lap. Good for you. I'm here and I'm dealing with the turds first hand (if you will pardon the pun). Help out or go away. Not your monkeys, not your circus.”

Yup. I said this in a public post. It is clear that I have a little more work to do in order to qualify for sainthood.