You Might Be An American Asshole

Remember one of Aesop’s Fables ‘The Boy Who Cried Wolf’?

The story is about a shepherd boy who constantly yells to the villagers a wolf is attacking his flock. He does this so much to get attention that finally the villagers quit believing him. When a real wolf does attack no one comes to his rescue.

That is what I think is happening today in our culture with people getting all butt hurt over a perceived slight or offense and it gets blown way out of proportion.

White male

Middle class

Black

Jew

Muslim

Catholic

Christian

Thug

Gay

Lesbian

Transgender

Poor

CEO

Rich

Inner city

Women

Fat

Autistic

Liberal

Conservative

Why the labels?

If you are a fat, black, transgender from the poor inner city who worked your ass off and became CEO of a company and became rich and have mainly white males working for you because they were the most qualified and you converted to Judaism, have an autistic daughter and a thug son, you vote conservative but you are an asshole.

You are an ASSHOLE! That is the label you have to own. You don’t even have the right to be offended if someone calls you that because it is the truth. You are an American Asshole! OWN IT!

The rest of the labels should not matter and we have to stop the insanity of using those descriptive labels to pretend to be offended and create a stink about it when the only label should be “asshole”.

Or criminal.

Or rude person.

Or mean person.

Or…..oh well, you get the picture.

We need to have personal accountability and it not matter the color of skin, how we voted, our religion, etc.

I will not intentionally offend someone but then I don’t surround myself with people who limit themselves with that first list of labels. They also are not the kind of people who would pretend to be offended just because it may be the popular thing to do.

Mother's Day Without Mom

Mother's Day is approaching this weekend and for many of us we have had to deal with losing our mothers to death.

My mom died in April so Mother's Day followed shortly after. I needed to pick up a greeting card for a friends approaching birthday that year and had no thought whatsoever when I walked in to the card store other than the birthday card. The clerk immediately said "happy mother's day" to me and at the same time I saw the rack of Mother's Day cards. My heart stopped for a second and I felt like I could not breathe. I practically ran from the store. My pain was still that raw. Then my feeling was that of being pissed off that a clerk in a store would say that to me when I was not her mother and that she caused me so much pain. We all know it wasn't her that caused me the pain that day even though she should not have said it.

Healing took place and the pain was not so raw after that first year and I learned to celebrate my beautiful mom every year on Mother's Day. Part of healing is doing something to honor those we lost. One of her favorite flowers was red geraniums so I began planting a pot of those in celebration of her every year. Yesterday when I went to the garden center to get them the fragrance alone brought back so many wonderful memories.

Before I plant these today I will stick my nose right in the plants and inhale deeply the very distinct smell and feel so blessed for the mom I had. She taught me how to survive, thrive, and blossom just like these hardy geraniums I plant each year and see each day when I go out my backdoor.