Category Archives: Human Nature

Anchors disguised as people

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Have you ever worked with a person who has nothing to contribute to a situation or project? The type who lives to criticize work and never offers any constructive feedback? Who sits in meetings quietly and only speaks up to point out why action is a bad thing, why change brings risk, and why sitting on your ass doing nothing is always the best course of action?

People who “don’t” not “do”?

I hate these people.

I work with a lot of good people. And yet, I work with a few who the universe dropped on the planet with the sole purpose to point out flaws and imperfections, or  why something won’t work or isn’t right or who knows what. I like to call them “anchors” because they keep projects from moving forward by creating obstacles to dodge and hurdles to jump.

There's one of them now, hanging out, making life difficult. Creative Commons: Michael Wilson

I see this quality in many of our current politicians and the people who follow them.

They have no plans of their own and they hate everyone else’s plan.

Don’t give Americans the right to purchase healthcare, they say.

Then what should we do instead to solve the challenge of affordable healthcare for all?

Well anything but that plan?

Okay, what about this plan?

Well, not that plan either.

What’s your plan?

[silence]

So, you’re just going to say “no” to anything we come up with?

[silence]

Nothing is ever right with these people. It’s all wrong.

My daughter was like this when she was two-years old. I would build a tower with her blocks and she would come along and take a swipe at it like Godzilla walking the streets of Tokyo and down it would go. She’d laugh and it was quite a game we played. But then she grew up and understood it wasn’t so cool to destroy something someone took the time to build, especially if she was the builder.

Here’s my remodeling math: It took me a day to demolish my bathroom to the studs, and six months to rebuild it. So, anything politicians or others want to blow up, like Social Security, takes a long time to rebuild. It’s easy to remodel when you have some structure in place. From scratch is hard and takes a long time.

If we really want to “fix” this country, we have to stop listening to the people who tell us why we can’t do something before it has ever been tried, and who have no original ideas of their own. It doesn’t matter what party they’re from – they live in both.

If we don’t cover our ears to these Eeyores with half-empty glasses, we’re going to find ourselves peeing in a bucket asking when the bathroom is going to be finished while these knuckleheads debate the color of the tile.

Or, to borrow from Facebook: Done is better than perfect.

What not to do when someone tries to break into your car at 2:30 in the morning

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[As if readers of this blog needed more proof of my stupidity, here’s more evidence. Clearly, I could place “what not to do” on most of my posts, but this is more glaring than the rest.]

I was having a bad dream, which is not to be confused with the parts of my life involving cystic fibrosis. This one happened while I was sleeping and woke me up at 2:30 a.m. I’d also been fighting a virus all week and my body temperature was screwed up, which made me feel more discombobulated at that hour (building the excuse for my idiot behavior right now).

What's a leek?

As I am the most paranoid guy in the world, I looked out the window of the front door on my way to the bathroom, as I always do, and noticed a white SUV in front of our house. Double take, it’s really there and the door is open.

Unfortunately, I’d been too lazy to replace the bulbs in the fixtures near our garage because I would need to find the step-stool, and because the light fixtures are a pain in the arse to unscrew and there are spiders in them and I didn’t have bulbs and hadn’t gone to Home Depot to buy any because even though I’ve passed the store 50 times in the last two weeks, I was too lazy pull into their parking lot, get out of my car, lock my car, walk into the store, find the bulbs, pay for them, get in my car, drive home and find the step-stool.

So, the driveway was darker than it should have been thanks to me, creating the perfect environment for thieving scumbags to go to work. Oh, and I didn’t have my eyeglasses on either.

So, I moved to the bathroom window to get a different view and I saw someone standing next to my wife’s car with an object in their hand – a tire iron? I don’t know what it was. All I know is after all the years of people stealing shit off of my car at night, I was pissed. A spark ignited in my brain, or what there is of one, and any chance of rational thought fled it as I walked with pace to the front door.

I didn’t disable the house alarm when I opened the door because I wanted the high-pitched squeal of the 30-second countdown to start in case one of them came running at me and I had to shut the door in a hurry. I can’t hear the sound anyway thanks to years of IV tobramycin, but I figured they would hear it loud and clear in the dead quiet of night.

Geek does Rhyme with leek

I opened the door and in what my daughter would call my “big voice,” I yelled “Hey you guys, get away from that stuff.”

I had to confirm this is what I said with my wife at least a dozen times because I couldn’t remember and I thought I must have yelled something like “get away from that car, low-life scum, before I come out there and rip your bowels out of your throat” or something cool like that.

But no, I didn’t say that. I said “you guys.” Not “you scum sucking criminals’ or “demon-spawn from hell car thieves.” No, instead I said, “you guys.”

Oh, and by the way, while I was using my big voice, my wife disabled the alarm because I’m always activating it by accident, which she thought I did again, unaware I was having a conversation with criminals.

At about the time I opened it door and yelled, it occurred to me at the very second the words left my mouth that I was yelling at exactly the kind of people in Los Angeles who worship and carry guns. The kind who probably don’t like being told what to do in a loud voice.

And there I was standing in my t-shirt and J. Crew boxer shorts covered in a charming “carrots and leeks” pattern (picture included) in the glowing light of the porch.

Could there be a more perfect and easy-to-shoot idiot in the history of targets?

I’m a lucky idiot because the perps ran to their SUV like the vermin they are and pulled a U-Turn in front of our house as my wife and stood in the doorway watching like dopes – defiant dopes – providing yet another possible double-homicide, target-shooting opportunity for the crooks, and headlines for tomorrow’s newspaper, with our daughter growing up parent-less.

And though I was calm during the incident, after I shut the door I was wound about my stupidity and it took me two hours of replaying my missteps before I could go to sleep.

Now the hindsight part of the story.

Though everything turned out okay, I’ve been flogging myself daily for not calling the police as the criminals did whatever they were going to do, which is a mystery still stuck in my mind and a question I can’t answer for friends who hear the story. What did I really see in the street-light dim of night?

I would have loved for the police to catch these guys. I love stories like that. But I blew it. I blew it. I let my anger overcome my rational thoughts and even endangered my family by opening the door, a key defense (the sound you hear right now is the whip hitting my back).

Though I may have saved the $500 deductible for my car insurance, it cost me almost a grand to have an electrician, locksmith and our alarm company come to the house on Friday. We now have new motion detector lights around the house, stronger locks in the doors, and a soon to be upgraded alarm with a panic button for my wife when I’m not home – and a different tone control panel I can hear when I am home.

Oh, and I did drive to Home Depot to buy five bucks worth of light bulbs. And I did take out the step-stool and climb up to unscrew the tops of the light fixtures to reach in past the spiders and cobwebs to unscrew the bulbs and replace them, which had they been replaced may have stopped all of this from happening by causing the criminals to go to a different house with a different idiot lording over it.

The silver lining: when I’ve away, I’ll feel a better with my wife daughter at home with improved security. But I’m not done yet. Soon to be installed: a fence or wall. A good fence may make for good neighbors, Mr. Frost, but an electrical one with barbed wire makes for a big FU to criminals when they’re flat on their backs unconscious waiting for the police to scrape their electrocuted, bloody bodies from the sidewalk.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. This is a lesson is what not to do when criminals pick your house to rob. Call the police. They like to catch bad guys. Unless you own complete body Kevlar®, of course, which means you can walk right up to them and beat them with your flail, which would feel pretty satisfying.

Stay safe.

The simple bumper sticker that stuck in my craw

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A bumper sticker from a week ago is still irritating me. I saw it on a Prius in the McDonald’s drive thru while ordering my breakfast of real champions, a McGriddle, which I’ll defend to my grave is the best breakfast sandwich in the world after eating over a 1,000 of them in recent years.

I'm eating one of these right now

Back to the bumper sticker, which read: “All you have is now.”

Harmless, you say. What’s the big deal? Exactly, I agree.

But then I started mulling it over in line, getting bothered by it, which may have been because I still hadn’t received my tasty goodness. Or, could it have been the bombardment of McDonald’s signs working me over to eat myself to an inner tube of jelly around my midsection?

Beef and bacon covered ice-cream sundaes, coffee desserts, quadruple burgers covered in chocolate, 50 oz. sugary smoothies, 10-pound bags of french fries covered in candy sprinkles and cheddar cheese.

The reason the bumper sticker bothered me was because the “all I have is now” attitude got me in a lot of trouble years ago. And because I have a daughter now, which made want to change the bumper sticker to the following: “All you have is now, but your children have tomorrow, Jackass.”

Clearly, when I see anything talking to me, it calls me Jackass, which is appropriate after a 1,000 McGriddles.

Here’s the rub.

We have a lot of conversations at our dinner table about the future of the planet: Oil production is peaking, global ice is melting, a very large pool of plastic is floating north of Hawaii, our natural food supply contains harmful chemicals, we’re getting bigger and have more ailments, and Earth can’t support its predicted population growth.

All of this adds up to a potentially bleak future, which is a post for the future, if I had one, which apparently I don’t according to the Prius driver.

So, when I see a bumper sticker “All you have is now” on a Prius, which is ironic as that car is better for the environment than most, I feel that’s the attitude that got us stuck in this mess in the first place and that if more people made harder choices and put the future higher on their priority list we’d be in a better place.

By the way, I’m doing my part by not taking as many showers and wearing the same clothes for a week, which saves water and keeps more detergent from flowing into the water supply or ocean. My wife clearly has mixed feeling about my strategy.

Back to the bumper sticker. Maybe I misread it. Maybe it meant “all you have is now to make a difference and that’s why I’m driving a Prius and not an oversized SUV, Jackass who eats McGriddles every day.”

It didn’t say that. But for my own sanity, I’m going to pretend it did and let it go.

There, done. It’s off my mind. I feel better now. Go about your day. There’s nothing to see here. Insane man back to enjoying the weekend. You do the same.

Letter to my daughter 06/13/11

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[To my friends: I’ve been tinkering with this post for almost two weeks. It’s the most frustrating of my letters to my daughter and makes me wish I had told my wife about my blog so she could edit it. I’m posting it so I can move on to new posts. However, I’ll probably revise this one forever. ]

Dearest Daughter,

The mistakes I’ve made in my life haunt me. Probably more than they should. But I can’t help it and I can’t forget them.

I wish I could take what I’ve learned and transfer that knowledge directly to your mind, helping you avoid the same ones. But I know you need to make your own.

Perhaps, I can help you in an unusual way.

Creative commons: Photo by Chefranden

If a butterfly flaps its wings in Hawaii, will it affect the weather in California? This is my version, by the way. And, my answer is “no, it will not. Or, there is no way to prove it.” However, if a nuclear power plant melts down in Japan, will it affect California? Yes.

So, there are obvious, major events we can measure – radiation – and events we can’t – the influence of the butterfly’s wings.

But when it comes to your life, the butterfly flapping its wings, or the small event seemingly with little impact at the time, matters a great deal.

Think of the timeline of your life, past and future. Actions or a lack of action in your life, especially early on, will change your life when you’re older – for better and worse. In my case, worse.

I think of my life now and believe it should be easier than it is. I should know more than I do. I should know how to do more things – play the guitar, solve harder math questions, identify more plants and trees, make more money, have the perfect career. I should be in a better position to take care of you and your mother.

And when I look back on my life, my situation now is a creation from simple actions I took or didn’t take when I was younger – when opportunity presented itself. I hung out with the wrong people and made the wrong choices, and never factored in the future.

Here’s the simple equation: (here and now + anything goes) – an eye on the future = the hole you’ll have to dig yourself out of for the rest of your life.

Creative Commons: Photo by shark001

This doesn’t mean you can’t have fun, or must work yourself to the bone. Have fun. Enjoy life. Just remember little events and choices have potentially big consequences later on in life. You’ll have to live with the good and bad decisions. No matter what though, don’t beat yourself up like I have. Let the bad ones go.

I’ll leave you with this. Until you know exactly what you want with your life – what makes you the happiest – open as many doors as possible, try as many far-reaching experiences as possible. Play the guitar, the piano. Learn karate. Skeet shoot. Make a quilt. Study as much math as possible. Appreciate science and nature.

Better yet, ignore everything I’ve listed and go your own way, but always love your Mother no matter what.

It’s my hope one day when you’re in a tough situation, on your own, with someone leaning on you to do something you know is probably not the best choice for you to make, this post will remind you to imagine the butterfly and the air currents its flapping wings displace. And strength will come to you from the knowledge that those currents can only travel a long way into your future if you allow them to.

Love, Daddy

Sunday Stories: Anger or CF? and Welcome to Liceland

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Anger or CF? Which came first?

When the SUV stopped hard in the middle of the crosswalk, we and the crowd of families with soccer kids had the “walk” symbol. The hurrying driver realized he’d stopped too deep, a common mistake easily forgiven at that point. But then he looked over at us and decided to compound his mistake and step on the gas and make the right turn. My fuse burned fast. And I added to his mistake by yelling out “Jerk Off” in front of everyone and, I hoped, loud enough for him to hear. My wife looked at me in the way only wives can do, and I apologized to everyone. I meant to say “asshole.” But I caught myself, just not in time to keep quiet. I redirected the impulse and fired off another nicer term for the young impressionable minds, each of whom, thanks to me, asked their parents tonight: What’s a Jerk-Off, Pa? Well, son, that’s someone who yells “Jerk-Off” in public. I don’t understand, Pa? Well, son, let me make it simple. It’s the same as an asshole. Exactly.

In a perfect world, without CF, my wish would have been for the SUV driver to stop, get out, and for me to deliver a beating to ensure he wouldn’t run a crosswalk again with kids present. It makes me wonder if I were “cystic fibrosis free,” would I be blogging from jail right now? Is my anger created by the trials of cystic fibrosis, or not? I believe I would not have the degree of pent-up anger without the life CF gave me, or has taken from me, depending on one’s point of view.

Welcome to Liceland. Now go home.

If my wife owned a flamethrower, our house would be a pile of ashes right now. She would let rip with the weapon and scream, “Burn in Hell, lice, Burn in Hell,” until there was nothing left. My daughter and I would stand watching, silent, fearful we might draw her attention and earn a good singeing of our hair as a precaution.

This weekend has been difficult on my wife, who has the strength and courage of a frontierswoman. But even lice can break the strong. She’s cried several times from being overwhelmed. She is due. Her chromosome-challenged husband has mild hemoptysis and may be hospital bound. And, our house, garage and a car are filled with quarantined black plastic bags of anything non-washable. “Can you fit in one of these bags,” she asked me. I kid that she did, maybe. Yes, I kid. Stop it, Fox.

The bug bags will be here for the next two weeks (she wants four weeks) while the eggs, if there are eggs,  hatch and die. My fear is that my wife will have done all of this work to eradicate the lice, then my daughter will go back to school Monday and be infected again.

We emailed the school Friday. They’ll do an inspection Monday. What’s interesting is how many families don’t tell the school when their kid gets lice. We discovered this over the weekend: “Oh, yeah, so and so had lice, and so did they and them. Oh, and them, too.” Yet, we don’t remember the school mentioning them or they. Oh, well, what can you do?

So, we continue to vacation in Liceland and abide by the strict laws of the country. We strip down to our birthday suits before entering the house, then receive a chemical shower, a body-cavity scan from TSA workers, and fresh white space suits. In my Darth Vader voice: “Lice, I am your father.”

We’ll kick the lice problem, one day. Or soon we’ll be living at the Holiday Inn for a few weeks until we catch bed bugs and have to move to the moon, which is bug free I hear. But who knows? Perhaps here is a louse living there that burrows into your ear and eats your brain, which, for me, makes the moon the perfect place to live.

Tapping the Maple Tree

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Lately, I’ve been tapping my anger like one taps a maple tree. I jab a spike in my right leg and let it drip sap into a bucket. Most of the time I keep the anger inside, contained. But slowly, I’ve been draining it, letting go of my fear of using it.

Does this hurt the tree? Because it hurts my leg.

We went to a restaurant a few weeks ago for lunch. It took forever to find a parking space. And when my daughter is hungry, that feels like forever and a day. The restaurant was half full; it was 2 p.m. The hostess came to take our drink order and they were out of fresh squeezed lemonade, their specialty. On a Saturday?

We ordered water and an ice tea. But the hostess never came back with the drinks. She walked by us a dozen times – we had transformed into customer ghosts. Then the waitress helped everyone except us. So, we got up and left. No one cared.

Not getting service made me feel bad because I take it personally. My wife says I shouldn’t because it has nothing to do with me – it was a poorly run restaurant. But I tell her the world revolves around me. It always has something to do with me. Was there something wrong with me? Look, I know there’s something wrong with me, but does it really show in the 10 minutes I’ve been in your restaurant? Are you clairvoyant? Did you read my mind and not like what you saw? I don’t like it either, but you don’t have ESP. If you did, you would have seen I’m a great tipper. So there, Amazing Kreskin.

Then I remembered rule #1 in the Book of the Unknown: Never leave the house without the paper bag on your head – you’ll only frighten people if you do.

So, I wrote the restaurant. I’ve written many emails to companies expressing my happiness or displeasure. I had never used the “F” word in one before. Never. Time to tap the anger tree. Bang. I showed it to my wife: “Are you really going to send it?” Bang, I pressed “send.” Then I thought, “What did I just do?” and panicked, a little. But something about it felt good, like they deserved it. The staff at the restaurant was incompetent and lethargic. They ruined our lunch and made us feel bad. The crappy restaurant needed a wake-up call, something with punch – an email capturing the emotion of how we felt. I did my best to communicate it. I never heard back.

We ate lunch at Jamba Juice next to the blenders. I offered my daughter 10 bucks to walk into the evil restaurant and throw her Mango-a-go-go on the floor. “Then, run like the wind. We’ll have the car ready.” Simple plan. She declined. At least she laughed and saw the humor in it. That’s my girl.

The Story of the Manure Salesman

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One day an unknown manure salesman hurried to load his camel. Shovelsful of manure were thrown up and into a large wood crate strapped to the camel until it became a heaping pile and the camel’s legs shook from the weight. At that point, the salesman threw handfuls of hay onto the load to keep it together, and to knock down the smell, as if that were possible.

A woman watched from the shadow of a doorway.

Sweating from his labor, the man stood back and looked at the camel – loaded and ready to go. Glancing at the ground, he picked up one more long stray piece of straw and tossed it on the load. In the time it takes a summer breeze to appear, the camel collapsed and died, crushed by the weight of the manure, which spilled into the street and onto the salesman.

He stood there stunned and speechless, covered, stinking, his hands not wanting to touch his soiled clothing. Tears filled his eyes from the loss or the smell.

“That was unfortunate,” the wise woman said, stepping carefully to avoid the mess as she approached.

“It was the fault of this one straw,” the man said, as he plucked a sample from his shirt and held it up for her to see. “It only took this cursed piece of hay to kill my animal. If not for this single straw, I would still have my livelihood and load.”

“It’s never the fault of a single straw.”

“It isn’t?”

“All of that manure weighed a ton. You were an idiot for loading too much on your camel – to the point it only took one straw to tip the scales toward disaster. But it was the total load, not the single straw, that killed your animal.”

The man gave this some thought, his facial expressions mirroring the realization of the truth and his responsibility. Then his face became calm, his body relaxed, and he pulled out a gun and shot himself in the heart while the wise woman watched.

She stood there for a minute, calm, quiet, studying the scene in front of her. The man, the camel, and the fertilizer, all linked together. Her hand raised up to her face, slowly wiping away a drop of blood, but no lines appeared on her face for anyone to read – if they had noticed her.

People circled around the man and camel, letting their curiosity overcome their sense of smell. A young girl stood next to the wise woman and tried to peek through the cracks of the wall the onlookers formed.

“What happened?” she asked the wise woman.

Looking down into the young green eyes, the woman said: “Always choose your words carefully when speaking to someone who doesn’t have their shit together.” Then she turned and walked the opposite direction of the growing mass.

Having a blog rocks! And so does Josh of Joshland!

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If my daughter reads this blog one day, I hope she takes away the lesson that you can only get rewards in life if you take a first step in one direction or another. When I started writing this blog I had no idea it would return the level of support, intelligence, humor and kindness that it has. I’ve been blown away over the past year by the experience, as I thought I would attract two or three people who had read every page on the Internet and were down to mine. Like love, I find it best not to analyze anyone’s reading choice too deeply, lest the magic fade. I’m grateful for my new friends – I’ll leave it at that.

And then there is Josh from Joshland, a kind soul unlike any other who walks the walk of inner strength and positivity; a person who has experienced more than a reasonable amount of heartache in his life with cystic fibrosis and the death of his sister, Angie, from CF. Mere mortals might give up. Not Josh. He colors this world orange with his  crazy pal Moganko* and almost makes me want to believe in the goodness of humanity (almost, which is a future blog post).

So, what does this crazy friend of mine from the land of Vikings go and do? He creates two amazing graphics for me. The banner at the top of the page and the Unknown Graphic below. I opened my email and there they were – gifts for moi. And I like gifts. Yes, I am the luckiest person alive.

My humble thanks to Josh for the thoughtfulness and generosity. The banner will go into rotation immediately and appear randomly, depending on my mental state. Regarding the other graphic, I like admiring my handsome self in it. The resemblance is uncanny. Well done, Friend of Moganko.

Please raise your nebulizers for Josh tonight. Salute.

I rock in my purple shirt. Fox doesn't like the way he looks.

 

*There is some debate whether Moganko created the character Josh or vice versa. It’s a mystery that remains unsolved.

Use the Force next time an anxiety attack happens

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After two visits, my new heart doctor suggested I should go on Prozac. “Forget you” very much, doctor. At what point did you not notice my extensive list of medications? The one that comes on a scroll and unrolls onto the floor.

Sure, let’s add another med to the list. Genius idea. Especially a drug like Prozac, which can do all kinds of strange things to your head. May I have a prescription for a .44 Magnum handgun, too? Pretty please with mustard and my brains on it?

How did I get here?

My fantastic regular heart doctor is getting up there in years and is a 60-minute drive each way, plus the two-hour visit. So, every time my heart does its samba, giving up four hours of my day is a real drag just to be told I’m alive. So, I spun the doctor wheel of fortune and picked a new one close by. The five-minute drive rocks. But the new doctor ain’t my old one.

During the first visit he was complaining about his older patients and how slow they moved and how long the visits take. During the second visit, he mentioned how the children of dying patients don’t accept the fact their parents are dying and nothing can be done. He wasn’t making a big production of his frustration, but was whining. And, as I’m the king of whining, I can spot when someone else is stealing my stage time.

I was also thinking he has life pretty good. He’s a doctor, married with kids and doesn’t have cystic fibrosis. Right there he’s ahead of the game. No whining allowed, Doc. What the hell are you complaining about? Where’s the genie that gives you CF for a month to teach you what you should already know? You’re living the high life.

Back to the five-minute Prozac diagnosis.

Along with the suggestion for Prozac came a few suggestions that showed he hadn’t listened closely to why I was anxious, and ended with the simple advice “don’t worry so much.” Oh, doctor, it’s that easy? Why didn’t I think of that? I’m so lucky. You cured me with your brilliant wisdom. May I kiss your stethoscope to show my eternal gratitude? I promise to name my next boa constrictor after you. The one I’ll let wrap me up and squeeze me to death while I’m high on Prozac.

Prozac this. I’m insane, not depressed.

[“Cranky tonight, I am,” as Yoda would say – if he were not on Prozac, though we all know he is.]

The woman with the blue hair

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I wish I could tell you the exact words spoken by the woman with the blue hair, but I was bending over having an argument with my daughter about not shutting off her Nintendo DS and I didn’t see the woman when she spoke to me. She said something like “If you spank your daughter in public I can only imagine what you do at home.”  Let me clear this up first: I don’t spank or hit my daughter, nor did I on the streets of Ventura that day. But somehow this woman in her late twenties with bright blue hair and a coffee in her hand thought I did. Somehow her mind saw something that did not happen and she felt the need to comment on the illusion.

“Sorry?” I said. “What did you say?”

She told me I shouldn’t spank my daughter. I guess at this point I should have just walked away and ignored her. But as my daughter had already wound me up by continuing to play her game and giving me attitude about it, I was already in “fray mode.” I won’t go into all details of the loop that started at this point, but it started with me explaining that my wife and I don’t believe in spanking and never do it, which is true, as I got spanked a ton growing up and wasn’t going to inflict that on my child. So, this complete stranger accusing me of something like that got me pretty heated fast. My voice was loud and I was pissed, but anything I said was followed by something to the effect of “I saw you spank her.”

Now had this been an argument with another man, it would have escalated into a fist fight, which would have caused me to cough up blood, of course, and the police would have come and it would have been a mess. Fortunately, I realized two things: I couldn’t get in a fight with a woman, as that would cross a line I would never be able to live with; the argument was becoming pointless, as arguing with her would never change her mind of what she thought she saw.

My daughter started crying at this point, which should have a been a major clue for the woman that she was wasn’t crying before, a good indication she didn’t get spanked. “You made your daughter cry,” she said. “You made my daughter cry,” I said, which doesn’t sound that cool on the page but I said it with such intensify that the woman didn’t say anything after that. I hugged my daughter and looked back at the woman one more time. She flipped me off. I just waved her off in a way that said you’re not worth my time and walked away with my daughter, who had never experienced anything like this heated argument in her life.

We went for pizza and it turned into a great teaching moment. We spoke about how we couldn’t let the woman ruin our day. We could have gone back to the car and gone home, but she would have defeated us if we had done that. It also allowed me to discuss the types of people that exist in the world and how you have to be street smart, which is another reason you don’t walk along with your head down playing your DS. People and situations come at you fast. Head up, eyes open.

If there is a karma side to the story it’s this. As my daughter and I got back to the car later, a woman called out to me. She and her two friends were there when the argument was going on. She told me she had seen me standing with my daughter and I hadn’t spanked her, which is amusing as I didn’t need confirmation, but I understand she meant it as support. She said I was controlled and had it happened to her she’s not sure she could have managed it like I did, which is funny as I felt wound up and bordering on a lack of control, but I didn’t use foul language in public and in front of my daughter, which I was happy about.

This nice woman told me she debated getting involved and stating that I didn’t spank my daughter, which deep down I would have liked just to prove the blue-haired woman wrong. But who knows what would have happened or if the annoying woman would have even believed the witness. It may have escalated the situation. So, I let my witness off the hook and told her it was best that she stayed out of the situation. It seemed she needed to hear this, as her inaction was bothering her. I was happy to help her let it go and absorb all of the burden.

Now if I could just let the damn thing go. It’s several days later and I still replay the situation in my mind. It taps into my CF anger and OCD and I keep thinking about it. I like to win and perhaps that’s where my frustration lies – there was no way to win, but I still want to. I also have a new appreciation for the fact many witness statements in court are incorrect. Somehow this woman saw something that did not happen, yet was convinced it did. Or, she just wanted to mess with me, which is possible. Or who knows what her motivation was – and that bothers me. For as long as I live, I’ll never know what really happened that day or understand human behavior, including my own.