A Good Friday.

April 3, 2010

Note to self:  It’s okay to drink beer on Good Friday as long as it has ice cream in it.

I’m pretty sure that this blog is not going to be all that funny.  I’ll do my best to interject some dry sarcasm every now and then.

I haven’t written in a while – and for good reason.  Surely I am not the only one in this tragic/beautiful world that thinks thoughts that might have warranted electro shock therapy 50 years ago?  No?  I think my sister said it best the other day when I made mention of this.  I told her that I was concerned that if people really knew what went on in my head sometimes they might render me dangerous/clown shoes—to which she responded, “OR you might find out that you are normal”.  For me, this would be worse.  I think I find some sick satisfaction in singling myself out as misunderstood.

This recent self-deprecating tirade I have been on over the last several weeks was brought on by some stuff that I would rather not make mention of.  But for the sake of everyone’s curiosity I will sum it up in one word: Actually I can’t think of a word…that doesn’t begin with the letter, “F”.  Sorry.  Surely you know that by, “F”, I am referring to the word: Fiddlesticks.  I’m not going to waste anymore time talking about things that don’t matter.  I’m not going to waste anymore time telling you that mankind is disappointing and mostly selfish (myself included).  I am not going to tell you that I’ve been really pissed off lately and crying a lot.  I’m further not going to tell you that not even pastors are exempt from chronic douche bagery.  Yea I said it.  Let the head shaking, intercessory prayer, and hypocritical gratefulness that you are not nearly as bad off as me begin.  I dare you.

This is my struggle: How do you separate your value as an individual from the effect other people’s shitty behavior has on you?  In other words, how do you not blame yourself for the hurt people cause you?  You see, in my mind, people wouldn’t hurt you if you had all the necessary and redeeming qualities required to please them.  It’s the magic, the magic of perfection.  If you have the magic then no one can hurt you.  Because you are perfect and they would never have a reason to.  Instead, your magic would motivate them to bestow upon you nothing but kindness, sweetness, gentleness, and the occasional box of chocolate.  And by the way, life is not like a box of chocolates.  Life is more like a box of Milk Duds.  Sometimes you get a nice gooey, caramelly one.  Other times you get that defective one with the shriveled, dried-up caramel—the actual dud.  You know?  And other times you don’t even get a Milk Dud, you get a Raisinette that accidently made it’s way into the Milk Dud batch because they all run down the same conveyer belt.  And while Rasinettes are good, they are an unpleasant and disturbing surprise when what you were expecting was a Milk Dud.  Get it?

Funny thing about it is, I would actually take that unpleasant surprise of a Raisinette right now—because lately, it’s been more like I’ve been biting into rocks instead of chocolate.  I’ve been praying a lot.  Waking myself up in the middle of night because I am yelling out, “I’m not afraid”.  My spirit is disturbed—my subconscious is asunder.  In light of this Easter weekend I know that I shouldn’t be struggling like this.  Believe me, I’m sussing it out with fervor.  And when it’s finished I am not going to look back.  I am in the process of disposing of this like you would the soiled linens you’ve discovered in your guest room.  Save me, Father, from myself.

So all this . . .and then today something good happened.  I met up with someone for lunch.  It wasn’t anything like the whole, I Should Have Ordered the Soup incident.  Nice fella, artist, seemingly normal—a little pretentious but gentle in spirit 😉 I am not going to give the play by play.  I just want to highlight one incident—one thing that stood out to me.  A little background: The person I met for lunch is a Mac specialist.  So I asked if it would be okay for me to bring my recently purchased Mac book to lunch for a small tutorial.  I’m still debugging my brain of P.C. methodology.  He said it would be fine and asked me to come prepared with some questions.  Yea right, I don’t make grocery lists—let alone lists of questions for a computer tutorial.  I sent him one email expressing my frustrations with the fact that I could not figure out how to correct spelling errors without using spell check.  You know how on a P.C. you can right-click underlined words and it gives you spelling options?  Yea, well they don’t have that feature on a Mac.  Very frustrating for me.

Anyway, despite all my recent half empty glass mentality, today something happened that felt nice.  It kinda took away some of the disappointment of all my recent letdowns.  When we entered into the Mac tutorial stage of our lunch, he pulled his computer out to take me through my spell check lesson.  Then he directed my attention to an email that he sent himself full of misspelled words.  I can’t remember exactly what it said, something about a hillbilly and Mississippi…I think.  It was funny though.  That’s not the point.  Words were underlined everywhere.  I was momentarily confused.  What the heck was this email?  How did he happen to have an email riddled with misspelled words for our tutorial?  Then I remembered he had mentioned he wrote and sent himself the email.  So I asked him, “Did you write this specifically to teach me how to do this?”  He smiled and said, “yes”.

Maybe what I am about to say will sound stupid, maybe not.  I don’t really care.  For a split second it dawned on me that this person had taken the time to write a funny little email, filled with misspelled words, in order to help me learn how to use my new computer.  It was the realization that someone cared enough to do something nice for me even though they didn’t know me.  For two seconds it felt really nice.  Then for five seconds it was cute—because he took the time to make it funny.  Then for the rest of the day it was comforting to know that not everyone is a douche bag.   Sorry for the salt.  But it’s true.  I guess you could call this one of the gooey caramelly milk duds.  The cool thing about it is that no matter how many shriveled milk duds you get, or even unexpected Raisinettes, the caramelly ones are still just as good.

People are disappointing.  They let you down and they hurt you.  But for all the bad experiences, life is not so cruel that you don’t get a break every now and then—more of a redemption really.  Something to remind you that people aren’t perfect but they are still good.  Today I met a good one.  Good to me at least.  And I guess that’s all we really need, the occasional good one, to keep us from losing faith in humanity altogether.  Of course it could have just been the fact that he also introduced me to beer floats today.  But I think I’d like to project some depth of character here.  I don’t know, you can read the beer float description and decide for yourself.   It was a Good Friday.

Beer Float:

-One part vanilla ice cream

-One part beer (Chocolaty tones preferred.  We used 1554)

-Mix beer and ice cream to consistency of milkshake

-Experience restoration of faith in humanity

Written by MONICALAPLANTE Posted in Uncategorized