One of the interesting things about being me is that people ask me for guidance. I fear that I shall never understand the logic behind that, but I take the compliment seriously and attempt to give suggestion that is worthwhile.
It even works sometimes.
The qualifier there would be sometimes.
I have a young woman in my life that I met a few years ago, someone who I can call a friend. I would not call our relationship as formal as the one with me & the mentee, but she often calls me when she wants to talk about the man in her life. It started well back when we first met, she admired my outlook on life and love. The comical thing about that is when she and I first met I was at what was most likely the most dysfunctional point of my romantic life.
What I knew was what I wanted, what I did not know was all that I would have to give up to get it. I was one of those people back then that could look at YOUR situation and walk you through it, yet I was not capable of following my own advice. I’ve changed since then personally, yet not in an advisory fashion. It still is what it is and I still know what I know and if you want to know it I will share it, I simply do not put a guarantee behind the words.
I figure if you trust me enough to ask then you will determine that I am fairly sensible, somewhat sane, and that you plan on doing what I suggest that you do. I mean, think about it, if none of that is true…..why the fuck are you asking me what you should do?
So …. anyway…. the young woman:
She’s been in some interesting predicaments since I met her. I have a whole list of reasons why she chooses as she does, and I can show her exactly at the locations that things go wrong. God Bless the beast and the children though…she listens not to one fucking thing that I tell her.
She will call when the shit hits the fan because what she REALLY wants is for me to listen. I’ve done that for 2+ years now…I am all tuckered out. When she gets to the end of the crying session she will ask me what she should do. I always tell her, she always ignores me, and in 2-3 months the phone rings and she is repeating the same pattern.
The last 2 times that she called though I warned her that I was at the end of my rope with this situation. I mean well fuck it all, is my life not complicated enough? She said that she understood…yet…well let’s discuss the day I had on Twitter.
I logged on to see one of the most callous and ignorant things that I’ve seen in some time on Twitter. That says a lot because Negro Twitter is not for the weak of mind, body or spirit. The Cliff Notes version of the scenario was one of my followers (OOMF) was ranting about what a stupid bitch Sabrina Fulton is/was/will be…whatever.
If you’ve followed my position on the Martin case, you should know that while I don’t have the blood lust most have for George Zimmerman, Sabrina Fulton and Tracy Martin have 1,000% of my empathy, loyalty, respect and admiration. I am a mother. I get it. I am the mother of a Black male child, who will one day be a Black man, assuming that I can do my part and keep him from the Zimmerman’s of the world, and out of the cell block.
The idea that one day my child may not come home is something that chills my blood, and turns my hair gray. No parent thinks that they will lose their child, or heaven forbid bury their child. If you combine the agony of every parent’s worst nightmare that has become reality for Trayvon’s parents, with the media circus that this case has morphed into, I don’t see how anyone with a soul can condemn that man or that woman. Yet this was his thought pattern:
sigh
The thing about social media is that it gives many people the idea that they can say what ever they wish without consequence. The the about social media is that $400 notebooks and iPads have given access to almost everyone. Once upon a time, you had to have a certain amount of $$ (or credit) to have a computer in the home. Today, with AT&T giving way iPhones for a penny, every great unwashed keyboard thug gets to pop off at the mouth.
This is relevant to the why won’t she listen to me conversation because this rocket scientist and all around nice guy who’s timeline I obliterated yesterday, is the same person of the male species (I can’t bring myself to call him a man) that the young woman wants to make a life with. Live happily ever after with.
Now the comment in and of itself, while without class, or taste, or manners is not a terrible thing (I guess)…the day long exchange between the two of us was – or SHOULD – be eye opening.
The thing about Twitter? If you are going to pop off at the mouth with ignorance, you should also be prepared for someone to point out that ignorance.
Once you put something out there on a social media site, you open yourself up to anyone that can see the comment. It was this bamma’s poor luck that I happened to see that yesterday.
If you are bold enough to say it, you should also be bold enough to take what comes with saying it, that someone might find it offensive, that someone might tell you they find it offensive, and that you will deal or you will ignore.
If you are bad enough to type this:
Then you are surely bad enough to take the heat that may come from what you wrote? Oh you’re not? Well then perhaps one should leave Twitter to the adults & you should go back to AOL.
If you are bold enough to say: ” Just bein honest, I can’t sugarcoat my feelings!” when someone reminds you that this woman lost a son, on one of the worst ways possible, and that she’s had to endure media attention and scrutiny most would have collapsed under in hours. Then surely you are bold enough to withstand a couple of words like ‘ignorant’ ‘classless’ coming from little old me.
If for some reason you are not? The worst possible thing that you can do in response is create a Twitter beef. The thing is you might just meet someone who is smarter than you, wittier than you, had the time to go word for word with you, and has the ability to make you look foolish. Not that you don’t already look foolish when you say things like: “please understand that you’ve opened the flood gates?! I’m not gonna let up until you say uncle! Its my job to make you delete me or delete your acct cuz you’re sick of me!!”
What is going to happen then is that I will use the opportunity that you’ve now given me to expose you as the petty, ignorant, unwashed, misogynist that you are.
I hate a fucking bully, I absolutely do. I take every possible opportunity to remind a bully that there is a bitch that is bigger and badder on the block than they are.
If it is also the opportunity to show the woman I’ve been telling for years that you ain’t shit by using your own words? How on earth do I turn that down? How do I resist the chance to walk into your house and shit all over your weak & miserable existence? How do I reject the opportunity to wipe my ass with your self-esteem?
Precisely.
Although he swore that he would make my life miserable, he didn’t stop me from any of the work I needed to get done.
Although he insisted to his acolytes he was destroying me, I finished a $300 assignment while he walked about the office with high blood pressure that nothing he said to me would make me go away.
I hope she paid attention, that young woman I’ve spoken about.
If for some reason she didn’t? I now have documented evidence I can direct her to, rather than waste my breath, time and energy telling her what I’ve been telling her.