Ramblings of a Middle Aged Lunatic

                I don’t hate men.                 For real, I don’t.   I grew up with a father whom I adored despite being profoundly flawed.   I am blessed to know many amazing, talented, considerate men whose entire lives have been about giving to others.                 I’m not quite sure where people got the idea that I hate men.   But I was accused of it last night in a discussion on a friend’s Facebook by a former classmate I haven’t seen in at least twenty-five years.   To be honest, this is the first time I can remember having a conversation with him ever.   I know who he is because my parents bought our house from his family in 1978, but we were both small children then.   I was peripherally aware of him having a crush on me in high school, because everyone told me.   I can recall at least one painfully awkward encounter in the hallway when he deliberately knocked my books out of my arms in an obvious attempt to break the ice and have an interaction with me.   Tha

                I spent over three years as the consolation prize.                 It was a position as familiar to me as a comfy old pair of pajamas.   Growing up, all I wanted was for someone to be my friend.   I wasn’t picky.   I just wanted a seat at the lunch table, so I didn’t have to sit alone.   I always knew if given a chance I would be the best friend any girl could ask for, but back then no one wanted to give me a chance.   Years of rejection made me believe I was broken, second rate, bargain basement goods.  I would let people treat me like garbage as long as they would tolerate my presence in their life.                 The end result was I wasted years on a man who didn’t love me and was hoping his former wife would come back.   At the end, he was talking marriage.   Not in the excited way of someone wanting to share a future with me, more like “we might as well.”                  I balked.   I knew I would be signing up for a lifetime of being second best to

                By now nearly everyone has heard of the brouhaha surrounding Starbucks.   Two black men were arrested for trespassing.   According to the manager who called the police, she asked them to leave repeatedly.   According to the men themselves, they were meeting a friend to discuss a real estate venture and didn’t want to order until he arrived.                 What happened next was the kind of explosive media storm that has become all too common in today’s world, enough that people are immune to it, sick of it, and dismiss it.                   I spend way too much time on the comments section of various websites.   It’s like eating candy.   I know it’s not good for me, and will make me look bad, but I just can’t stop.   But I digress.   Basically, I’ve noticed a phenomenon on these sites.   When any sort of minority is treated disrespectfully, be it someone black, Hispanic, or a woman, the majority of people try to find a reason to make it their fault.   They

                Remember graduation day, when you set out to conquer the world?   You were going to do great things with your life.   Make a difference.   Be somebody.   Then the years passed, and your noble notions about being a mover and shaker faded.   You were willing to settle for a nice, steady paycheck that provided enough income to support your lifestyle.   You had a family.   You went on vacations to Disney World.   Life was good.                 Then you got pink slipped, and now you’re just another worthless leech sucking the government teat.   Make a difference?   Ha.   Now you’re less than nothing.   You find yourself wishing you had the money from all those vacations to Disney World.   The cost of that week could have kept you afloat for several more months.   You can’t eat those priceless memories.                 No matter how it happens, whether you were downsized, made a huge mistake, or the new boss just didn’t like your face, losing your job ranks up th

                  If you’re around my age, within the last decade or so you’ve witnessed something alarming: the disappearance of all the things that defined your childhood.   In what seems like a very short time, you’ve morphed into someone mourning the experiences the new generations will never get to have that were sort of cool in a messed up, twisted way.   So let’s remove our hats and say a prayer for the disappearance of the following: 1.        Saturday Morning Cartoons. They seemed timeless, so you only noticed when they gone after they’d been like, long gone.   A whole generation of adults never experienced this magical kick-off to the weekend.   This was the only time the media paid attention to children, as the big three networks vied for their viewership.   Some of the cartoons were badly designed spin-offs of prime time shows…we had Happy Days the cartoon, where the gang wound up being transported via spaceship to the planet of the Krolacs (my cousin and I t

                My sophomore year of college, I took a class in Gender and Communication.   It was the mid-nineties; this was groundbreaking stuff.   Our Bible was Deborah Tannen’s You Just Don’t Understand.   There I learned something that has stayed with me all these years later.   Women like to talk.   Men like to solve problems.   This causes stress because when women are talking about a problem, they just want someone to listen.   Men try to solve the problem.                 As the years passed, I’ve realized that the assumption that “men do this, while women do this,” is a generalization.   I’ve encountered women who are also problem solvers.   How they somehow missed out on the whole brutal female socialization ritual and ended up this way is a mystery.   But my late mother was like this, and it made conversations maddening.                   I would start telling her about my bad day and she’d say, “I don’t know what you want me to do about it.   What do you want me