Ramblings of a Middle Aged Lunatic

                Over the past couple of years, I’ve written a considerable amount about bullying.   My first book, The Playground, was based on my experiences as a childhood victim and details how it continued to adversely affect my life many years later.   I’ve blogged about bullying, and I’ve written a nonfiction book for parents of children who are being victimized.                   But my bullying resume was incomplete.   Until now.     I had never experienced cyberbullying.   Sure, I’d traded nasty barbs from time to time with my fellow Facebook users, in the heat of a political discussion, but I would hesitate to classify that as bullying.                 As much as it sucked, I’m profoundly grateful, because now I can speak with authority on the subject.   I know what it looks like and how it feels, so  I can empathize and help people dealing with it.                 Here’s my story: after peacefully coexisting with my fellow users on Goodreads for nearly a year,

   Mr. Rogers Neighborhood was the first program I watched regularly.  I remember crying at the end of an episode at the age of four years old when he said, "See you next week."  I couldn't wait another week to see Mr. Rogers!  Fortunately, he was always on the very next day.  I loved him probably just as much as my own parents.     Of course, once I'd grown out of the Sesame Street phase of life, I scorned Mr. Rogers and the legion of public broadcasting.  He was so lame, in his sweater and shoes (although I loved watching him change into them as a small child), and I would laugh at the various parodies that cropped up over the years.  As I grew into adulthood, I began to have a new appreciation for him, especially when I realized he was still on television talking to children in that patient voice of his.  I think I cried when he died.      Until I watched the documentary on him yesterday, Won't You Be My Neighbor, I hadn't realized how much of an

I lost my father at the age of twenty-nine.   It was not unexpected.   He was terminally ill throughout my twenties, and chronically depressed during my teens.   Ever since I can remember, he had a death wish.   He would talk about death as though it were waiting right around the corner, making statements like, “I probably won’t be alive to see that,” whenever I mentioned graduation or getting married or having kids.   His pending death consumed my life.                             Nonetheless, he remains the meter by which I judge all men.   My father was a profoundly flawed man, and still every man who came after him would fall short of what I viewed as his unrealized greatness.                 My father could have been a contender.   He was extremely intelligent, witty, good-looking (I look exactly like him, but those characteristics don’t transfer well to a woman, IMHO) and should have been successful.      Except for one thing.   Depression.   It turned minor setbacks into

                Most of us will suffer from depression at one time or another.   It may be situational, triggered by the death of a parent or a break-up, or it may be chemical, a long lasting funk caused by something going haywire in the brain.   Regardless, I feel it’s safe to say that all of us have felt it at one time or other.   Maybe we never went so far as to plan our own suicide, but we’d all had moments when we’ve thought, “I wish I didn’t have to deal with this anymore.”   Or, in my case,  wish I could have a do-over, since now that I’ve reached middle age it appears increasingly obvious that my life needs a reset button like a game system.                 The tricky thing about depression is, although most of us will experience a serious depression in our lifetime (whether we admit it or not) we are unequipped to deal with friends when it’s their turn.   Much like women not remembering childbirth, we develop selective amnesia when it comes to remembering how awful o

I’ve wanted to be an author since I was small, from the moment I realized people wrote those wonderful books my older sister read to me.   That was before I could read or write a word myself.   To me, there has never been a bigger honor the world can bestow than the title “writer” or “author.”             Then life got in the way.   Although my father never stopped assuring me that my dream was within my grasp, the world was filled with people who scoffed at my aspirations as unrealistic and unattainable. But I never stopped writing.   To this day, I sometimes open hard cover books to find loose pages of some story I’d begun longhand and never finished, as I would use the books to lean on, then tuck the pages in them when I was done.   The strange thing is I regard those years as fallow, yet I am constantly stumbling over evidence they were anything but.               My problem was consistency.   I wrote when the mood took me, which was whenever.   I started stories and novels

                                Today I was kind to someone different.                 For a long time, I’ve preached that we need to be nicer to each other.   In addition, I’ve also advocated for inclusion, and treating every human being with dignity and respect.   So, today I practiced what I preached.   I was nice.   I didn’t giggle or laugh or point.   Give me a pat on the back.                 The funny thing is, after the moment passed, and I was puffed up like a peacock celebrating my own kindness, I realized something strange and kind of screwed up.                 I felt owed.                 A chorus of angels should burst into song, serenading me.   A teacher should materialize and hold me up to the class as an example of a good human being.   Blessings should be rained upon my head.   It was time to buy lottery tickets.   All because I wasn’t a jackass during a ten second encounter.   Go me.                 How as a society did we develop this idea tha

Do you know what frightens me about the Roseanne scandal this past week?                 Not the repulsive sentiments expressed, or the stubborn refusal to condemn them by some members of the right.   Not the media firestorm it created, or that our President seems more preoccupied with Hollywood then the myriad of problems facing the United States.   Not the undeniable fact that she’s expressing what millions of Americans carry silently in their hearts.                 It frightens me that it took ten seconds and one Tweet to destroy her career.   Two hundred forty characters sent over two hundred people to the unemployment line, tanked her comeback, and condemned one of the most successful comebacks in history to the scrap heap.                   As someone who deals with words and is somewhat of a public figure (the way that your neighborhood Good Humor Man is somewhat of a public figure) I find that extremely alarming.                   I have always expressed stron