Dear Whosawhatsis,

I would like to write about a few things that have occurred to me that I’ve overlooked.  Or ignored.  The latter is far more likely.

So I’m thinkin’.  There’s quite a few people I don’t communicate with on the sole principle that they’ve gone and pissed off the few people I care about.  Well, some of them have done a little more then pissin’ on absorbent berber.  That’s asides the point.  I don’t talk to them out of the bloody rule in the south that you don’t go buddying up to knuckleheads that have reamed your kinfolk.  

It’s a rough realization knowing that behavior can be likened to sheets of metal pounded in over storm windows during a hurricane.  We do an awful lot to keep our honor intact.  I walk away the instant I feel someone’s looking down their nose at me, or curling their lip in some smarmy gear-up for a ‘verbose bashin’.  

Then I’m partway down the sidewalk with my pride, honor and dignity and I’m struck still by the frozen smile of the maid halfway down the stairs to a stately home.  The homeowner is irate, slinging insults in such a way that they were her embodied frustrations slimed up into little leeches.  Really  no other way to put it, the lady had a bad day and she was flickin’ leeches at the maid holding about fifty pounds of laundry on her way out to figure out how she was going to get the merlot stains out of those 500 thread monstrosities. 

She damn well stood there.  Smiling.  Listening to the ranting, raving, her eyelashes not even fluttering when the sticky bodies of pent up bitterness bounced off her weathered cheeks.  I’m thinking, if I was there, I’d be up those stairs feeding the lady that premium manure she more than likely insists on ordering for her goofy looking porch plants.

But you know what?  I don’t got nothing to lose.

That worker does.  She’s smilin’ because she’s ten times braver then I am.  She’s a hundred times more patient than I.  All she’s got to do is smile, lower her eyes and get into her car that don’t got more then 10k left on it’s sputtering corpse.  Because you know what?  She’s taking that pay check home.  Her kid is going to get lunches at school, her bills are going to get paid and they won’t be eating out of the bean-crock for another week.  

So I’m sitting here and thinkin’ guys .. I’m coming to the conclusion I don’t really know what honor or dignity is.  I don’t know.  

And I’m willing to bet, you don’t either.