2016: My Year of Caring

Liberals are always telling me how I need to care more.

I confess, I haven't always been the nurturing earth mother my progressive friends wished me to be. I was distracted by stupid stuff like trying to hold onto my job, endeavoring to find a way to pay my monthly bills without descending into bankruptcy hell, dealing with cardiac issues and remembering to remind my husband to plug in his holter monitor at night. I've been a lout.

In 2016, I'm going to turn over a new leaf.

I've seen the error of my ways, oh yes. It's my own fault for glossing over he pain that engulfs my fellow humans. I've already started by saying five Our Fathers and, to be fair to the feminists, exactly five Hail Mary's. I even threw in a few Glory Be's, because as a lapsed Catholic, the Glory Be's, regardless of their place at the end of the rosary, matter, too.

And, guilt-glutted Catholic that I am, I am sorry for the following sins and all the sins of my past life:

Pooh-poohing the Black Lives Matter movement.

I used to think that everybody's life mattered. I was so wrong. Only black lives matter! That lesson was brought home to me when the BLM folks shuttered off a major thoroughfare in downtown Minneapolis because they were pissed, dammit! So there was an ambulance trying to weave its way through the throng, endeavoring to save a stricken man's life. So what! In the larger scheme of things, who the hell was this guy anyway? Probably some retired rogue cop who'd spent his career hassling innocent poor folk. Or, I guess, he could have been a lowly working man who'd sweated inside a hothouse factory for fifty-odd years, trying to squeeze a couple of dollars out of his weekly paycheck so he could send his son to college, but whatever! You know the white dudes are always keeping the black man down.

Not being sensitive to the LGBLT (I may have the acronym wrong - again, sorry!) community.

Guys who are just "not feeling right" sometimes undergo gender reassignment surgery. Take Bruce Jenner. He's sixty-five; he's fathered a passel of kids. He's been a staple of the reality TV lexicon for a decade. But all these shows were never about him. They didn't focus on the man/woman he was. God-dammit, Bruce deserves his thirteen episodes in the sun! A "regular" person doesn't understand the lure of TV cameras following one's every twitch. A regular person can't afford the heroin that is TV notoriety. I have been inexcusably ignorant and obtuse.

Not understanding that college students are besieged.

Life truly sucks. Especially if you are one of those kids whose dad has mortgaged the family home to send you to an A-list university. You have to contend with all those trigger warnings and micro-aggressions, when you're just trying to (one day) graduate with your liberal arts degree and secure a job with the local franchise of Office Plus.  Guys are raping all over the place, and some dude is calling himself a "master", which, in itself, is devastatingly offensive. And scary! Not that you're Black or Native American or anything, but the connotation in itself is enough to drive you to take a couple weeks off and slither on down to Cabo and drench your sorrows in a couple of highballs of sluice lime and tequila. But spare us, please, the sombreros, unless you want a taste of what my puny-assed fist could potentially ball up into and give you the what-for.

The earth is dying, for God's (if I believed in a god) sake!

This is serious, people! If we don't stop this climate change now -- I mean right now, the island of Monuriki will be engulfed! What will happen to the poor inhabitants of Monuriki? What? Nobody lives there? Still. Never mind that. The polar bears...well, you know...they will....

Like college students, women are under attack!

It's high time to understand that women rule! Where once females were considered the "mothers" of the world (a hideous, provincial notion), women are, in fact, just like men! We might not have actual penises, per se, but for all intents and purposes, we are a glom of testosterone; and if you don't believe us, we'll wave our soon-to-be aborted ultrasounds smack in your face, you neanderthal nineteenth century slave masters!

Just ask our champion-in-chief, Hillary (with a thick arrow pointing straight at the spot where, theoretically, a human heart might rest).


I know I've left out some. 2016 will hence be a learning experience for me. I expect nothing but.  Thus commences my year of caring.

A year of sensitivity.

A year of viewing the world through new, albeit squiggly eyes. 

Meanwhile, don't worry about me. I'll keep suffering stress-induced chest pains, endeavoring to satisfy a boss who I didn't even know was my boss; but as it turns out, he exerts some influence over my paycheck and whether I actually receive one. Praying to be able to retire before an MI kicks me to the curb.

Because, after all, it's all about you.

And I'm sorry.