Wednesday, May 1, 2013

Bad Leslie...BAD!

Occasionally I amuse myself by poking a stick at the local 'intelligensia' in Modesto. In particular, I like to bother a certain person who occasionally runs for City Council or Mayor and is an out right buffoon.  His logic is faulty, his behavior is bad, he is easily ruffled and can get caught up in the rancor so fast it is hilarious. 

I need to knock it off.

It is not kind and it is not necessary. 

GAWD, it is so much fun!

I think it must be an attitude I have inherited genetically from my late father.  Neither of my parents suffer fools lightly but my Dad loved to poke fun at the louder ones.  As a result, of course, they hated his guts and gunned for him relentlessly over the years.  This, of course, just tickled him pink, giving him hours upon hours of amusement.  The idea that he was that important to these people just cracked him up.

It makes me laugh too.  This man's reaction to me and my opinions proves how important I am to him and how important it is for him to take me down a peg or two.  His words just drip with anger and resentment.  It is really kind of sad.

He 'calls me out' - questioning my class, ascribing motives that do not exist while ignoring the obvious one (I keep poking at him to see how long it takes to get all that hot air out of his balloon) and the only way to stop the dialogue is for ME to end it.  When I do he can then pat himself on the back, adjust his phony cowboy hat and declare himself 'da winnah!' in a contest only he was a part of in the first place. 

I got to thinking, however, about why this amuses me so much and I think it is because I cannot abide smug men or women.

Like GK Chesterton, or my Dad, I cannot fathom the lack of humility that causes people like the Modesto Pol to spout off in such a disagreeable manner.  Because it is hard for me to fathom, I am almost irresistibly drawn to poking a stick at the soft, gooey center of such an intellect just to see if there is any depth to it at all.  Of course there isn't; there never is, so I should just knock it off.

If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results I suppose the definition of mean would be to do the same thing over and over again when I know what result I will get.  If that is true, then I am a mean girl.

That isn't very nice and it isn't very Catholic and it is unbecoming to someone who has been sober for over 20 years.

So I think I will knock it off, stay away from the comment section of the opinion page of the Modesto Bee and just enjoy the day.

Shame on me (tee hee).

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hang in there Leslie! I can have a caustic tongue easily...for me I think it stems from living with an alcoholic father....lack of power to change things that bother me result in pent up anger that can explodes. I'm still working on it and its never easy, but now I understand why. I would love to talk with you sometime about all that.

Unknown said...

think--"Litany of Humility"