Sticks, Stones, Words, Judge Alex, Bullying, Bologna, PMS, the Pseudos, and Other Various and Sundry Sub-Topics

Lest any of my approximately twelve readers read this blog and comment that the ideas expressed are random and not necessarily pertinent to my topic, I've given this entry a broad title. All of those subtopics will not necessarily be covered in the course of this entry, but I reserve the right to stumble onto them, perhaps randomly and without warning or transition. If I don't touch upon each one, I may edit the heading. Then again, maybe I won't. It all depends upon just how lazy I am feeling after I finish what I have started here.

The blog I posted on Saturday disturbed a hornet's nest, metaphorically speaking. I directed Judge Alex to it. He apparently read it and complimented me on it. (The apparently referred to whether or not the judge read it. He indicated he did. He did compliment me on it. Perhaps he just tweets that back to everyone who sends him a link to something they've written. I really don't know.) My PseudoAunt also read it and was initially fine with it. Then my mom, who had read my blog and was most definitely not fine with it, convinced my PseudoAunt that she was not fine with it, either. A friend of PseudoAunt's also read it and was somewhat dismayed by something I had included. My PseudoUncle, who had expressed no opposition to the contents, also became upset, not because of the contents per se, but because they upset his wife, and so he had an obligation to be upset with me in support of her and in the interest of marital harmony.

Most of the blog was about either the topic of bullying itself or about Judge Alex's two-part special on the topic. Nothing in that portion of the blog was remotely controversial. What created the contention was something at the end of the second paragraph. I had included facetious comments my PseudoUncle made to his wife in regard to "Judge Alex." I thought that the comments were so obviously not true in any literal or figurative sense that their inclusion would hardly constitute an invasion of anyone's privacy. My suspicion is that my PseudoAunt felt this way as well. Furthermore, I did not use the names of either PseudoAunt or PseudoUncle in the blog. Between the relatively benign nature of the reference in the post and the anonymity of my pseudorelatives, I was unconcerned that anyone should feel "outed" by my blog.

One thing I learned, which I should have learned from many years of living in my parents' home, is that one should never underestimate the power of PMS. An otherwise harmless word, sigh, or eye-roll can take on the significance of the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor when PMS is also a factor. PMS may very well have doubly impacted my situation.

My intention was never to embarrass anyone. Had I actually heard the Pseudos arguing because PseudoAunt had inadvertently called out Judge Alex's name during an intimate moment (THIS NEVER HAPPENED, BY THE WAY), I would never have passed such a thing along. For the record, PseudoUncle was JOKING when he made the infamous remark within earshot of me. Nothing that either PseudoAunt or PseudoUncle said gave any indication that there was even a shard of seriousness in PseudoUncle's light-hearted comments or in Pseudo-Aunt's response.

Words began getting me into trouble shortly after I uttered my first ones well before I reached one year of age. Something about hearing the words, "Similac, b!tch!" when she was trying to serve me SMA formula in my bottle must have really rubbed my mother the wrong way. The previous sentence was entirely a joke, by the way. If I had called my mom the female-dog word, we would have found out just how true or untrue was the Fisher-Price corporation's claim that the high chairs they manufactured and marketed would NOT tip over under any circumstances, because my mom probably would have slapped both me AND the high chair at least into the next county even if PMS had not been a factor.

Still I seem to have always had a penchant for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. When I started writing, the tendency to write the wrong thing at the wrong time logically followed. Sometimes it was simply that I expressed my opinion when someone in charge -- usually a teacher -- didn't want to hear it. At other times it was actually what I said and/or how I said it. At other times still, it was the perceptions of others regarding what I said. In the ensuing state discombobulation created by response to my recent blog (only a fraction of the response about which I had the pleasure of learning actually appears in my "Comments" section), an acquaintance wrote to me, "You have entered into your inheritance as a writer. When you write about what is happening around you as you see it, you will pay a price for having done so." The person went on to suggest that the price for writing, even in an obviously non-literal sense, about the sex lives of those who have authority over me is very likely too high a price to pay with regard to the relative benefits I might conceivably derive for having ventured into the particular forbidden territory.

Bottom line: Pseudos, I'm terribly sorry for any pain or embarrassment I may have caused you. I'm not offering to apologize to anyone else because no one else could logically been harmed in any way by my blog.

In investigating this website, I discovered that the blogspot.com site offers bloggers statistics in order to track their readers. I rarely take advantage of this capacity. One particular feature provides a blogger with specific searches that led readers to their blogs. I scrolled down this list of searches. One search that led a reader to my blog was [verbatim] "Is there human flesh in bologna." I recall mentioning bologna sandwiches once in a blog about the garbage that was being served in my ward of the hospital at which I'm being treated. I never followed the subject so far as to wonder what was actually in the bologna that the hospital attempted to serve us. Perhaps I should have. Readers, if there are any of you left, please answer the searcher's query, rhetorical though it may be: Is there human flesh in bologna?