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I’m Offended. Here’s Why You Should Care.

Heather Christena Schmidt Leave a comment

My birthday is coming up and the craziest thing has been happening: I’ve been telling people I’m turning a year older than I am actually turning. Either it’s the old age, or the fact that my husband just turned that age (he’s a year older than me). But I’ve been doing it.

The fact is: I was born in 1982, which makes me – what I like to call – a late stage millennial. I’m like an older millennial who can see some of the ridiculous shit us millennials are doing, all while doing it. And loving it.

Like avocado toast and blaming the financial problems we millennials face on the crippling behaviors of Baby Boomers. Or using mason jars for drink ware. Spending my time reading labels, and breastfeeding my kids well past two (and in public!).

There are also, though, a lot of millennial things I can’t get on board with.

Millennial men’s haircuts, I can’t stand. Right now my husband is sporting a hairstyle that makes him look less like a Nick-the-film-editor; and more like David, the wanna-be goth who wears black lipstick and works at my local Starbucks as a barista. (It’s awful, and sorry David – I hope you can forgive me.)

I also cannot do the whole MLM candles, essential oils, and workout programs thing. The thought of taking forty-five selfies of myself a day, and posting story after story on Instagram in which I just sit there and talk – all in an effort to sell something – is …undesirable to me. That isn’t to say there’s anything against people who do it (and in fact I find myself envious of the people that can take so many photos and videos of themselves while I have to take 537 shots before finding an angle that suits me).

It’s just not my jam.

The conflict I really have with myself as an older millennial is the being offended thing. It is so typical of me as a millennial to get offended by things to such the degree that I do. (And isn’t that just the mark of our era: to always find a reason to feel offense at something someone else said/did/posted?)

And yet… I completely get it (the being offended).

Yesterday someone’s post on Facebook so severely offended me that I told literally every person I talked to about it for the rest of the day.

Today I was at Target and found myself feeling offended no less than four times.

Then tonight I made the error of going online, and …well…

Basically, it happens a lot.

The thing is: if you spend any time scanning the comments sections of online, you’ll see that it is hot topic now to not only get offended by things, but also – on the flip side – call out anyone that takes anything personally. Honestly, it makes me a little sick (or maybe offended, how meta would that be?) to see how crass people can be about it.

I get it: some people have taken it way too far. Like over the edge of the cliff and halfway down the river in the ravine far.

But also, in other instances, I think a lot of people have missed the point.

Take today, for example. It’s April Fools day, and while there have been a myriad of dad jokes and corporate brands having a good time posting dumb shit on the Internet for us all to enjoy, there have also been some steadfast reminders going around about what is too far.

One of those things that goes beyond clever and turns into just, plain crass is the ever-predictable fake pregnancy announcement. What better way to fool your family and friends then by posting a faux memo for the entire world to see that you have a bun preparing itself to fly out your lady hole. Then on April 2nd you let the truth be known that your womb is, in fact, still childless, and everyone had a good laugh. Right?

No. Just no.

I guess if I’m in my 50s and everyone’s going through menopause, it has the potential to be silly. But I’m 36, almost 38 (scratch that, 37) and a fair number of people in my group of peers has lost a child, miscarried a pregnancy, or had a tremendously difficult time getting pregnant. And while those people may all have a sense of humor, I often wonder if for everyone that thinks it’s silly, there isn’t someone quietly hurting as a result of the insensitivity of the whole prank.

I’ve been saying this for years: fake a marriage, fake a gigantic Amazon delivery. One year we put candy melts on brussel sprouts and fooled my husband into thinking they were cake pops. Awesome!

But don’t fake a pregnancy.

The best equivalent I can think is going up to a friend whose Grandma died on March 31st, and saying “my grandma died – APRIL FOOLS SHE IS ALIVE!”

I’m not one to take life so seriously, but I know when the time for jokes is over and the time for compassion begins. It seems that others are starting to figure it out as well, because this time, I saw an article going around about this very topic: how not funny the April Fools pregnancy announcements can be to some people.

And as usual, the comments proved how awful humanity has become.

The comment that I read on one of the postings that stuck out the most for me summed up perfectly what is wrong with the our culture (or at least one of the things):

“When are people going to understand that it’s not my responsibility to worry about what everyone is offended by?”

Who the fuck said anything about being offended?

From there I got sucked down the comment hole, in which I read heinous reply after heinous reply, all from the likes of women named Candy and Monica, with big haired profile pictures and those stupid cause filters laid over the photographs, quite obviously meant to cover up their total and utter lack of humanity. Yeah you are really passionate about lupus, but don’t give a fuck about people’s feelings, Tiphani with a ‘ph.’

That’s when it hit me: it’s super cool to make fun of millennials for always being overly sensitive to people’s sensitivities; and yet a lot of the time, what we are talking about are actual matters of human compassion.

The same woman who says it’s not her responsibility to worry about what others feel (because that’s what that comment is saying) is the same person that will drive by a homeless veteran and call him a drunk. It’s a weak viewpoint, weakened mostly by narcissism.

This is where things get dicey. Because you don’t want to be one of those people who’s just up in arms about everything. But also, you need to be compassionate towards others: even if it doesn’t affect you. And it’s dicey only because there’s a fine line between the two, one that is incumbent on all of us to walk along carefully.

So I’m pretty offended, obviously, about this whole issue. April Fools. Fake pregnancy announcements. Being offended. People saying people are offended too easily. Millennials.

And you should care for the same reason I do: the world of Candys, Monicas, and Tiphanis lacks the thing that makes us who we are. Our humanity.

How Many Relationships Have You Lost Over the Syrian Refugee Crisis?

Heather Christena Schmidt 3 Comments

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It isn’t every day that you think you’d be asking yourself, or others, that. And yet today, I find myself wondering just how many people I can no longer look in the face, speak to at a party, or read about in a Christmas letter or a Facebook post anymore.

It’s a lot.

The Syrian refugee crisis, one that has been going on for – surprisingly – a few years now, is reaching a fever pitch in these post-Parisian attack days, where people are now arguing whether or not the United States should continue to admit Syrian refugees seeking asylum from the Civil War. I say that “surprisingly” it has been going on for a few years, because before this last week, no one fucking seemed to know about it.

In 2013, footage was taken covertly amidst a routine gas attack in Syria, where innocent civilians – men, women, and children – were gassed in a public square. Since then, Syrians have been seeking asylum, or refuge, in other countries, as well as the United States from the civil war and the terror being brought on by the emerging terrorist powerhouse – ISIS.

To date, the United States has accepted approximately 355 refugees, since 2013.

Since 2013, there have been no terrorist attacks in the name of Islamic radicalism on US soil. Perhaps there have been thwarted attempts many of us have not heard of, but lives have not been lost at the hands of Islamic fundamentalists in the United States during that time.

There have, however, been several mass shootings in the name of racism, Christianity, and just plain blood-lust.

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The process to migrate to the United States as a refugee is a rigorous one, so much so that it takes a considerable period of time, and many are denied.

Moreover, historically, terrorists within radical or fundamentalist cells do not sneak in to a country they plan to attack amongst refugees. To be clear, no terrorist has ever been proven to have snuck in through a refugee process to a country they then later attack. Ever.

One person involved in the Parisian attacks last Friday had a Syrian passport, but this was forged, with the man having no origination from the country; and then the story was naturally fabricated and stretched by the media.

Rather, terrorists tend to use other means to get into a country, most prevalent being via tourist Visas. They are quick and easy to acquire, and with thousands if not millions of people traveling around the world between countries every day, it’s much easier to blend.

Those are just facts. There’s no debating them. There’s no arguing about these points. They are facts, ultimate truths – plain and simple.

What concerns me about this Syrian refugee crisis, is the response of the public. It is filled with hatred. Vitriolic fervor. And lies.

Post after post has gone viral, claiming statistics, arguing points, and furthering Islamophobia.

Tonight I actually read an article that claimed that 97% of rapes are committed by Muslims.

Are you fucking kidding me? People are accepting these articles as case in point proof to keep the Syrians out – all of them. And to take it a step further and suggest closing mosques. To require Muslims to wear special arm bands.

Um hello, special arm bands to signify a person’s religious designation? Hello, Nazi Germany…good to see you again. (Not really.)

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I get that fear is what is driving people to so radically react to what is happening around the world at the hands of the radical Islamic group, ISIS. But it’s more than driving them to react, it’s driving them to hate and to lie.

And it’s being used as an excuse for the deeply-rooted racism our country continues to hold close to the vest.

Moreover, it’s driving them to act crazy. To argue by personally attacking anyone that has even the remotest ounce of compassion for a people that is helpless and running from exactly that type of terrorism that everyone seems to want to prevent. In the last 24 hours I have been called an “idiot,” a “fuck face,” a “cantaloupe for brains,” a “terrorist lover,” and I have been told that I should be blown off the planet by terrorists wearing bombs.

Because I said we should try to find a solution that addresses people’s concerns, while also acting with compassion.

I have been told that regardless of statistics and facts that have been fabricated, made up, stretched, and lied about, that those “statistics and facts” should still be taken into account. That sure, 97% of rapes probably weren’t actually committed by Muslims (they weren’t), but that’s still reason enough to keep all the Muslims out.

Huh?

Everyone has lost their fucking minds. There, somebody had to say it.

I have friends in other countries, and they have confirmed that Americans have officially gone bat shit crazy over this issue. As the attacks in Paris were going on last Friday, Parisians were opening their doors to strangers to take refuge. The next day, Muslims lined up to donate blood to victims. This week the president of France announced a plan to take in 30,000 more Syrian refugees – and the nation rejoiced.

So why are we so afraid? Or is it that we’re not so much afraid as we are a nation more racist and bigoted than we’d like to admit?

A nation that wants our freedoms, but only if it’s the freedoms that we want. If it’s the freedoms others want, that have been used in the name of violence – well then fuck that. Fuck that, but if our freedoms are used in the name of violence (ahem guns, Christianity), well that’s just another issue and you can’t take my guns.

I am by no means a liberal, though I am also by no means a conservative. What do I identify myself as? A human being. A human being with compassion and an understanding that my duty, just as the duties of others, is to help others in need. Today I told my husband that someone asked me at some point in the last day or two if I would take refugees into my home. My response, of course, was yes – of course. My husband’s response? “Well yeah!” Because we are people guided not by fear of others and what we do not know, but the belief that it is our responsibility to do for others what we would hope them to do for us in a similar situation.

The thing so upsetting about this is that America is doing exactly what ISIS and the other terrorist groups want them to do. To close up and fear; for their fear to become so unbridled that it completely controls all common sense. That it completely controls all common sense that people will openly and without reserve accept lies as reasoning, knowing they are lies because that is better than actually thinking for ourselves.

Now, if you have any points grounded in facts and ideas of middle grounds and a way to help those in need but also increase protection on our land, I would love to hear it. I would love to have a conversation and consider each other’s points. I would love it because then we could still go on being friends.

To date, though, all I’ve heard is nonsense.

How many relationships have you lost over the Syrian Refugee Crisis? I have lost many, and in all honesty I’m not sure I want them back. If I do talk to or see any of them again – those haters of humanity and crafted manipulators of common sense – I’ll say what I am going to say to you all now:

May you all find in times of need exactly what you have given to others in their time.

And may God have mercy on us all, for we have fallen so far.

I Just Don’t Care Anymore

Heather Christena Schmidt 1 Comment

Nope. I just don’t.

I just don’t care anymore.

I don’t give a fig.

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For far too long, I’ve cared far too much. I’ve worried about what people thought of how I was dressed. I agonized over how people considered my hair, my make up, my outfits, the way my ass looked in those pants. I concerned myself with what people thought about things I said, how people responded to ideas that I had, and whether or not I’d offended anyone with my honesty and unrelenting logic.

For hours, I would ponder why we weren’t invited to something. When people came to my house, even for the quickest of moments and most mundane of reasons, I would clean for hours. And hours. And hours. Because I’d worry about what they thought of how I kept my home.

All the while, no one cared one single bit in the same way when it came to me.

No one ever cared how they appeared to me. How they dressed, how their hair or makeup was, how their asses looked in those pants. They didn’t care about how their houses looked when we came over, they never asked why they weren’t invited to something we hosted, and they certainly didn’t care about how we took things that were said to us.

At least they didn’t act like it.

Today my husband and I were talking about some recent, family-related Internet drama. People saying things that are so out of line and direct and just plain nasty because they, quite clearly, don’t care about what others think; then when I say even the remotest and most inoffensive of things, an Internet shit-storm erupts. In light of this, my husband said something so perfect, so true, I almost felt like crying that someone finally recognized the situation for what it is. He said: “Heather, why does everyone else get to say whatever they want, but you and I can’t?”

Because I’ve always cared too much, and they knew it.

The burden of all this caring has weighed on me far too much, though. It’s stressed me out and made me miserable. At some point, I must have realized this on a subconscious level; or more likely at some point I realized that no matter what I do and how much I care, there’s always going to be something wrong and someone unhappy because you just can’t make everyone happy all the time, and more importantly because I wasn’t being true to myself.

So I realized this and the figs began falling from my caring tree.

At first it was just that I didn’t give a shit about what clothing I wore or what make up I had on in specific places. Then most days of the week I stopped wearing make up altogether. I don’t like wearing make up, why am I doing this?! I started asking myself, with my hair everywhere and my yoga pants and tank top reaffirming this new decision.

And then I did this year’s Christmas shopping. I typically agonize over what to buy people. I want them to appreciate the gifts, have use for the gifts, and also be impressed with the intuitive sense I had to get them exactly what they needed or wanted without having to be told. Ridiculous? Um, yes. I still did it, though, because I cared too much.

This year, however, the number of fucks I gave over what we gifted for Christmas was correlative to the number of hours I spent agonizing over it all.

Zero. I spent zero hours. Well, 0.25 to be precise: in just fifteen minutes, I bought gift cards online for everyone and the entire affair was over. Let me be clear: I gave 0.25 fucks about Christmas giving, when every year in my previous 33 years I’ve given all the fucks I had to give.

When I realized that was when I really accepted that I just don’t care anymore. At all.

I don’t care what people think of me or how I look or what I do or what my hobbies are or how I am as a parent or what I wear or how my hair is styled or what I have to say or what I think about any given topic, and I don’t even care about whether or not other people like me or include me in their bullshit. Nine times out of ten I wouldn’t want anything to do with it/them anyway.

11251777_994838043886455_3284857635056924981_nBy the same token, I don’t care about how others look or what others do or what hobbies other people have or how other people parent or what other people wear or how other people style their hair or what other people have to say or what other people think on any given topic. I’ve been feeling this way for a while now without really realizing it, and now that I do I can see how much less stressed out I am.

I mean my stress level has gone from absurd to “wow, she’s super chill.”

When I was in high school, people used to think I was high on weed pretty much all the time. Now while I did partake in my fair share of pot smoking (what high school kid in the Midwest didn’t?), the times I did were few and far between. The reason why people thought I was high all the time, really, was because I just didn’t care back then. I did what I wanted, said what I wanted, wore what I wanted, and owned who I was. I was relaxed all the time, and loved my life to the point of contentment.

If getting back to that means people assume I’m high all the time, or drunk at every occasion, or – what they’ll all actually assume – just completely insane, well that’s the way it is. Guess what? They can think whatever they want, I know what’s true and that’s really all that matters.

What they think? I just don’t care anymore.

Ways I Quietly Judge My New Mom Friends

Heather Christena Schmidt 10 Comments

Sad news for me, because I am sure if any of my new mom friends read this blog post (which I am sure most of them will not – they are too busy uploading 7,000 photographs of their new babies taking a crap – see #2, appropriately numbered…); well, I am sure if any of them actually do read this, they will cease to be my friends. It’s just that I have been quietly judging many of them for some time now. Pretty much since all of them started dropping babies out of their lady-holes… sometime around the beginning of this summer.

I’ve reached that time where a lot of people my age are having babies. A few years back it was that everyone was getting married; and don’t get me wrong, quite a few are still on their way to wedded bliss. But the babies started coming and then this year it reached an all-time high. I think something like 50 or more people that I know squeezed one out, or plan to sometime in the next nine months.

Being a seasoned mother at this point, though, I have been all-the-while quietly judging my new mom friends. You know, we all do it as parents. I write blog posts all the time about how we – as parents and mothers – should support each other and stop judging one another, and all that other happy horse shit that sounds gloriously understanding and open-minded. But of course that is even a judgement in itself (the judgment that people are too judgmental), so finally a month or two ago (as I said, the beginning of this summer), I said “screw it” in my mind and decided to just join everyone in the chorus.

I don’t get all up in the mommy war debates or anything like that, though. And when all is said and done, I still could give two figs what anyone does as a parent. I will support others in what they want to do as a parent, even if I do not agree. Even if I do not agree vehemently. Nonetheless there are a few quintessential ways that I quietly judge my new mom friends. Do you?

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#1 I Think Their Pregnancy Announcements Are Lame

Granted, they seem to be getting more unique. More inventive. I saw one recently that involved a photograph of people wearing t-shirts; that was cute. But how many of you have read this – at one time or another – on your Facebook page:

“Blah blah blah and I are proud to announce that we are expecting a baby such and such on yada yada day month year. The first trimester has been rough, but mommy and daddy could not be more excited!”

Oh just can it. There were some days when there would be eight or nine of them in a day. It was all I could do not to make snarky comments, like: “wow, so many of you … that must have been one great group orgy!”

And as their pregnancy continues, I of course judge (in my own mind) just how glaringly awful each set of new mom friends acts, as if her pregnancy is the first pregnancy in the history of all humanity.

#2 I Feel Like They’ve Become Our Parents

I sometimes wonder if our kids are going to find us to be terribly guilty of overexposing them as babies to the Internet.

I’m not talking about online predators or perverts or anything. And honestly I’m not begrudging the occasional family shot, or the cute photos of baby at certain months, or whatever. I mean that when our kids are 14 or 15, they’ll have their own Facebook or whatever is popular at the time, and on our pages will be hundreds of thousands of photographs we have uploaded of them in the most humiliating and compromising positions imaginable.

Think of it. When we were teenagers, the worst thing that our parents could do was break out a humiliating photo album and show off pictures of us in the bathtub or on the toilet. “Look, that’s the first time little Jimmy took a growler on the big boy potty…” and your date to prom decided she’d be going with the kid that smelled like rotten asparagus instead.

I feel like my new mom friends have become our parents. They have exposed all of our children’s most humiliating, most mortifying, moments to the entire world. If I see one more photo of a baby taking a shit on Facebook, I’m going to scream. Every time a friend posts one of these photos, I quietly judge her for becoming exactly what we hated about our parents when we were younger.

#3 I Say Things Like…

… “Oh, I’m not sure how public school works … I homeschool …” Which, of course, I only realize after the fact that it might make a friend that has to work to make ends meet feel like shit because she knows all-too-well the ins and outs of all the horrors the public school system has to offer.

And then I have judged her for having her kids in public school. Because since I don’t really know how public school works, how can I even say to myself or imply that these “horrors” exist and that public school is so awful, in every case?

I could go on, but I won’t.

What I realized a while ago, as babies continued to pop out of others and it seemed that the baby-making time of our lives would never even take a break, is that it’s hard not to judge in any way at all. Because that would mean we have no opinions on anything at all. Of course we have opinions on being a parent or raising kids or being pregnant, or really just about anything – how else would we make decisions in the best interest of all these kids we’ve decided to have?

I think the important part is who you share those opinions with. Do you keep them to yourself, or do you wage wars on Dr. Phil?

STFU Fridays: All Hail Herr Nietzsche

Heather Christena Schmidt 14 Comments

For those of you that haven’t caught on yet, I went to graduate school in philosophy. Yes, I am one of those people. I think a lot. By a lot I mean all the time. I took a little too much to heart the lesson in humility from Socrates, though, so I really do believe I’m a dumbass (thanks a lot, jerk). But I also believe that my education was far superior to anyone else’s, even though it hasn’t gotten me anywhere. (The old philosophy student’s joke was: What is the first thing a Ph.D. in Philosophy asks on the job? Would you like fries with that?) And for five years or so, I’ve been in a perpetual existential crisis. What does it all mean and all that high-fallutin crap.

So I’ve been thinking a lot about Nietzsche lately. For those of you that have no idea who I am referring to: (1) you for real need to wake the fuck up; and (2) he was a German philologist, one of the fathers of modern philosophy, and the dude had a whack mustache. Your Movember ‘staches and wanna-be Fu Manchu hipster shit has all got nothing on Nietzsche’s facial hair.

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I will be providing further tutorial on Herr Nietzsche after we discuss this week’s Shut the Fuck Up. For now, let’s leave it at: the dude was pretty rad.

Now I’m getting ready for my kid’s birthday party. It’s in about a week (seriously guys, if it weren’t for Shut the Fuck Up Fridays, I would have no concept of day or time). All I know right now is that it’s turned into the event of the goddamned century.

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There are going to be four little girls and a ton of adults there. It’s a tea party. Everyone is getting really dressed up. There will be crumpets. There will be doilies and tule. We will have three cakes and a cake table: a standing princess cake, a Cinderella’s carriage cake, and cupcakes.

And then yesterday we realized that the kids needed games to play. Duh, it’s a kid’s party. It isn’t just eat and go to them. So now we’re making games: pin the shoe on Cinderella, learn your tea party etiquette, and the coupe de grace of the event – the Cinderella pumpkin carriage piñata. (Which I am making.)

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So Herr Nietzsche.

Yesterday I had to get the rest of the supplies I needed to make the games, finish the piñata, and so on. My mom called and said that she had a coupon for 40% off the entire purchase at Michael’s, and while I did want to avoid my mother yesterday, I couldn’t pass up on the deal. As we walked around the store, though, picking out the things that I needed, looking at the Christmas stuff, navigating the holiday shoppers, and grabbing impulse buys along the way, my mom went into this little tirade about how the birthday party was “too nice.”

“You’re going to make people feel weird with everyone dressing up,” she said.

“What, a simple Vons cake isn’t enough for you people?” she whined.

“I think you guys are acting a little pretentious with all the decorating,” she griped.

After some hearty thinking, I realized that her problem is she is jealous. She isn’t in charge of the party. She isn’t even throwing it – it’s being held at my mother-in-law’s. My mother has nothing to wear. My mother would have just gotten a Vons cake – to hear that I am baking the carriage cake, a family friend is baking the standing princess cake, and my mother-in-law is baking the cupcakes was just the icing on her own cake of inadequacy.

Now let’s not get all “oh, you are leaving her out…” because you faithful blog followers know that my Trailer Trash Mom is unreliable, a drama queen, and a total flake. Up until yesterday she said she didn’t even think she would be coming to the party – and this was before she heard about all the pomp and circumstance that would be going on.

Nietzsche had this idea that people deemed what was right and wrong in the world by whether they were a master or a slave. Without getting into too much verbiage here, the people that get angry and resentful when something is nice, that find fault in things they cannot do, are the slaves. They see those that can as masters; as their oppressors. Nietzsche says that they have to cut down the masters so as to feel better about their own slave inadequacies. My mother’s slave mentality spews from her constantly. If she can’t afford a nice gift, well then gifts are over the top. If she doesn’t have time to throw the party, well then the party is pretentious and shouldn’t be done.

Basically, it’s about cutting people down so that you feel better about yourself. To this, I say: shut the fuck up.

Shut the fuck up with your bullshit that the cakes should be Vons cakes. Shut the fuck up with this “if I’m not in charge, it shouldn’t be happening.” Shut the fuck up with your underlying resentment over the fact that you squandered away all your money and can’t afford a nice gift. Shut the fuck up with all of it.

I’m sure you faithful blog followers all have a slave in your life; perhaps you just haven’t realized that their bullshit, narcissistic, weakling viewpoints were really just a matter of being jealous that they feel inadequate in one way or another. I think a lot of people call it “those that want people to be as miserable as them.” They are the people that need to make sure everyone knows how much they disapprove of things being nice. They are the people that need to make sure everyone understands that they think nice is wrong for some reason or another (excess, gluttony, whatever). They are the people that would rather not show up for a party because they think it is “too pretentious,” when in actuality they just need to cut others down to size to feel better about the fact that they – themselves – did not throw such a party.

They all need to take a lesson from Nietzsche and shut it right the fuck up.

* * *

Now for those of you that not only need to shut the fuck up, but need to wake the fuck up, here’s a nice little documentary on Nietzsche. It’s shorter than an episode of Dancing With the Stars. And while I know that you are going to be very busy right now pinning photos of cute DIY projects to your Pinterest, and uploading 7,000 photographs of your celebrity crush to your Facebook page, methinks you would all benefit from turning that shit off, shutting the fuck up, and watching this video right now.

All hail Herr Nietzsche!

A Few Open Letters From My Day…

Heather Christena Schmidt 35 Comments

Yeesh, what a day! This may be Hump Day, but for me it was “Fuck Heather’s Brain Until It Bleeds”-Day. I have a few open letters to write from my day. Shall we begin?

An Open Letter to the lady at Natural Cafe

FUCK YOU.

I heard you standing in line behind me, having a pithy little conversation with your friend about how you don’t dress down and “lower” (your word) yourselves to wear Team Shirts outside of the house, or at the very most sporting events. I heard as I stood in line in front of you wearing my White Sox shirt. I heard your bitchy comments after you noticeably sized me up, right before I turned my back on your oversized, posh ass.

I wore my team shirt today, you might know, because I am overwhelmingly homesick at the present time. I hate California because of assholes like you and thought a good way to deal without making everyone around me miserable would be to wear my White Sox shirt. Sue me. And kindly shut the fuck up.

An Open Letter to the guy that commented on my blog

FUCK YOU.

I really and truly enjoyed receiving your comment this morning on my post about the Pubic Parking sign outside a local elementary school. Sadly, I cannot approve it because you are a dick. I don’t know who you are, and your vague pseudonym “CaliGuy” leads me to believe you are too much of a pussy to reveal your true identity. I will, however respond to your three sentences here:

“You clearly have no compassion for simple mistakes.”

Sir, I kindly invite you to fuck off. I do have compassion for simple mistakes. I do not have compassion for mistakes that leave my kid to ask me what “pubic” means, or that are a direct result of laziness. In a public school, simple proofreading should be taught and shown by example. Period, end of sentence.

“I have read other posts of yours. If you hate California so much, why don’t you leave, and while you’re at it stop sucking up our tax dollars?”

Short answer or long answer, oh douchly one? The short answer is that I would gladly leave if I could. The long answer is that my husband works in the film industry, so just up and leaving California because I am unhappy is not as simple as you suggest.

And in regards to my sucking up the tax dollars, the only way in which I reap the benefits of the taxes I contribute to is in the extra-curriculars I take advantage of run by the city. I still pay fees for those, though. I homeschool and am not on welfare. I rarely use any public services whatsoever. This means that I pay taxes and reap very little actual benefit at all. I pay taxes for that public school to put up the “pubic parking” sign, and further to educate other kids while I pay for my own educational materials.

Now, I again kindly invite you to fuck off.

“You really are a bitch.”

Yes, sir. I am. Proud of it.

An Open Letter to the lady at swimming that accosted me today.

FUCK YOU.

Oh, woman that accosted me at swimming today, told me my kid crying during the class was ruining it for everyone, and proceeded to yell at me that you wanted to know how long we would be there so you could return after we are gone: kiss my grits. Seriously. The swimming staff and instructors informed me that my kid crying is a normal part of swimming and water confidence, and if you have a problem with that you should take it up with them. I will be bringing my kid back on Monday and if you so much as look at me the wrong way, I won’t be as nice as I was today.

You see, today I stood firm to my belief that it is an extremely bad example to set for children to act like such a pompous, overbearing, self-righteous asshole. I don’t believe it is OK to tell other parents at extra-curriculars that they are “bad parents” or “rude” because they will not indulge in petty arguments. I do not believe in getting into huge, loud, verbal confrontations over something that is unambiguously wrong on your part, so I kindly said “none of your business” and we left. If you continue harassing me, though, I may not continue to be so nice.

You are a bitch. As with all the other people I encountered today, I invite you to kindly fuck off.

This was a bad day, full of assholes. It is true that I hate California, but I think I really just hate people.

When Does God Say to Go F*** Yourself?

Heather Christena Schmidt 10 Comments

Today I was talking with someone over a friend’s posting on Facebook about the Duggar family, who has made the news again after announcing the pregnancy of their twentieth child.  Without going into all of the details of the discussion (which I will blog on at a later time, the Duggar family that is), in the end the person with whom I was inevitably debating took the conversation a turn for the worse:  she cited God’s plan.

If you’re like me, you can’t really have an intelligent conversation if someone is going to talk about God’s plan, unless (of course) you do so in a purely academic light; most importantly, with background detail from the Bible and exegetical analysis of what you are claiming to be truth about God.  This person with whom I was debating, though, didn’t do any of that – she simply said “I have a hard time believing that God would create a world where we will run out of fresh, drinking water.”  When I questioned, though, that she believes God will not allow the planet to run out of fresh, drinking water, although will allow other horrific things to happen (such as cancer and natural disasters), she said those are from human negligence.  At this point, I gracefully bowed out of the conversation and bit my tongue for the sake of my own blood pressure and my own friend’s peace on Facebook (I don’t even know how she knew this person that was discussing it with me on the post).

In the end, anyone that will invoke God’s plan as an argument against something completely unrelated to God or religion is already questionable on the intelligence front.  But things really go awry when that person makes stupid and asinine comments, such as that cancer is a matter of human negligence.  To be clear, she said “it is because we have free will that people get cancer … negligence of their bodies.”  Looking at some of the young children I have known with cancer, or looking at some of the earliest cancer cases in world history predating even Christ or carcinogens; looking at cancer in the womb, or even looking at the appearance of cancer in animals that could in no way have caused such a disease to happen:  I have to simply ask where (exactly) the head of such a person is located that would say such a wholly retarded thing as “it is because we have free will.”

Here’s why at the end of days these pompous assholes will be told by God to go f*** themselves:  they make completely jerk-faced judgments without all of the information; they use God as an excuse for making their point; and, they try to imply that they are God-like by saying they know God’s agenda.

There are a lot of really horrible things in this world:  cancer, disease, famine, natural disasters, Republicans.  (I’m sorry … not necessarily the Republicans, I just thought it sounded funny.)  And it is true that amidst all of that crap, it is really easy to ask whether there is a God to begin with. In the end, from a purely logical standpoint, none of us can ever even know if some almighty guy in the sky exists, so why act like a dick and speak for this unknowable being?  I got news for all the Bible-thumping judgers out there (that are, incidentally, only reading the parts of the Bible they want to read):  if there is, in fact, a guy up there in the sky, acting like some pompous asshole about things you don’t even seem to understand is exactly why you’ll be told to go f*** yourself when you try to waltz your pompous ass into heaven.

Have a little humility, and (more over) a little compassion.  Don’t invoke God’s plan as an argument about something completely unrelated.  Like many of us “reformed Catholics,” I don’t know what is out there beyond this world we know on Earth:  God, some other being, or nothing.  But if there is one thing I do know, it’s that in all religions of the world (monotheistic, polytheistic, or atheistic), there is one unifying theme:  don’t judge others before judging yourself.  There is so much wrapped up in that idea.  Most importantly in my little debate over the Duggars and their +18 population growth ratio, is that before speaking on things you think you know, you should probably consider all the facts.  Judge others and God (or whatever is out there) may just judge you in the same vain.  The last thing you want to hear when you hit those pearly white gates, paradise full of virgins and palm trees, or whatever your heaven may be is to go fuck yourself.  That would really suck.