This comment showed up the other day.
I guess I’m arrogant to think my writing conveys sarcasm and humor in the little things in life that I find interesting and irritating.
But spoiled???
Oh please anonymous Alice. I may be fortunate. But I’m not spoiled.
The funniest thing is that the post is from two years ago.
I don’t normally get defensive about things like this. Everyone has their take on things, but I suppose I’m cranky today.ÂÂ
Cranky. That’s a good descriptor a lot of the time.ÂÂ
Spoiled? Prove it, sister.
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I’ve just read that posting and I don’t see any spoiled! I have encouraged Alice to visit my blog and call me spoiled; perhaps she can visit with my sister- and brother-in-law some time and they can make a threesome of it.
But I suspect that Alice is one of those who suffer in silence, and as such, more to be pitied than censored.
Thanks Mary,
I don’t know why that comment got under my skin, other than the cranky mood. I know the point of all this is to have people state their opinions and that’s fine. It just struck me that it was such an old post. Oh, the trials of blogging. Poor me, how could someone say I was spoiled? Me? Me? Me? Oh come on.
Screw her! Let’s all go have a beer!
I’m all for the beer — make mine a Dos Equis, please, and let’s have some tortilla chips and salsa too while we’re at it!
A comment like that is annoying because it’s a hit-and-run, anonymously made, and without foundation or qualification. If Alice had backed it up or identified herself, I doubt that you would have been so irritated.
One other thing struck me, though: a group of women and I were having a bitch-fest not long ago about irritating habits of our husbands when another woman joined the group. She was a widow, and later said privately to me that it hurt her to hear married women complaining about their husbands when all she wanted was to have her husband back, warts and all. That shut me right up, but a few days later, in the midst of tidying up one of my husband’s ubiquitous messes (socks, shirts, ties, receipts, change, pens, etc. all left in a heap on the dresser), I forgot my good resolution not to gripe.
Maybe Alice is like my widow friend; she’s not at the coalface of marriage anymore and looks back with rose-colored glasses on the whole experience. I feel for her if this is the case, but like you, I resent being called spoiled just because of a little good-natured and perfectly justified griping.
Coalface–great word, Mary. That’s very well taken. I agree it’s true that once an entire existence is altered in some negative way, we yearn for what’s missing, even the bad parts of it. Unfortunately, life is what it is at a given point and when something’s irritating–even if not by objective standards–people don’t normally stop and say “my blockhead husband is blind to his life but that’s okay because he’s here, god-dammit, lucky me.” I find similar things when dealing with having Mult. Scler. There’s no question, I’m very fortunate to entertain the degree of MS that I have. There are people so much worse off with it and most of the time I realize that. But when a particular day is bad for me, when I can barely get one thing done let alone the normal list of ten (most of the world has 20 things to do a day, I’ve already lowered my standards quite a lot), the first thought in my mind isn’t “well at least I’m breathing.” Sometimes the thought is just “this effing sucks.” And then it passes and I see my good fortune again…