Something Wonderful and Something Awful

Saturday night Marie and I dressed up in our fanciest going out clothes, went to dinner at Carl's Jr. and went dancing at Out of the Blues in Lake Oswego. Take your girl dancing whenever you can. It makes them mushy and it's good for your hearts, both literally and metaphorically.

We got a room across the parking lot at the Motel 6, far from glamorous but as promised, clean and comfortable. Only trouble was there was a dog show in town and the room next to us had been rented by the owners of two talkative Schnauzers. We managed, though. It was good to be together, to steal some precious hours of intimacy and tenderness. The front desk clerk, Brandon, was another of those people I'm glad to meet, alert and bright and welcoming. It's a little awkward for a married couple to rent a room and he took the awkwardness out of it just by being pleasant and polite in a refreshing and genuine way. He had an uncut goatee and a piercing above his lip, two things that mark him as coming from a different generation and a different culture, but he was one of those instantly likable people. As I often do I gave him a card for the blog. "Cool," he said. "I'll check it out." I like young people and generally get along well with them, with one notable exception, the Something Awful of the post's title.

I don't want to talk about the specifics, because it would just serve to store up more hurt and leave a paper trail that would haunt me later. Everyone has had the misfortune of knowing someone who is very skilled at controlling people with their anger, the toxic and judgemental person who rules a family by their capacity to store and express resentments, to take things to a meaner and more shrill place than anyone else dares. The person who thrives on drama and hurting people, the person everyone else walks on eggshells around. "You don't want to upset ______ ," the family whispers, or often its just a silent understanding that if Nancy/Ashley/Regina makes the slightest feint toward displeasure people will leap out of their way; whole destinies will be changed, friendships discarded, merely to maintain the appearance of calm and peace, while everyone is paddling frantically beneath the surface to keep this illusion of harmony afloat. Good kind caring people will be victimized and brutalized, and that's the silent satisfaction of this cruel and toxic person, the exercise of power and control, the power of meanness and sanctimony and random cruelty. Unfortunately we all know someone like that. Perhaps it is a mother, a sister, or the ring leader in your group of friends. Sometimes it's a boss or the Committee Chair or Precinct Captain. The Queen Bee. Run from this person. Limit their influence over you and don't let them infect your children. If you know a person like this, if you have been hurt by a person like this, please know you are not the person they have made you out to be, and your imprint on the world around you is in no way defined by them or the poisoned shroud in which they have tried to cloak you. Throw it off and take all the good kind things within you to a better place. Don't try to love this kind of ugliness. It simply can't be done or overcome. Let them preside over an increasingly shrinking kingdom that does not include you.