Outgoing Mail

Outgoing mail this morning:

Thank you note to good ol' Roberta, age 93. We love that sprightly gal.

BD Note to friend. Home-made, took less than 30 mins.

Third: another apology note ( ! ), this one related to AmZyg's moral inventory theme. Hearkens back to a gathering in our church parking lot to welcome home a daughter after her two weeks away on a church missions trip.  The first one off the bus was a paid staff member whose t-shirt sported a loud and large ABERCROMBIE & FITCH across the upper chest.  My mouth spang into action, as it is sorely wont to do. Pulled my jaw up off the pavement and (prob'ly) waved my finger, "You wore THAT all the way home, representing our church?"

My dear daughter, ashamed and embarrassed, scolded me. I've never been off the hook, really.  Now and then, I'd stew over [recognize the theme?] feeling misunderstood, and ponder how I might educate my kids and this pastor re: the horrific reality of who these AF people are. {uh, isn't your son one now? cosmic jokes abound...} Was I out of  bounds to expect everyone to just KNOW how orgy-istic Abercrombie is?  To expect staff on a baptist payroll to just KNOW that FocusOnTheFam staged protests in 2003 over catalogs that went from vaguely pornicious to vulgarly pornicious?

No. You were just out of bounds for wanting to shame someone in public.

Obtaining that 2003 catalog has been on my mind ever since. Seemed like an obvious means by which to defend myself, but I only got around to doing the Amazon search this February.  Had a brilliant idea to just print out one offending page, since the whole obscene thing runs $15, so I did, & then left the ugly thing out on my kitchen desk. It got just the disgusted reaction I expected: various kids and hubby kept flipping it upside down so they wouldn't have to look at it. {OS, the AF sell-out, prob'ly wasn't one of them.} I grilled them, "Instead of hiding the image, why don't you become outraged and vow to alert AF that you oppose this?" No response.

I guess they oppose my outrageous outrage more than they oppose porn, and I suppose I have myself to blame for that.  It's not about porn, it's about my demeanor. My anger management issues  have spawned a litter of porn permissive offspring. Great.

Nevertheless.

I finally ran across Mr. AF t-shirt wearer one day last week, and what'ya know, the print-out was actually in a file I was carrying.  I begged him for a minute of time, showed him the despicable scene, explained that I'd taken a lot of heat for my alarm that day, and asked him to indulge me in my desire BE UNDERSTOOD. He was nonplussed; like he was used to seeing that kind of junk all day everyday. He shrugged and described how he DID actually walk out of AmericanApparel recently after seeing their in-store posters.  Ah! He maybe gets it. SOMEONE gets it. I wanted to tell him  about my anti-American Apparel billboard "campaign" last summer, but he'd already had enough of me. And I didn't want to learn his protest was just a one-time thing, that he probably just orders their stuff on the web now...  Accommodation to 'undress' is just the way of the world, and as the world goes, so goes my church, my friends, my kids... ug.

(This IS the man, btw, whose single greatest contribution to OS's life was to persuade him that guys should walk around the house in only speedo underwear. Seriously. He comes home from a weekend retreat strutting his stuff in brand-new Hanes, scoffs at my exasperation, and, well, another battle ensued that day... Least he didn't wear the G-Unit cap from the same pastor, as he strutted.)

Nevertheless, a written apology was called for.  It was insensitive to give him no warning that I was about to flash a page of porn in his face, and it was insensitive to force his attention when he was in a hurry to get somewhere.  And it's definitely childish to feel defensive over the matter five years after the fact.  But AmZyg admits, that's just who she is. A happy four year old who's grudge holder setting is stuck on Overlydramatic Overdrive.

With the clock ticking on my nine month count down, I still have a few more amends to complete:

-There's the college room-mate to whom I owe a twenty seven year old apology for picking a fight over how to squeeze the toothpaste tube. We refused to speak to each other after that. She lives where? Irvine?
-There's that university professor I lied to about finishing my senior project, so technically, I did not really earn my B.A.
-And then there's the YMCA summer camp director who I finally chatted with last month, but who, when I asked to meet, hung up on me!

Oh, I hate my life.  Ya know that previous post about "getting prayer back"? Lie.

Mostly.