Sometimes I wonder if I am too abstract and random (a neat trick for a concrete random by the way)  for others to follow when I try to explain my feelings about personal responsibility and owning one’s own life, or if perhaps most adults really do read on a 6th grade level. I actually hope it is the former because it’s too depressing to contemplate the latter. From an educator’s point of view. And from a selfish one. I really like communicating and sharing ideas and views via the written word and especially through the various sites and forums to which I belong. Still, there is the occasional misinterpretation and though sometimes I believe it is an intentional disconnect for the purpose of starting an argument, it’s usually just a case of lack of clarity. Maybe I should have used more or different examples. Perhaps I didn’t preface my words properly. I suppose that just because I know what I said, and my husband/editor has given it the thumbs up, doesn’t mean that anyone else will be able to decipher my decidedly non-mainstream thoughts on things, generally and specifically.

Of course there is the other problem of me on the page as opposed to me in person. I have a tendency, when I write informally, to write like I talk. Which, sans facial expression, eye contact, tone and voice inflection and body language (which gives me away most often though my husband has commented on my occasional ability to pull off a poker face) gets me in trouble. A lot. But I am going to suppose, for the moment, that perhaps it’s them and not me at all. Why? Because I suspect it is really.

I am not a mystery. My likes and dislikes and viewpoints on just about anything are not buried dead-center in a Sphinx-like tomb in the Valley of the Kings. I say pretty much what I think when I think it and never hide behind aliases or pseudonyms or non de plumes or whatever other term there might be for being cowardly when your opinions differ or make you “not one of us”. My shame, in my opinion and not the opinion of others who could probably list by the dozen things I should hang my head about, lies in not being articulate enough, or so it appears to me today, to simplify or explain my opinions to those who read them. 

And every single person is a Slim Shady lurkin

He could be workin at Burger King, spittin on your onion rings

Or in the parkin lot, circling

Screaming “I don’t give a fuck!”

with his windows down and his system up

So, will the real Shady please stand up?

And put one of those fingers on each hand up?

And be proud to be outta your mind and outta control

and one more time, loud as you can, how does it go?