Sour Thoughts (aka Hook Hands)

The other night I was having dinner with some friends, and we started talking about one friend’s effort to raise money for a community organization that is strongly supported by my company. Every year, we raise money through a number of charitable events, like raffles, donation drives, potlucks, and other events. We were casually brainstorming ideas for how she could get a really big score to round out the donation drive.

“We have to get something everyone wants, like sweet Ohio State/Michigan football tickets or a date with Aaron Craft,” I suggested. Aaron Craft plays basketball for Ohio State and is basically the Justin Bieber of the over-thirty set. Women love him.

Predictably, one of my friends said, “He has a girlfriend,” as if that were the only obstacle to my brilliant plan to pimp out Aaron Craft. And then she added, “He’s had the same one since high school.” Like I said: Justin Bieber of the cougar set. Obviously, she’d been doing her homework.

“People always talk about men who stay with their high school girlfriend like they’ve done something special,” I commented. “I say they’re just lazy fuckers.” To which my friends looked at me like I’d suggested that we go stuff some puppies in a garbage disposal and turn it on.

“Too harsh?” I asked. They nodded.

But here’s the thing: we all have our sour thoughts. My philosophy is, when you have a sour thought, you should set it free, like a Japanese beetle that you find in your house, because otherwise, in short time, you’ll start finding those suckers on your pillow, in your cereal, flying around all of your light bulbs, and biting the back of your neck with their tiny, sharp little beetle teeth when you least expect it.

And, when you think about it, you know I’m right. How many people do you know who stuff all of their negative thoughts down in that secret space in their soul, only to have them burble up in any manner of unpleasant ways? Like they insist on thinking all Muslims are terrorists, or they hate-devour pizzas in the dark every night while watching reruns of Oprah’s Next Chapter, or they get themselves so wound up, trying to say and feel the right thing all the time that they lose their ability to make real human connections, and instead, end up with a partner who doesn’t understand them, whiny children with an unsophisticated understanding of the myriad ways the word “douchebag” can be used, and a life that gets smaller and smaller with each passing day. Horrifying!

I made that mistake a couple weeks ago. Some troller made an anonymous comment on my blog that, essentially, it was the worst and stupidest thing s/he’d ever read. Afraid of losing my significant cool by immediately lashing back, I thanked Anonymous for the sweet comment, and then lightly seethed for a couple of weeks. Had I simply responded with my initial reaction, “Well, your mother is a whore,” I would have felt MUCH better immediately, and would have then had the freedom to consider that, perhaps the anonymous troller was just having a bad day. Maybe the anonymous troller had lost both of his or her arms in a tragic lobster-fishing accident, and the only thing s/he knew how to type on his hooks were “Your blog sucks.” But, since I hadn’t yet expressed my fleeting, negative thought, all of my kind and charitable thoughts were stuck, and couldn’t be released until the hate-wagon rolled through. And that didn’t do anybody any good.

So, Anonymous, let me correct the situation: your mother IS a whore, and I’m very sorry about your hook hands. Thank you for putting lobster on our table. 

That’s much better.