Spoiling Christmas?

     I love my kids. Those darling little boys of mine with their lopsided smiles throwing peace signs in the air or dabbing so I can't get a decent photo for Christmas cards. They bring as much joy to my heart as they do Legos to the playroom floor - a infinite amount that stabs you with love unexpectedly at two a.m. My sons fill my world with happiness!
     Consequently, I want to reciprocate the feeling. And what can be more joyous than watching two little boys tearing through presents on Christmas morning throwing last year's discounted wrapping paper over their shoulders along with that carefully picked out present on Amazon. Cries of "Where's mine?" and "Are there anymore?" join the angel chorus of Pandora holiday favorites soaring out of a nearby speaker. They pause for the occasional photo holding their cherished gift for the five seconds necessary for a blurry picture on Instagram accompanied by another peace sign before tossing the gift onto the growing pile and shoving another chocolate orange slice in their mouths for energy.
     Sometimes, they will play with the new toy after mom and dad carefully extract the thing from its security ties. (Seriously, did the Pentagon design those black twisty security holders on the back of toys?) Of course, mom and dad will get roped into playing Monopoly Empire or Just Dance 59. Then the boxes will be cleared, the wrap thrown out in a black sack large enough to be St. Nick's, and the gifts will be put away, some forgotten about until I threaten to sell them or throw them away.
     As I work in my sons' closets, organizing toys and hanging up new clothes, I wonder if I'm spoiling them too much. There seems to be a fine line between wanting to make my kids happy and buy them their heart's desire and turning them into spoiled little brats who expect to get whatever they want. I love providing a happy childhood for my kids and revel in their smiles and ecstatic squeals when the husband and I discover the perfect game or toy that makes them dance around the family room like a sugar-powered Energizer Bunny. I remember my own happy childhood, and how my mom often went with out providing all those Barbie dolls and My Little Ponies that littered the underneath of our Christmas tree.
     But I cringe when the wrapping paper carnage is over, and they scramble under the tree pulling up the tree skirt and asking if there are anymore presents. I bite my lip and point to the mountain of books and video games already amassed in a corner. The beginnings of a lecture on gratitude and greed write itself in my brain just waiting for my tightly compressed lips to open. Sometimes I let it out, sometimes I count to ten and wonder if it will make a dent. Sometimes I realize they can't help it. I've conditioned them to expect a lot. They are a product of my spoiling, just as I am a product of the world I live in. A world of plenty of everything including expectations to bury your kids in gifts.
     I just don't want them to be, what's that nasty word that gets tossed around these days - Entitled. Yes, that's my biggest fear apart from spiders, the Big One (earthquake), and nuclear war. I don't want my sons to grow into narcissistic, spoiled, entitled little brats who believe the earth revolves around them, and they are entitled to everything they want. I need them to know there are limits - financially and ethically to our generosity.
     Plus, I want them to see the beauty in giving as well as getting. That's why we participate in toy drives and Angel Tree. I feel a little like the moral at the end of a Christmas movie as I try to impart my grown-up wisdom that the reason for the season is about love and bringing joy to others. They nod to get me off my soapbox and look solemn and help me wrap the toys. But like the kids they are they will still ask as I'm purchasing the angel gift - "Is that for me? Or I want that".
     Now, I have read on Facebook and others blogs that some families try to tamp down the spoiling with the three gifts rule: something they want, something to read, and something to wear. I've seen some other variations on this one, too. For about a second, my husband and I contemplated trying it out this year. Of course, that lasted as long as the three seconds it took to pull up Amazon Prime and start browsing Pokemon and art supplies. We get carried away picturing their bright little faces singing karaoke on a new machine or exclaiming best parents ever as they don their new Five Night's at Freddie's t-shirts and Pokemon socks.
     I am sure I failed this year to bring any semblance of restraint to Christmas gifts. But it's something to think about for next year. After all, I feel I owe the world and myself the gift of two kind, thoughtful, non-entitled boys who grow up to be good men.

Teaching my son not to be popular but be himself

     My oldest son is sensitive. He's like me, he doesn't just read books or watch movies. He invests himself in the characters. Let's himself get drawn in and immersed in the fictional world. Consequently, he gets very upset when something bad happens to his beloved characters. He cries. But what he said after watching a recent movie and crying nearly brought me to tears.
     Sitting on the edge of his bed, talking about the day's events and the movie, he told me he was afraid the other kids would make fun of him for crying. He said he didn't have as many friends at school as he used to. The boys were changing, their soft, sensitive, little kid interiors changing in time with their round, chubby exteriors becoming sharp-edged and hard. They cuss and bully each other and seek out other people's weaknesses as buttons to push, something to exploit and make fun of. Our world encourages this behavior. Even celebrates it. 
     And I'm not sure what to tell my son. I've never been popular. I've always had about two or three close friends I felt comfortable and secure with even now as an adult. For the most part, I've never conformed to what the world said was important. I've never worn the right clothes, said the right words, played the right games, or owned the right things. And those times that I did try to conform, stuffed into expensive jeans, primped and polished like a high-gloss Barbie, playing mind games to get attention, I hated it, feeling false and uncomfortable.
     Now, my mother's heart wants to protect my boy from hurt. Wants to wrap him in assurances that he'll always be well-liked and well-loved. But the brutal truth is that he won't be liked by everyone. That's not how the world works. Especially, when we don't share the world's values. Honestly, I don't want him to grow cold and hardened to emotions. I pray that he retains his warm heart, his boundless curiosity for knowledge, his enthusiasm for new activities and adventures. He skips when he walks, he believes any kid at the playground is a friend to play with, and he gives the best hugs.
     Now, I'm not saying he's perfect. He's a bit spastic and can overwhelm others like a Labrador puppy. He's forgetful and possessive of his things. And like all kids he sometimes thinks he needs the latest game or gadget to be happy.
     Yet, he's also content to talk with me about history for hours pouring over maps and learning about the past. If prompted he'll tell you in detail about the Donner Party or Civil War battleships or the Atomic Bomb - facts he's learned about in a series called Nathan Hale's Hazardous Tales. But he'll go one further and discuss the police brutality on civil rights marches in Alabama and question racism comparing the water hoses being aimed at protestors in the 1960s with those being aimed at the protestors of the Dakota Access Pipeline. He'll get teary-eyed when discussing the Holocaust and the shoes of innocent victims piled high in Auschwitz. And I love discussing history with him and teaching him to learn from the past.
     I want my son to be sensitive and smart and empathetic and kind. But the world and the kids on the playground may not. So I also have to teach him to be strong and confident. I have to help him build a wall around his feelings so they don't get trampled on but also leave a large door so that his true friends may come in. I must teach him to see the best in others but not to be naive and trusting of everyone so he doesn't get taken advantage of.
     It's hard. He just wants to be loved by all. A goofy, happy-go-lucky, loving boy who likes to play. I love my boy. He means the world to me, but the world might be mean to him. But I mean to teach him to be strong enough to be himself. 
    

All I want for Christmas is Time, Baby

     I blame my over-wrought, fatigued, and hyper-caffenieted brain and the local radio station over-playing Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas" for my blog title. But I honestly hear it singing in my brain, "all I want for Christmas is time, baby" with a few oo, babys elongated and repeated over and over.
     Now if only time could be bottled in a cute Pinterest-stenciled bottle or gift-wrapped in a giant box with a ridiculously over-large red bow, I'd be a very happy woman. And I believe I'm not alone in this.
     Except, I am not just seeking time during the busy holiday season. That hectic time of year where we shuttle our kids from one "fun" activity to the next, exhausting ourselves for the sake of a happy family memory commemorated by twenty Instagram photos to prove we were having a good time or at least smiling for the camera before mom lost her cool again.
     I am not looking for a few more minutes to finish holiday shopping for whatever "it" gift my kids think they need (hatchimals, right?). And while I really do need more time to finish my Christmas cards, gift wrapping, cookie baking, party planning, and Christmas play practice schedule shuttling, etc; that's not the time I truly want.
    No, the time I desire is a bottle of an extra hour or two here and there to be used all year long so that I can escape and accomplish the thing I really enjoy doing - writing. Because between being a mother, taking care of the house, grocery shopping, remembering cousins, aunts, friends, grandmas birthdays, driving all over the city and back again (sounds like a more boring title for the Hobbit and lacks the dwarfs and dragon gold), and now working as a sub; my time falls through the cracks like the proverbial sands through the hourglass.
     But what I am left with most days is what I call "stupid time", that spare fifteen minutes between dropping kids off at the bus and when my next scheduled assignment or doctor's appointment, hair appointment, etc. happens. Or the majority of my spare time occurs in the half hour driving all over the Coachella Valley running errands and since they haven't invented robot-driven cars and after seeing I, Robot I'm afraid of my toaster getting ideas and planning with my Keurig to kill me or turn me into a battery like in the Matrix, writing while driving would not be a safe idea.
     If my wish could only be fulfilled, I'd slip my extra two hours a day along with it's companion half-carafe of coffee between getting off work and picking kids up from school. Two glorious hours to plot and create and kill off a few key characters, oh wait that's my George R.R. Martin mode kicking in, before being owned by my six-year-old until I finally win the bedtime battle and get him tucked in forty-five minutes past when I said "go to bed". (Yes, most nights he wins.)
      Not that I don't enjoy having him glued to my side for the five hours between school and bed. I mean, we accomplish a lot of things together like building forts and crying when it falls down, attempting art and crying when it doesn't turn out right, planting seeds and crying when they die after not being watered, helping mom with dishes and crying when we drop mom's favorite mug on the floor shattering it, or helping mom bake and crying when we don't get to crack the egg in the bowl or do crack it and cry over most of the shell ending up in the dough. Honestly, I do love him but need a Valium after several hours by his side. And isn't it amazing that the few minutes I do manage to sneak away from him while he's actually playing by himself, he manages to sense I'm sitting at my computer and runs to my side, quizzing me on what I just wrote, offering his help typing words he can't spell, or begging for help to write his own story. Yet, if I sit stock still on the couch doing nothing but staring at the latest mysterious stain on the wall, half-listening to the canned plot of Lab Rats, while counting my remaining brain cells, he leaves me alone for hours. It's only when his bat ears hear my feet walking somewhere with purpose that he springs into action.
     And please for the love of all that's holy or unholy do not tell a mother that she can get her stuff done when the kids go to bed. Because by the time I have fought two kids into bed after a long day of driving, working, cleaning, shopping, cooking, picking up, nagging, and listening to detailed play by plays of Minecraft gaming sessions, my brain resembles a television on the fritz. No channels come in, all stories are halted, left streaming through the atmosphere with no reception to pick them up and air them. Nothing but grey, staticky fuzz and a buzzing sound. It's enough for me to slump onto my side of the couch and watch non-Disney programming and occasionally give into the husband's amorous overtures. You know those subtle offers to rub your shoulders or cuddle only to have a penis tapping out Morse code on your back. Dot, dot, dot, I want sex, dot, dot, dot.
     So my selfish wish for Christmas isn't a Coach handbag, Lularoe leggings, or whatever diamond necklace K Jewelers tries to tell me I want - it's just time. Self-indulgent, all mine, no strings attached "me" time. Now do they sell it on Amazon?

Wanderlust Part 2

    
     An arrow lay across the floor shaped by shadows, light, and maybe my own wishful thinking. A sign, probably meant to redirect my mind to the church sermon I should have been attending to. But instead, my mind wandered after it, the thing my body longed to do but couldn't. I traced patterns of rugged bronzed mountains sewn in copper thread across my new scarf. Another shape rose up like the Arc De Triomphe with silver lines of thread sparkling like the headlights on the Champs Elysees at night. The pattern on my boring brown acrylic crocheted hobo bag (appropriate name) spoke of tilled fields or lines of sediment along a canyon wall.
     I was so carried away on this train of thought (wishing for a real train) I didn't see the shadow of the boat the arrow pointed at till later. I should have noticed it as I blame the Pixar animated movie, Moana for reawakening my wanderlust. This exquisitely beautiful and touching narrative about a young woman called by the ocean, ignoring family and duty, following her heart on an adventure across wide seas full of peril, excitement, and the unknown spoke to me. When she sings the line "One day I'll know, how far I'll go" the pressure of the tide mounted in my breast swelling with salt water and longing. I can still feel it travel down to my fingertips, the place I channel all my unfulfilled energy, writing it out before it consumes me.
     Because my feet are planted firmly in my black faux leather boots grounded to duty, to husband and children, landlocked from lack of funds or available time. Where is my window, bound between soccer practice, Cub Scouts, school, work, Christmas plays, cookie exchanges, all fun things but not the antidote for this nagging virus making me weak-kneed and dizzy with desire. I see castles in Spain in the clouds. Castles I long to conquer with camera and the wisdom of a aged tour guide.
     Unable to fulfill my heart's quest, I shut down, grow numb, a mental hibernation that makes people pre-judge me to be cold or distant. It's a coping mechanism to tamp down the longing, my rational brain preaching the merits of doing my duty. Ignore the call to adventure. I am not my protagonist, unfettered and flush of funds or a sturdy horse.
     I am blessed in life with home, health, family, and friends. I find joy in the simple pleasures. Yet, just under the surface, fighting for freedom lives this other woman, the gypsy girl, ancestral daughter of sailors still genetically predisposed to go where the wind and sea call.
     Someday, I'll let her free. Follow the arrow to adventure.

Learning to Fall Off a Bike

     Today, I girded up my loins in Lycra yoga capris and steeled my nerves to teach my youngest son how to ride his bike. My fellow parents will understand my reluctance to accomplish this milestone as it becomes a lesson in patience and letting go of more than the handle bars. 

     For with the removal of the training wheels, comes the removal of keeping them safe. While not placing them in mortal danger, this is one of the first acts of parenthood where we need to learn to watch them fall. And it sucks! What hurt my son physically today, hurt my soul. I cringed with every fall, sucked in my breath with every scrap, and felt lower than a cockroach digging in manure every time he looked back at me, his eyes saying “what kind of monster lets her child fall and then tells him to get up and try again?”

     But I did. I smiled and called out encouragements. I even swore a little under my breath and over it too as I jogged alongside him balancing the center of the handlebars between my fingers and sweating like a demon in hell. I wiped his tears and threw out every generic inspiring phrase I could remember. “You can do it.” “Just keep trying.” “Nothing worthwhile is ever easy.”  Believe me, I got tired of hearing my own voice and wanted to punch myself in the face. But we persevered.

     He’d teeter from side to side begging me not to let go, all the while I knew I had to. Knew it was for his benefit and independence that I release my hands and watch him go. Even if it meant watching him fall. I forced myself to keep my voice calm and even, not making a big fuss, as I lifted the bike off his six-year-old body, inspecting his small bruises and encouraging him to do it all again. 

     But the biggest challenge of all was learning not to quit. It would be easy to throw in the towel and go home. Leave it for another day or another day or another distant appointment in the future when our nerves would both grow miraculously strong as steel and the ground would be less hard and the bike steadier. That’s the easy way out. The one I couldn’t teach him or myself today.

     No. I had to teach him not to quit on himself or me. I had to let him show himself what he was capable of. Show him the courage, dedication, determination, and skills he possessed deep down inside. He learned that he was stronger than a scraped knee, braver than self-doubt. He could conquer his fears, one bike ride at a time.
     Then came the moment, he sailed forth a few yards ahead of me over the grass, perfectly balanced and pedaling his little boy heart out. My words sang out, “You’re doing it.” “You got this.” And I saw his eyes, the high-beam of his smile saying everything I knew this moment could accomplish. He believed it himself. His cries of fear transformed into cries of elation. “Mom, did you see me.” “I want to do it again.”
     With fear behind him, we chased the thrill of accomplishment. Still sweating but with a new spring in my step, I ran alongside him, working hard and harder to keep up as he rode further and faster ahead of me. Another metaphor for life and maybe part of the reason we delay these lessons. Because once our children learn to overcome their fears and embrace their abilities, we are left to chase after them and their independence as they grow further ahead of and away from us.
     The hardest part of parenting is letting go. Letting them fall. Letting them know, that while we will always have their back, they can do things on their own, unsupported by training wheels and insecurity. 

    

Postcards from Heaven

     When I was little, I'd quiz my mom with questions about heaven. She'd smile and sigh a little, probably exhausted by the barrage of questions I daily volleyed at her, and answer "I don't really know. No one's ever sent a postcard."
     She'd half-laugh and then melt as my face fell, unsatisfied at the answer. She'd wrap me in her soft, squishy body and whisper in my ear, "I just know it's beautiful because it's full of love."
     My mom also believed heaven was more like an invisible dimension surrounding us instead of the celestial image high above us. I like her version. It lets me picture her next to me watching her grandsons play and commenting to my dad that my youngest has not only my curls but my sense of mischief.
     So maybe we don't get a glossy 4 x 6 postcard of a celestial city glittering with streets of gold and a "Wish you were here" tagline from a winking angel. But I believe our loved ones send us signs just the same. And I'm a natural born skeptic who scoffs at vortexes, magic crystals, psychics, and guardian angels, the latter because mine is either lazy or constantly in the bathroom when my klutzy moments happen.
     Yet, I've had occasions in my life where I felt like my parents were sending me signals from beyond. My dad, true to his larger-than-life personality seems to be the loudest and most often like the wild postcards he'd sent daily of London punks in the 80s or castles around Britain.
     I remember one June a couple of years after he passed around the time of my birthday, he seemed adamant to tell me he was there. I kept seeing random images of a Welsh dragon or a daffodil, tokens of my Welsh father, just when I was feeling blue. 
     One day I'd been crying in the car, frustrated that I couldn't talk to him in our weekly five minute phone calls that he was famous for. He'd mastered the art of cramming politics, history, pop culture, and love all in those expensive international minutes, he could barely afford on his phone bill. I longed for the stimulation of those conversations, even when he got my hair on end with constant nit-picking and rantings, because they made me feel. They made me feel worthy of so much passion and energy, his molecules bouncing off the speaker and transmitting themselves into my living room. His intensity radiated light like one of the aliens in Cocoon. So there I was silently crying over my steering wheel on I-5 South passing downtown San Diego, numb to my favorite view of the skyline and harbor when I saw the Welsh license plate cover on the car in front of me.
     A few days later, I had chills as I entered a small jewelry shop in the picturesque mountain town of Julian. I had been humming a song in my head, Nana Mouskouri's First Time Ever I Saw Your Face, a record he bought the day I was born and sang to me in his enthusiastically off-key tenor. As I opened the door, the song greeted me, playing over the store's radio, the chill of surprise warming like a hug across my chest. I smiled to myself, glowing with memories. For days after that I'd see signs with his name, Allan, an unusual spelling and the Welsh word for "out".
     Then when I first started writing again in September of 2014, I'd get these manias where I'd plot out ideas while singing show tunes in the car between dropping off kids at school. But I started to have a dry spell. I felt like a recovering addict, the writing high had been so visceral, I felt numb without it. So there I was singing Don't Cry for Me Argentina, a song he taught me when I was three, and a golden Welsh dragon and the sign Cambria, the Latin word for Wales appeared before me on the side of a van. And my brain clicked. The plot started writing itself again, warm fuzzies crawled up my chest and into my brain and danced a jig. I kept seeing the sign again, coincidence maybe as the Cambria company is located her in the Coachella Valley. But it sparked my imagination and brought a smile to my face whenever I saw it or passed the office on Cook.
     Finally, when I found my Claddagh ring hidden in a straw basket of seashells in the guest bathroom, I danced with joy. I'd had my 1st one stolen when our house was robbed. It had been a gift from his trip to Bunratty Castle in Ireland, a symbol of his love and my Celtic heritage. But he replaced it with another one that I vowed to never take off but unfortunately did and then lost it. To find it in the shell basket, a symbol of the sea we loved, the salt in our bloods from generations of Welsh sailors bringing Welsh coal to the four corners of the globe, I knew it was from him. A postcard with the words, "Tell my girl I love her" the last words he said to my mom before he died written in his tight, nearly illegible script. I wear it as a reminder, a connection to my dad and his passion.
     My mother's postcards are quieter, more subtle. I see signs from her in art, mainly in my son, Will's passion for creating and playing with her old watercolors. He's poky like her and quiet at times. But never to be underestimated. He is her largest postcard, one of those giant, pasteboard ones sold in novelty stores.
     But I will never forget the lady I met walking along the shore of Shelter Island in Point Loma. She was short and curly-haired, and my scrap-booking friends and I stopped to talk to her one dusky evening. She was from Pennsylvania like my mom and arty, but more than that - she had my mom's spirit. My dearest childhood friend, Mandy, noticed it too. It was like my mom just wanted to chat, to enjoy an evening walk along the coast, and be apart of creative people. I walked away full of her, a hug around my heart, a smile imprinted deep on my face.
    Now I also wear her love around my neck, a golden thread of her pulling me in close for a snuggle or my own childish arms stretched up to reach her, as I drape her Celtic cross over my head and rest it over my chest. I bought it as a Christmas gift for her when I lived in Dublin, something to match the one my dad gave me, something that said I missed her even when I was enjoying my Irish adventure, something that reflected the beliefs we both shared. And I was devastated when I couldn't find it after her death.  I searched her house, her clothes, her wallets, anywhere and everywhere I could to find it. I needed to clothe myself in something of hers after she left. I needed a talisman against the gut-ripping agony I felt when the numbness would recede and memory would bite.
     For many years, I felt the necklace was gone - lost or somehow burnt with her ashes melted into her bones. Then one melancholy day while going through her pictures, I found a box of old silver. There hidden beneath tarnished silver bowls and the cheap pewter candy dish  I bought her at Yellow Front was her necklace. I put it on feeling instantly connected to her. I wear it still, usually hidden beneath my t-shirt close to my skin.
     Some may argue these signs are nothing more than coincidence. That we read into something trivial something that's not there. Maybe. But I choose to see the connection, the celestial nudge reminding us that we are still connected, still loved. If anything, maybe we read into these signs hidden meaning because the meaning is hidden within us. We are the biggest postcard of all, their words written across our personalities and memories, their love stamped across our lips and foreheads and anywhere else they kissed us when they were alive.
     What does it matter if it's real or not?

What matters is it brings us peace and joy.

Are We Keeping it Real or Keeping it Rude?

Disclaimer: This is not an attack on my friends and their politics, but more of a general observation on the license for inconsiderate and sometimes downright thoughtless words and actions that both politicians and our society has allowed to become the norm.

Now my personal belief is that human nature is inherently problematic, bad being too strong a word for me. This is something philosophers and world religions have discussed and mulled over for centuries. But my Christian upbringing and just watching the developing nature of my own sons makes me believe we must work at being good and empathetic. We are born rather selfish and self-centered. It is the role of our parents, schools, and society to model good behavior and teach us how to rise above our nature of want. We learn from them the benefits of kindness and sharing.

But when I tap my mouse and open any social media page or turn on the television, I am bombarded by a celebration of cruel, cutting words and the idolatry of the individual. Our politicians have been slinging barbs against not only each other but particular segments of society like hyper-active monkeys slinging poo at the zoo. And no one is apologizing. Quite the opposite, it's being hailed as keeping it real. That the honesty is refreshing. Well, I'm here to say it's not. It's not honest to say all Mexicans are lazy, rapists, and drug dealers. I'm married to a Mexican American man who works hard as an attorney. His mother may be retired but never stops working for her kids, grandkids, and her church.

It is fear, pettiness, and too much free time combined with the false courage social media affords us, that allows us to post unkind words without looking the person in the face that has really fed this trend of nastiness. But it still hurts. I was appalled to see a post from someone I thought was better than that of a political cartoon depicting President Obama as a slave picking cotton while someone calls him "Boy". Now, you don't have to agree with his politics but making fun of slavery, a despicable stain on our national history that should teach us humility and the error of our ways is downright ugly and evil.

But this is the new norm, ironically in an age of political correctness where more people care about Cecil the Lion and animal rights than human ones. So while one news story or viral post celebrates diversity another makes fun of it. And I will go on record as saying I can be a hypocrite like every other person on the planet and am known for my snarkiness. But I am never cruel. I'd rather poke fun at the inconsistencies of human nature than label an entire race as terrorists.

But I fear this new acceptance of rudeness and cruelty. I work hard to teach my kids to respect all people and judge others only on behavior not race, religion, gender, or sexual orientation. But will society undo my life lessons?

I hear people complain about entitlement, a word I truly hate and knee-jerk react against whenever my darling sons start acting like entitled brats. But isn't Facebook a vehicle for entitlement allowing people to show off their "sanitized" and heavily edited pictures and images of their "perfect" lives. Our ids have splattered themselves all over social media. Between the mean political memes are the ones defending the right to be a bitch or act like a spoiled brat. Or we can watch shows like "Real Housewives" or the Kardashians or anything on E or Bravo where rich people are famous for being catty and cruel to each other.

I think being "real" should mean that we are "really" trying our hardest to be kind, considerate, loving people who agree to disagree in an intellectual and understanding manner. We cannot argue like second graders on the playground and start name calling when someone calls us out on our hypocrisy or differs with our opinions. I want to live in a world where rudeness is seen for what it really is - petty and mean and meant to inflict harm.

Real to me are those friends who really do good for others and will really lend you a helping hand or a shoulder to cry on or an ear to vent to. I have so many of these good people in my life. They should be emulated and celebrated. There is enough hate and misery in the world, let's not add to it in an effort to seem cool and edgy. It's not honesty but honestly malicious.