That Crazy Old Lady

Every neighborhood has one.  Or so it seemed when I was a kid.  There'd be a crotchety old man down the street who would yell at children not to ride bikes on his lawn, or a crabby old lady who would peek out her windows to see what kind of nonsense the local kids were getting into--or even a crazy type who might be out sweeping the street with a broom and mumbling to him/herself.  And now, so soon on the heels of my prvious post about forgiveness, I find that I have become one of those crazy old people!

When my daughter was a toddler, I would take her to the nursing home to visit my beloved grandfather.  I adored that man.  He was such a kind and gentle (and stubborn) soul, but Megan was a 2-year-old and my grandfather was in his late 80s on our last visit.  When she did something toddlerish, he snapped at her.  Secretly, I was offended.  My mother and I were both in attendance and watching her.  We were on it, so to speak, but he snarled before we could even act.  I made up my mind then and there that I would not take Megan to visit under those circumstances again--not out of anger but rather as an effort to protect them both.  I didn't want my grandfather to think of my precious child as a nuisance, and I didn't want my precious child to remember her beloved great-grandfather as a nasty old man. 

What I didn't understand then (but is clear to me now), is that we become less patient as we age, maybe because everything we do takes more energy and effort than ever before.  I can fall on my face at the end of a day now, exhausted, when I haven't even done anything all day long. 

My life is pretty boring, actually--especially now that the long, cold, snowy winter has kept many of us old folks inside.  Oh, there's plenty to do, but I often don't have the oomph to do it.  Instead, I spend endless hours sitting in front of this computer keeping up with the world through social media and watching mindless television enough to keep me (and my bottom) numb.  It's probably a bad idea because I have lost my perspective on some things.

I have a couple of pet peeves that are only exacerbated by watching TV or reading Facebook.  One is something insidious: politics.  I find that I have absolutely no patience for people who follow party lines, regurgitating political buzzwords without thinking for themselves.  Honestly, it makes my blood pressure go up!

Another follows along with that: on Facebook, people post false information that they have not checked out for validity, as if it were truth.  One might claim to be quoting our country's founding fathers or respected personalities, when in fact they are quoting some nameless author from a century ago.  It takes only a few moments to check these things out on a number of Internet hoax sites before posting, but it is apparently easier to jump on bandwagons of popular belief than to be accurate.  I hate that.  It isn't just.  It isn't right.  I hate hypocrisy, and I end up correcting these things almost every time I find them.  It doesn't make me very popular, I'm sure.

The biggest pet peeve, however, has to do with people who are posting radical ideas, complete with profanity and name-calling, in an attempt to make themselves appear in the know or intellectually superior--but they misspell words, use homonyms, or have incorrect grammar that just glares at me in their posts.  I spent 40 years of my life correcting that sort of thing with my students.  It's tough to give that up in my old age.  Of course, spelling and grammatical errors don't bother me so much if the writer is merely expressing personal feelings, but making a big deal out of proving his/her "rightness" on something while merely only proving ignorance of one's own language simply begs for me to speak up.  And I do.  I try to keep sarcasm in check, but it isn't always easy.  And again, it doesn't do much to endear me to those to whom I am responding.  It makes me the crazy old lady peeking out of the window trying to catch people doing something wrong.  The self-appointed Internet Police.  The Crabby Appleton of cyberspace.

And you know the worst part in all of my well-intentioned zeal?  I come off looking like more of a pompous ass than the people whose pomposity I'm trying to correct! 

More than once, I have had to backtrack and apologize to people who weren't really asking for a fight.  It is then that I realize that I have no life--that the winter's isolation that has kept me cooped up for weeks, along with my growing disabilities, has transformed me from the once-patient person that I was to the curmudgeon that I've become. 

It happened again yesterday within my own family.  My niece posted an old photo-shopped hack of Bill Gates holding a sign saying he would give money to people who "liked" the picture...or something like that.  No one in their right mind could possibly believe that Bill Gates is going to give out millions of dollars to people on Facebook who click the "like" button, but there it was.  Again.  So I said something to her about it in an open post.  Apparently, she took offense.  Then, a couple of days later, her son posted something about how he'd been playing with his "nephew" who actually is his first cousin.  I felt the need to correct him, so I did.  I didn't mean anything bad by it.  I just thought he might not have understood.  What I did in doing so was arouse the ire of his mother (again) who came to his defense.  She informed me that her son DID know that his "nephew" is actually his first cousin (and he later confirmed that).  Then she zinged me.  Said I'd been "on a roll" lately.  Called me bitter.  Said it wasn't like me.

I sat back, took a gasp, and realized that she was right--not with the "bitter" part, but I certainly must seem that way.  I have lost my patience.  I have lost my ability to let certain things go.  Even my daughter has tried to temper my ardor by suggesting more productive things to act on my frustrations with the world.  Thus, I have decided, that even if I can't get out more until (unless) the weather begins to improve, I will bite my literary tongue and try to do better.  I'll be more demure.  More tolerant.  More reliant on "accepting the things I cannot change"...and TRYING to find the wisdom to know them when I see them.  I need to free myself from those little things that irritate me so much because my world has become so narrow.  In short, I need to regain my ability to "consider the source" and forgive people in the way that I spoke of in my previous post!

I don't want people to remember me as a crazy old lady.  But really, folks, you're going to miss me when I'm gone!  Who will keep everyone in line then???