Adults Behaving Badly

Is it Ok to excuse an adult for behavior you would punish your kids for? This is a question I am pondering because I encountered a very very rude adult at church. While I was complaining about the behavior, two of her friends came to her defense. I was told that she is one of the nicest, kind hearted people I would ever come in contact with. They said she would do anything she can for you. She just has a “personality” and you just have to get used to her. My issue is she is old enough to know better. And, I remember a nice kind old lady in my church growing up just like her, Sister W. That woman was one of the reasons I had to be dragged into any kind of leadership role in successive churches. I always felt I would encounter a Sister W. I knew a Sister W was not going to bring out the best in me. I also felt that Sister W stole a lot of my worship from me. As an adult I get that I gave up my worship and Sister W was indeed a very nice person who would be mortified to know that I disliked her enough to hold back in church. But still, maybe things would have been different if her friends had said to her that she was rude and needed to check her behavior instead of telling me and others that she meant no harm or that’s just the way she is.

I read a piece by Blogher’s Mata H. on your ideal place of worship and this incident instantly came to mind. This makes me wonder if this is really my ideal place of worship. I want a place where I and my children can grow spiritually, be nurtured, loved and feel safe. I am not into having to walk on eggshells to account for someone’s personality. That did not work out well for me in my marriage, hence the EX husband. I am almost never rude I go out of my way to make people feel special and welcome. So why then do I get treated with such disrespect and then told ‘it just the way she is’.

Back to my original point why is it that we expect more from kids than adults? If either of these defenders of this lady had been told that their kids behaved this way they would have apologized to me and made their kids apologize. A friend of mine told me that she once took her son to a church service when he was 4 or 5 and he behaved very badly. She said she got him in the foyer of the church and said “you know better than to act this way. We do not behave like this in church.” He responded to her by saying “mommy this not a real church, because that man up there was drunk at pa pa’s house yesterday”. She said she was stunned and so were the people in the foyer. She said so we just left. Our children are watching us. Be it the child like me who just sat in church for years because I felt like all churches had a Sister W or this little boy who felt he was not in a real church because he saw the minister drunk the day before. Why defend the adult who should know better than to behave this way and esp in church. When is it appropriate to say to a friend that was rude you owe her/him an apology? If you are truly a friend why not have that conversation? How do you handle an adult’s bad behavior? Remember your kids or someone else’s may be watching.

Honest Conversations

I attend Bible study at an Evangelical church. When I went to Bible study last night I pulled in beside this Volvo XC 70 which I want badly. So I am looking at the car and on the back window there is a sticker that has PALIN! In large letters on top with Mccain/Palin 2008 at the bottom. I smiled and thought to myself Johnny boy had better watch his back. Then I noticed the owner of the car getting out as she was on her cell. We walked in together talking about the lesson for the night. After bible study we go into the little coffee shop and a few of us start to talk. The conversation turn to the election and I realize I am out numbered so I just say well Obama has my vote. There is this smile on Volvo lady’s face as she says I hope this doesn’t offend you but can I ask if it is because he is Black? I say no offense taken but it is because he is a democrat just as I voted for Clinton, Gore, and Kerry I am voting for Obama. So I ask are you not voting for him because he is Black? She goes no it is because he is a democrat. We all have a laugh. And she finishes with she doesn’t see color. I tell her I am the exact opposite. I see color. I am glad we are not all the same. I told her that seeing color allows me to respect the differences that are inherent in us and to me our differences are one of the things that speak to the awesomeness of the God we serve. Of the billions of people on this earth there is no one that is exactly like me that is just beyond awesome. I tell her that it is PC to claim not to see color but if you had seen me in a dark parking lot yelling at my kids and staring at the back of your car how would you have described the incident the next day? She says touché I get your point. I would have said there was this Black lady behind my car yelling at her kids. We all talk about this a little.

Then the question is posed to me as to why Blacks always vote Democratic. I say besides Strom Thurmond, David Duke, and Jesse Helms. There is the Southern strategy; this insistence that everything is the fault of the poor, that affirmative action is a way of hiring unqualified people instead of a way of promoting diversity. Even Collin Powell has pointed out that he benefited from affirmative action. Never mind that there are the Sean Hannitys, Rush Limbaughs oh and Obama waffles showing up at a value voters summit for three days before someone thinks it is not a good idea. Then there is this insistence that abortion is the greatest evil we need to fight against when we have children living in unspeakable circumstances. But the argument is they just need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps when half of them didn’t even get the boots. By the time I was finished going on the room was silent and uncomfortably so. Volvo lady looks at me and says you seem to have been holding that in for a while. I tell her that I spend time in a lot of places where I am the only Black person and have been asked that question more than once.

I said now what I really want to know is why you guys aren’t mad at all of the republicans you have helped to elect? None of them have overturned Roe v Wade. None of them have held firm to the personal responsibility code. George Busch lied out and out lied and he was elected twice. His administration has taken a surplus and is leaving a deficit like we have never seen. How could any of you cast a vote for him after what is campaign did to John McCain in SC in 2000? I was told about their family values, that he hasn’t been as bad of a president as Democrats have made him out to be. I say wait where is the personal responsibility thing he contributed to this mess and greatly does he not have some responsibility? To that I got yes but. I told them excuses are tools for the weak and incompetent. Which is Bush? Then I ask the blowup question how in the world can you sleep at night and cast a vote for a woman is so completely unprepared for the seriousness of the time we are in and the man who decided this was a good idea? Volvo lady is the first to the defense of Palin she goes on about her being a Gov and a mayor, and she can’t be that bad if she has gotten that far. I ask her if she got the resumes of Sarah Palin and Barack Obama on her desk which would she call in for an interview and why? She said well I don’t know? The guy running the class says I have to admit I would call in Obama but for this election I agree with Sarah and John more. I told him you would not hire either of them to work with everyday but you would hire them to run your country and that has an impact not only on you but your kids and my kids as well as everyone in this country. They all got my point but we agreed to disagree.

So I would like to pose these questions to you all.

Why aren’t you republicans pissed at George Busch and the likes?

Why do you think more Blacks aren’t republicans?

And to answer your question I go to an evangelical bible study because it is on a convenient night for my family.