Flip flips in the snow, we don't care. in Not All Who Wander Are Lost

I have a friend at work, I call her my work husband and I’m her work wife. She moved here not too long ago from Buffalo and the first thing I said to her, after noticing her Harry Potter patch on her bag, was “What house are you in?” Now we are work married. Anyway. I mentioned the Ohio Grrls video to her the other day and realized she’d never SEEN the Ohio Grrls video, which was weird to me because I feel like that’s just . . . A thing everyone knows about, lol. Anyway, so I was telling her about the video and then for whatever reason, the way minds works, I thought about a comment this guy made on an article that was written about the video.

The article was really nice, it was one of those sites with general titles like “Associated Content” or whatever, where anyone can write some articles and call themselves a blogger or writer or whatever. Anyway, the article was written by a girl who had gone to college here and really identified with the song and said it was nice to see two friends just having fun and making a fun song (she did not, however, like that we made it “grrls” instead of “girls,” which I GET since I’m a stickler for proper grammar and all, but we were making a parody of a song called California GURLS, so I think it’s allowed, anyway, I digress.) A commentor, a male who was also a writer for the site, said that I was so ugly he felt the need to poke his eyes out with forks. Or something along those lines, I’m paraphrasing. Anyway, it really caught me off guard because I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone speak about me that way, I mean, not in the way that I could actually SEE IT.

And, of course, logically I know this is just some douche canoe on the internet who doesn’t know me and it just trying to be cruel for the sake of being cruel. A whole bunch of people called him out on it, including the original author, saying it was completely uncalled for, which I appreciated. And then the dude did attempt to apologize on the video, one of those non-apologies that’s like, “I’m sorry if you were offended,” which IS NOT AN APOLOGY, CAN WE JUST KNOCK THAT SHIT OFF?? You are not apologizing for your WORDS when you say that. And then he went on to say that it was just a joke and us “young’uns” were “too touchy” these days. Bitches, right? Can’t even call them ugly without them getting all pissy about it.

Which, besides having a total stranger call me ugly, at the time, I just didn’t feel very good about myself. I had just had my third child a few months before and I’ve never had the easiest time losing pregnancy weight. My braces weren’t due to be removed for a few more months. I was still at that point after giving birth where your body doesn’t quite feel like your body. It just wasn’t . . . It wasn’t a good time for me and having some asshole make a harsh judgement on me that I knew I shouldn’t have taken seriously just didn’t’ help. And it was one of those situations that I was upset about and knew I shouldn’t be so I felt worse about feeling worse until I was just a big jumble of icky feelings. And I think that’s why it’s so important to be so careful about what we say to people. Because you don’t know how they’re already feeling about themselves and how one flippant comment that you forget all about can possibly make them tear themselves apart from the inside.

But looking back on that time, and how I feel about myself now, and how I’d feel if someone told me that now, at 35 and feeling more comfortable with myself and how I look and who I am.

He wishes.

Last updated February 25, 2016