As a child I really did try to learn to respect my dad as that was a basic part of my Anglican Catechism. But on the inside I would frequently be seething with resentment and anger ‘at him’ because he was so mean to my mother and brothers. By the way, I have forgiven him. So at the back door, he would be reminding us of our last instructions, “be sure to help your mother’. Yes dad we will.” ( we often didn’t, because we were very normal lazy children who chose to play rather than help. But mom was so glad to be free from her difficult spouse, that she didn’t care if we didn’t help her. She just wanted peace.) “Byyyyyye!dad.” And off he would go.

We grew up on an island, and during the smelting season, when you could still eat Lake Ontario fish without poisoning yourself, the good old fifties, after a good catch of smelts, mom and I would set up the card table in the living room, in front of the TV,WITH THE TV ON!!!! and with basins of water, knives, and laid out newspaper, we would clean the fish and watch TV at the same time, and have such a wonderful time, knowing we could work and play at the same time, when dad wasn’t there to say ‘you can’t do two things at once!”( HE must have been away!) Mom and I had such fun cleaning the smelts which of course needed to be cleaned, wrapped up and frozen right away, to be put in the freezer to preserve them for many delicious future meals.

As an adult, and a Grammy, I love to look at a book, write things down in a journal and watch tv at the same time, sometimes, just for the fun of it. because it’s so much fun breaking stupid rules when you realize that God never made them in the first place.

I think the best rule to live by is to be kind and good to other people, practice the Golden rule, and learn how to love. That way, we can be happy and fulfilled, as long of course as we do not make the mistake of trying to change other people with the way ‘we’ want them to be,as if we thought ‘we’ were somehow ’superior to them’. So demanding something from others ‘isn’t being good ,kind, or loving. Some people simply ‘don’t’ want to be kind ,good or loving, or, if they try to be early in the friendship, for some reason they ‘change their minds.’ Do they also ‘change their rules? I don’t know.

But until we realize that such relationships can be never be anything more than one way,with people who ‘don’t’ want to be good kind, and loving, we can never be happy or fulfilled in them. So for those who are the meanies, stinkers, and selfish, or who turn out to be that way, who take, use, exploit our patience and kindness, and who always ‘want’ something’ from us, but who don’t seem to really ‘give’ us anything that really contribute to the friendship, to the relationship,other than a ‘what’s in it for me’ kind of thing’ , people who make their own rules, break them whenever they want to, who have a different, peculiar set of standards and values, possibly even a wrong set of values,people who are’nt about to change their selfish ways, apart from personal crisis and intervention from a higher power, if we want to keep our sanity, we need to say I love you, I forgive you, but I really can’t hang out with you anymore, so it’s ADIOS AMIGOS baby!

Free, happy, and loving it. BQ.

Guess that makes me a hypocrite right? Ouch.

My motto, “it’s easier to ask forgiveness then permission!”