Guide For The Newly Diagnosed: Pay No Attention To The Man Behind The Curtain

And that man is usually a member of the general public spouting tired cliches mostly found on Facebook posts with cute kittens. You know, the kind of sh*t you see and think, "that is true... Ha ha! My ex slipped on the ice and broke his fat ass! That's the most uplifting post I have ever seen on here!" You are going to hear a criminal amount of stupid crap, useless platitudes and general bad advice. Refer to the good advice in the title of this post. Depending on the source and my mood I have different ways of handling these sages.

The Slow Blink

Some one just told you, "None of us knows what tomorrow brings!" and goes skipping off to take a jog before they make dinner for their family. You are dealing with an attack that has you staggering like a drunk and barely able to stay awake until dinner. Their words are hanging in the air... waiting for a reply... wipe your face of all emotion... now... b...l...i...n...k. It's true, none of us do know, but to say something like that when the odds for your tomorrow are sooooo much better than my tomorrow is really a poor choice of an empty platitude. On the way out of the store grab some cheesy quotes book so you will be better prepared next time, or can at least hit me with something I don't hear as much. I really like Benjamin Franklin or Winston Churchill is good too.

The Lost My Patience

I'm actually a pretty patient person, so when I do lose my patience, you pushed me pretty good. Grocery shopping a bit ago, a woman was using a motorized cart. I could not possibly care any less if someone is using a cart, wheelchair, cane, iditarod dogs, etc. She and her husband came up behind me while I was pondering which spaghetti sauce was truly as delicious as it claimed to be, when he loudly said, "EXCUSE US! She's in a cart!" I no longer cared about spaghetti sauce. I told him, "I don't care if she's in a cart! I have to use them sometimes too because I have Multiple Sclerosis!" I think I may have dropped the F bomb in there too because that kind of attitude really pisses me off. I wasn't blocking the aisle; it was earlier in the morning so it wasn't busy; and why should anyone roll out the red carpet for you because you are in a cart? I had my cane in my shopping cart and no one was walking in front of me loudly informing people of it. "Here she comes! She has a cane! Mush, you little peons! And some one grab her some spaghetti sauce because in all that brouhaha she forgot to grab some! There she goes! She has a cane!" 

The F*ck Stick

This is for when you have really, really pissed me off. You know that old adage "beware a patient man's anger," well I am that patient man. My mom HATES the F word. She hates it to the point that if you use it it has to be in the most extreme situations, and even then... Talking to her on the phone I slammed my finger in the door and took a big chunk off my finger, blood all over, and I said f*ck. My mom was more concerned about my language than my finger. My mother is what inspired this last one, and inspired it is! She really got me livid one day. I haven't been that furious in a long time; I was so angry I told her I wanted to beat her over the head with the word F*CK. I didn't necessarily want to kill her, so I wanted to get a foam stick and carve the word F*CK (I would censor it for the kids' if they saw it) into it to beat her with. For non-human uses I want to get a punching bag to hang in my garage and go out there and beat it with my f*ck stick when I get really mad. I have an old cane with F*CK written on it and there really are not words for the release I get from beating on an old pile of rugs in my basement when I feel the need. 

I know -- or at least I think -- people mean well, but sometimes I wish they would mean well somewhere far away from me.