December 16, 2017
5:03 p.m.

Got myself a nap and a shower and the toddler and I have been enjoying an afternoon of "Mickey Mouse Playhouse".

The grandson took advantage of nice weather and played outside all afternoon, and now the kiddos are filling up on fresh fruit and good stuff like that.

At some point their mom should be waking up, and then we'll figure out dinner.

Like I said yesterday, our schedules are a little weird around here.

Son and daughter-in-law are off to a holiday party. I kind of miss doing things like that.
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I'm going to vent a little now.

How many of you have Messenger from Facebook? Do you get a lot of "chain mail" type messages? I sure do! And, dang, I hate that stuff! My old phone went bananas whenever I would get one, recalling every photo and message I had ever deleted--ever--and bringing it back, filling up the memory and screwing everything up.

I have never even installed it on my new phone. Who needs that happy crappy?

It is, however, on my PC and on my laptop, because my kids frequently use it to send me messages and pictures--you know, they use it as it should be used: for messages.

I have asked numerous times on my feed that people not send me flashing lights and sparkling bouquets of flowers and "pass this on or suffer a horrible death" messages, but no one ever pays attention, and so now I am once again deleting and deleting when I should be busy writing.

I don't want to get rid of messenger. I want those personal messages from family and friends. I just don't want the "junk mail".

What can I do? Is there a way to block that stuff? Someone help me out here!
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I think I touched on the "#MeToo movement the other day... did I? I meant to. Whether I did or not, I'm going to talk a little about it today.

I often begin my day looking over news stories, as I'm sure many of you do as well. And these sexual misconduct accusations seem to be flying in faster and faster as each day passes.

Along with accusations and allegations, I'm seeing a lot of posts from men and also from women claiming disbelief. The victims are lying because they waited for decades to come forward. The victims are lying because real victims don't want to be identified in public.

I've also seen a few "she had it coming" posts and even a couple of "he should have finished the job" posts that I find reprehensible. Where does that kind of hate come from?!

I don't care much for this subject, but I could probably write a book and name names myself, and truthfully, most every other woman I know could do the same.

I mean, let's be honest here. It starts early and goes on forever. The first time I was sexually harassed, I was in second grade. Yes, for crying out loud, I was probably eight years old!

A neighborhood boy, a classmate, was always grabbing and trying to steal a kiss. He finally coerced me into giving that kiss by stealing my little brother's favorite Tonka truck and holding it hostage. I love my brother, okay? So I gave Bobby the damned kiss. Ugh! Repulsive! I took the truck home to my brother, and then I washed my face and brushed my teeth and sulked.

The next day, I punched the kid in the face. At school. Mrs. Fox made me stand in the corner and told me she was disappointed in me.

I'll say this for Mrs. Fox, though. The next year I told her why I punched Bobby, and she apologized for punishing me. She said I should have told her why right then, and she could have taken some sort of action. It was too late now, though-- he and his family had moved away.

My introduction to the idea of statutes of limitation.

She was right, or course; you should always tell. Tell an adult. Tell someone you trust.

But you know what? You don't.

Why?

Because even at the age of eight, there was this nagging thought in the back of my mind: What did I do or say to make him think he could get away with that?

And doggone it, down through the years I had many an occasion to have those thoughts again.

Many an occasion.

Many.

The arrival of the girls heralded in an era of behaviors by boys that I came to dismiss as just par for the course. A "boys will be boys" sort of thing.

Pokes and pinches. Questions like "When it rains, do your feet get wet?" Invitations to play tag or touch football that leads to being held too long, "accidental" chest gropes, etc.

You get the picture.

And that was sixth grade.

Whee!

So, did I run to the nearest adult and tattle? Nope. I learned how to use my elbows to good advantage and stamped on a foot or two, but mostly I just squirmed away and chalked it up to "stupid boys".

Some of those "stupid boys" could be reading this right now. Um, guys? You sucked. Big time. And the saddest part of it all is that because of the times and because it was "boys being boys" or whatever, you were too stupid to know you were stupid. You made me and a lot of other girls feel bad about our own bodies. Like we could do anything but grow up. Sheesh.

See, as I matured, I got comfortable with the girls. They fed my babies. I really pretty attached to them now; I hope to always keep them.

But at age 12? Age 15? Even 18? Not so much. They were at times a source of embarrassment, even shame. Certainly they gained me some unwanted attention.

Being a girl gained me unwanted attention, okay? From boys. From men.

Now, I was blessed with an intelligent and progressive-for-her-time mother and an even-more-progressive-for-her-time grandmother, so I was educated in the ways of "stupid boys" fairly early on, or things could have fared much more poorly for me than they did. I was smart enough and precocious enough to get myself out of situations that might have ended up so much worse than they did.

Even so, I was not a tattle tale. I let that nagging voice ask me over and over, what did I say or do? Why did this happen? What am I doing wrong?

And at the same time all this was going on, I knew damned well that I was not the pretty girl or the popular girl or the sexy girl, so...what the hell? Why the attention? What?

I didn't date a lot. The guys I crushed on didn't even know I was alive.

I didn't have a clue how to get the attention from the ones I liked and how to deflect the attention of the ones I wanted to leave me alone.

I was awash in self-doubt all the time.

I could go on, but I'm still not willing to be a public tattle tale. To this day, if I feel that some guy might be a problem in real life, I tell the people who I think need to be careful of being with them, but I've never taken it further than that.

Why? Well, like many women before me, I feared not being believed. You hear the horror stories--they're not new. "She was asking for it." "She's a tease." "She wanted it." Yada yada yada. 

There were times when I knew it wasn't just me, and warnings were issued. Some girls ignored me, for whatever reason, and later returned with their own tales of woe. We commiserated. We said, "Stupid boys. Stupid men."

I will say this much: It is really no fun walking home from south hill in the middle of the night because you've been pushed out of the car for refusing to "put out". This happened before the days of cell phones. It was cold. It was really dark. It was scary.

But I was more scared of him coming back, still angry.

Not a fun night. Everytime I saw headlights, I hid. Yeah, it would have been nice to get a ride, but...just in case.

That was over forty years ago. Stupid guy.

(For the record, I told whoever I felt might need to know, if I knew they might end up alone on that same road. So there, stupid guy. But I didn't tell an adult, and I didn't call the cops. I just walked home, took a hot bath and went to bed and sulked.)

All that said, those were decisions I made at the time. If I found out now that that particular person was still in the area and that he might be continuing his nefarious ways, I could be prompted to change my mind. If he was now in the Senate, or the President, or a famous actor or director and I knew that he was still behaving like a notorious ass-hat, I would be motivated to speak up.

I lost track of him, though. Period.

That doesn't mean that I haven't regretted my law-related silence on the matter. I've regretted it plenty. I mean, there was yelling. There was shoving. There was desertion. I felt stupid and humiliated and pissed off. I got the buttons popped off my blouse, and when I landed on the ground, I got my clothes dirty. Other than that, I escaped relatively unscathed.

But what if he got more agressive with the passage of time? What if he started hitting? What if he ended up raping someone?

So I warned some girls when I found out they were planning to go out with him. Big la-dee-dah deal.

Because I was a chicken-shit, I didn't report him to anyone with authority. 

Yeah, I've regretted it a lot. But it I'm honest, I don't think anyone would have done a thing. As far as it went, he didn't actually do much. At least as far as the law in that town at that time would have been concerned. And in the meantime, I probably would have gotten dragged through the mud, blamed for the assault, told to suck it up and deal, because "boys will be boys".

Damn it.

It plagues me. It has left me with a guilty feeling of having let some unknown someone down.

And that leads me to the women who have spoken out in recent weeks.

I believe them.

Here's the thing: They know where their offender is. They know where he's working, and whether or not he has continued to be a problem.

They have had time to wrestle with occurances. They may now have daughters of their own. The perspective of a mother vs the perspective of a young woman can be profoundly different. Things they justified in their own minds may no longer work when they ask themselves, "But what if this happened to my child?"

Those are good reasons to stop holding their tongues and speak out.

I think the reason so many people are willing to call these women liars is because they think the victims are seeking publicity. I'll go out on a limb and say that publicity is likely the very last thing they want. If attention to themselves was all they were after, they would have reported it when it happened. Believe me, that attention is never positive. Who in their right mind would want to be placed under a microscope and examined for every flaw, be it mode of dress, make-up choices, drinking or drug habits, sexual histories or what church they may or may not attend?

(For the record: No, I had not been drinking. No make-up. Grey flannel pants and a white blouse with a blue cardigan that was NOT heavy enough for the weather--if you're walking. Clogs. Also not great for walking. Catholic. Zero sexual history.)

(But who would have believed me?)

Also, who wants to go up against someone who already has the "power" position? Some of these allegations were teenaged girls abused by a thirty-something businessman. He's got money. He knows people. He is likely a master manipulator. He knows just what to say to assure a girl that he'll be believed and she won't.

Fear and intimidation are powerful things.

These women are not lying. They have no reason to. They are already being dragged through the mud, being put under that microscope. They have nothing to gain but their own peace of mind for finally stepping out and standing up. In the process they will lose their privacy and possibly their dignity. Because they are not the ones in positions of power.

I believe them. I believe they no longer want to feel guilty about possibly letting some unknown someone down.

Now, on the other side of this spectrum, you have allegations of harassment by men making off-colored jokes and maybe patting a backside or two, and I'm not sure how I feel about men losing jobs over things like that. These are guys who grew up in the "boys will be boys" era, and while these things are offensive, I've been assaulted by this behavior my whole life and never felt guilty about not reporting it.

I find a good many of today's so-called comedies more offensive, frankly.

So where do we draw the line? What is a punishable offense? I mean, sexual innuendo that's clearly targeting you vs a traveling salesman joke? People are all very different from one another, and what cracks one person up might send another to sob in the restroom.

Ah, the world is a crazy, messed up place, folks.

For me, the line is here: if a person tells you they don't want to be touched, then keep your hands to yourself. It doesn't matter if all you wanted was a hug. The other person didn't want it, so respect their bounderies. I don't care if said person is two, or twelve or twenty or ninety. I don't care if they are male or female. Hands off if you're not invited to touch. Period.

And you know what? This includes your children. If they don't want a kiss good-night, let it go. They'll probably want one tomorrow. If they don't want to be tickled right now, wait for a better time. Sure, they're laughing--until they cry. That's not fun. I've found that kids are very good at letting you know when they are in the mood for tickling, for a hug, for a good-night kiss. Forcing it on them when they're not in the mood for it sends a message to them that what they want isn't important, and that they have no control over what happens to their own bodies.

(For the record: I ALWAYS hated being tickled. No time was the right time. And I always ended up crying. It was not fun.)

I always ask my grandchildren for a hug or kiss. If they say no, I don't freak out about it. In the end, they come to me and I get plenty. But it's up to them to say yes or no. I ask before tickling. If they want to play, we do, and when they say stop, I stop. Because it can go from fun to torture really dang quick.

I guess, bottom line for me is, I don't think you should get fired if you tell me a dirty joke. But if you push me into a corner and try to shove your tongue down my throat or your hand up my skirt, you should be packing up your desk.

"Boys will be boys" my Aunt Fanny.

To end this, I want to very clearly state that although I had some ugly encounters with "stupid boys", I had FAR more positive encounters with some really great boys and men all my life. These were the ones who helped pick up the books the bully just swatted out of your arms, the ones who walked you home when it was getting dark, the ones who spent that extra minute or ten listening to you chat when they really wanted to play kickball.

My overall experience of men has been great. One bad apple--or a few bad apples-- never spoiled the whole batch, not for me, at least.

And I'm really, really glad that I know so many good apples.

#MeToo.