R.E.S.P.E.C.T.

Once again, "anonymous" decided to grace my journal with another insightful comment. To wit:

Why do you always insist on calling her "The Kid"? She is a grown woman who may be failing in her health but is still not a child. Have some respect for the years God has allowed her to have, please. Call her your mother, not your kid. It just seems demeaning to her, somehow.

Okay, I'm guessing that you know me...but you don't know me all that well. For the record, I respect, care for, admire, and all around love this woman. She is my mother, yeah, but I rarely call her "mom", "mum", "mother"...whatever.

Ever since I was barely an inch taller than her, I've called her "Shorty". One time, I asked her if that bothered her, me referring to her that way, and she said no...in fact, she liked it, especially since I got tall enough that she could rest her head on my chest when she hugged me.

Our relationship is close. She knows how I feel and care for her. She knows how much I love her, and that I'd do anything for her.

In the "online" world, I go by the nom de guerre "Onestar" (or Onie for short). Over at DeviantArt, the character Onestar took on a whole different meaning. He's the character who goes around on Wednesday wishing folks "hump" day greetings, talking about boobies and being a goofball constantly flirting with the ladies.

Over here in this blog, it's closer to the real "me", but I still won't use my real name. I don't like to use my real name online. It's a personal thing...names have power, and I won't have it spread all over the place. To that end, I don't refer to my mother as "Mom", but rather "The Kid".

There's a natural order of things to life. When children are young, parents take care of them. As they get older, the children take care of the parents. Yeah, it's role reversal. It's the right thing to do. So I refer to her as "the kid" in journals and online...in real life, we both know who the parent and who the kid is. It just so happens that there's some blurring of the lines these days.

So, anonymous, there ya go. I hope this helps. Oh, and by the way, congratulations. You've managed to something doesn't happen every day: You've pissed me off. I had to wait a couple days to write this, to cool off. Trust me, the previous version of this journal were nowhere near as kind.

I've a good idea who wrote that. I know where you're coming from, but do me a favor: Back off on this one. I've had a really shitty couple weeks and am not in the mood. Don't bother trying to apologize or anything. Soon, I'll feel a bit better and won't be as pissy as I am right now. For the moment...I'd recommend leaving me alone. You said what you said. I've said what I said. Leave it at that. Taking it...and me...to the next level would not be in either of our best interests