wrso713.com

Remember when a television series had enough…I don’t know…Nielsen Ratings and feminine hygiene sponsors, I guess…that it could gaslight an entire nation of otherwise intelligent women to believe that when a guy rapes you, it’s not actually rape if that guy turns out to be popular with all those women buying products for when they have that “not so fresh feeling”?

Yeah, that’s messed up.

Back in the 80s, soap operas – which had been around for a long time and were largely viewed by housewives hooked on Valium, cigarettes, and anything else that would numb them to the desperation of life in the suburbs – suddenly became very popular with younger women. Who knows why. It was, after all, the 80s.

So it was that “General Hospital” somehow, suddenly, became a smash hit, with soaring ratings and the cred to coax acting legends like Elizabeth Taylor (more on her later) to deign to grace the small screen – and on daytime, no less!

The height of GH’s popularity probably owed a lot to the “fairy tale romance” between Luke and Laura – shown below at their super fabulous wedding. Laura, played by Genie Francis, was a fixture on the show, having practically grown up on television and generally portrayed as a wide-eyed, innocent young woman.

By contrast, Luke, portrayed by Anthony Geary, was a slick, smooth talking con artist and sleazebag who took a shine to young, sweet Laura. Doesn’t seem likely that the two would get together, does it? Well, they did, but only after Luke violently raped Laura in his disco.

And then, in a way that is always just so disturbing and disappointing, fans (mostly female – argh)
decided that they liked Luke and Laura m, regardless of what brought them together, and then the narrative changed. Instead of “Luke Raped Laura! He’s a dick! Let’s arrest him and put him on trial like the butt-farting cat licker he is!!” we were told that the Sexual Assault sponsored by Summer’s Eve and Trojan-Enz with lubricant was not a REAL rape…you know, where the guy holds you down and fucks you? No! It was a “Getting to Know you Rape,” where the guy holds you down and fucks you…and then, after a sizable segment of a targeted market share indicates it wants more, the woman involved suddenly decides it’s in her economic interest to FALL IN LOVE.

God help us.

Luke and Laura fell in love, because we wanted them to, and that nasty little forcible penetration was forgotten.

I KNOW! I’M VOMITING, TOO!

How fucking stupid…and gullible…were women of the ‘80’s that they bought this shit?

Hello!

HE RAPED HER!!

THEY SHOWED IT ON TV!!!

But thanks to the magic of Daytime Drama and a male screenwriter…rape became…true love.

Which is how I always feel when some guy with a bad perm who owns a disco fucks me when I don’t want him to.

Being fucked by someone with a bad perm is yucky.

Especially WHEN YOU DON’T WANT HIM TO.

But I digress. After all, this was the same show wherein Elizabeth Taylor played an otherworldly villain who lived on an island where she could control the weather.

If only she’d been around when Donald Trump was President. Think of all the hurricanes and space lasers we could have avoided.

Also, GH killed off Laura, and then she came back from the dead.

I’m not making this up.

Maybe Laura should have just stayed dead, if that’s what she was coming back to.

As in, “Yeah, he raped me, then I died, but now I’m alive and I’m okay with the whole aggravated sexual assault thing.”

But even after death, she took him back. Because that’s what the (mostly male) writers of GH thought women wanted.

Sigh.

Women…women, please.

We may not all agree on everything.

And I’m okay being the turd in the punch bowl when I say this…

But for the love of well-performed cunnilingus, can we please, please, FOR FUCK’S SAKE AGREE…

RAPE IS RAPE IS RAPE.

You don’t get to give it a less-horrible name, for the sake of Nielsen ratings or ad sales.

You don’t get to pretend it’s a way for people to realize they actually “love” each other.

You don’t get to brainwash an enormous percentage of the female population that WOMEN DON’T KNOW WHAT THEY WANT UNTIL YOU FUCK THEM!!!

Unless they let you.

And they did.

So here we are, 40 years later – we fat, old, crepey, cellulitis-ridden, batwing-bearing, grey-haired, creaky-kneed, glasses-wearing, wrinkled, crow’s-feet-laden WOMEN WHO WON’T PUT UP WITH YOUR SHIT..

We are here to tell you, Delta Mu Phi brahs…

-if she says “no,” she isn’t consenting to sex.

-if she’s passed out drunk, she isn’t consenting to sex.

-IF YOU DRUGGED HER IN YOUR CRAPPY-ASS “DISCO,” SHE ISN’T CONSENTING TO SEX.

It’s sort of awful that we keep having to explain this to men.

We don’t enjoy it.

Men often call us “stupid bull-dyke lesbos!” when we do.

Or they say, “don’t worry, no one would ever want to rape YOU!”

Or they say, “it’s just a TV show!”

Which is true. But it’s also a message that got put into the minds of a lot of young women – and maybe even some young men – and so is it any wonder that campus rape has become a crisis of epidemic proportions? Sure, that’s a vast oversimplification – rape, and rape by entitled young men – is a condition 3,000 years or more in the making.

But when you tell a young woman that maybe it wasn’t so bad after all…

…that maybe the pond-scum-sucking ass pimple is actually your Prince Charming, you just haven’t gotten to know him!

…well, that’s a problem.

No, we don’t want your body, and no, we don’t think you’re sexy.

And even if we did, it doesn’t mean you get to rape us.

There are good guys out there. There are.

So maybe make a TV show about them. They’re not rapey. They respect women. They still look good in a pair of Levi’s.

Men, here’s what women want for Valentine’s Day:

We don’t want candy.

We don’t want flowers.

We don’t want lingerie that’s only going to get one of us hot hot hot (hint: no women ever wore a corset and garters and said, “this is just as comfy as yoga pants and my favorite sweater.”)

Just do this – please – and we promise to give you a blow job when we fucking feel like it (you’re welcome):

JUST STOP RAPING US.

That’s all we – including Laura – ever wanted.

Remember when a television series had enough…I don’t know…Nielsen Ratings and feminine hygiene sponsors, I guess…that it could gaslight an entire nation of otherwise intelligent women to believe that when a guy rapes you, it’s not actually rape if that guy turns out to be popular with all those women buying products for when they have that “not so fresh feeling”?

Yeah, that’s messed up.

Back in the 80s, soap operas – which had been around for a long time and were largely viewed by housewives hooked on Valium, cigarettes, and anything else that would numb them to the desperation of life in the suburbs – suddenly became very popular with younger women. Who knows why. It was, after all, the 80s.

So it was that “General Hospital” somehow, suddenly, became a smash hit, with soaring ratings and the cred to coax acting legends like Elizabeth Taylor (more on her later) to deign to grace the small screen – and on daytime, no less!

The height of GH’s popularity probably owed a lot to the “fairy tale romance” between Luke and Laura – shown below at their super fabulous wedding. Laura, played by Genie Francis, was a fixture on the show, having practically grown up on television and generally portrayed as a wide-eyed, innocent young woman.

By contrast, Luke, portrayed by Anthony Geary, was a slick, smooth talking con artist and sleazebag who took a shine to young, sweet Laura. Doesn’t seem likely that the two would get together, does it? Well, they did, but only after Luke violently raped Laura in his disco.

And then, in a way that is always just so disturbing and disappointing, fans (mostly female – argh)
decided that they liked Luke and Laura m, regardless of what brought them together, and then the narrative changed. Instead of “Luke Raped Laura! He’s a dick! Let’s arrest him and put him on trial like the butt-farting cat licker he is!!” we were told that the Sexual Assault sponsored by Summer’s Eve and Trojan-Enz with lubricant was not a REAL rape…you know, where the guy holds you down and fucks you? No! It was a “Getting to Know you Rape,” where the guy holds you down and fucks you…and then, after a sizable segment of a targeted market share indicates it wants more, the woman involved suddenly decides it’s in her economic interest to FALL IN LOVE.

God help us.

Luke and Laura fell in love, because we wanted them to, and that nasty little forcible penetration was forgotten.

I KNOW! I’M VOMITING, TOO!

How fucking stupid…and gullible…were women of the ‘80’s that they bought this shit?

Hello!

HE RAPED HER!!

THEY SHOWED IT ON TV!!!

But thanks to the magic of Daytime Drama and a male screenwriter…rape became…true love.

Which is how I always feel when some guy with a bad perm who owns a disco fucks me when I don’t want him to.

Being fucked by someone with a bad perm is yucky.

Especially WHEN YOU DON’T WANT HIM TO.

But I digress. After all, this was the same show wherein Elizabeth Taylor played an otherworldly villain who lived on an island where she could control the weather.

If only she’d been around when Donald Trump was President. Think of all the hurricanes and space lasers we could have avoided.

Also, GH killed off Laura, and then she came back from the dead.

I’m not making this up.

Maybe Laura should have just stayed dead, if that’s what she was coming back to.

As in, “Yeah, he raped me, then I died, but now I’m alive and I’m okay with the whole aggravated sexual assault thing.”

But even after death, she took him back. Because that’s what the (mostly male) writers of GH thought women wanted.

Sigh.

Women…women, please.

We may not all agree on everything.

And I’m okay being the turd in the punch bowl when I say this…

But for the love of well-performed cunnilingus, can we please, please, FOR FUCK’S SAKE AGREE…

RAPE IS RAPE IS RAPE.

You don’t get to give it a less-horrible name, for the sake of Nielsen ratings or ad sales.

You don’t get to pretend it’s a way for people to realize they actually “love” each other.

You don’t get to brainwash an enormous percentage of the female population that WOMEN DON’T KNOW WHAT THEY WANT UNTIL YOU FUCK THEM!!!

Unless they let you.

And they did.

So here we are, 40 years later – we fat, old, crepey, cellulitis-ridden, batwing-bearing, grey-haired, creaky-kneed, glasses-wearing, wrinkled, crow’s-feet-laden WOMEN WHO WON’T PUT UP WITH YOUR SHIT..

We are here to tell you, Delta Mu Phi brahs…

-if she says “no,” she isn’t consenting to sex.

-if she’s passed out drunk, she isn’t consenting to sex.

-IF YOU DRUGGED HER IN YOUR CRAPPY-ASS “DISCO,” SHE ISN’T CONSENTING TO SEX.

It’s sort of awful that we keep having to explain this to men.

We don’t enjoy it.

Men often call us “stupid bull-dyke lesbos!” when we do.

Or they say, “don’t worry, no one would ever want to rape YOU!”

Or they say, “it’s just a TV show!”

Which is true. But it’s also a message that got put into the minds of a lot of young women – and maybe even some young men – and so is it any wonder that campus rape has become a crisis of epidemic proportions? Sure, that’s a vast oversimplification – rape, and rape by entitled young men – is a condition 3,000 years or more in the making.

But when you tell a young woman that maybe it wasn’t so bad after all…

…that maybe the pond-scum-sucking ass pimple is actually your Prince Charming, you just haven’t gotten to know him!

…well, that’s a problem.

No, we don’t want your body, and no, we don’t think you’re sexy.

And even if we did, it doesn’t mean you get to rape us.

There are good guys out there. There are.

So maybe make a TV show about them. They’re not rapey. They respect women. They still look good in a pair of Levi’s.

Men, here’s what women want for Valentine’s Day:

We don’t want candy.

We don’t want flowers.

We don’t want lingerie that’s only going to get one of us hot hot hot (hint: no women ever wore a corset and garters and said, “this is just as comfy as yoga pants and my favorite sweater.”)

Just do this – please – and we promise to give you a blow job when we fucking feel like it (you’re welcome):

JUST STOP RAPING US.

That’s all we – including Laura – ever wanted.

The Sentinelese are an uncontacted tribe living on North Sentinal Island in the Indian Ocean. They vigorously reject all contact with outsiders and are the most isolated tribe in the world, attacking anyone who comes near.

But even they know what happened at the Tokyo Olympics yesterday.

In a nutshell, the greatest female gymnast of all time pulled out of competition because she didn’t think it was safe for her to compete. Many people – including a number of elite athletes – praised her for her honesty and courage – and who better than Michael Phelps to opine about what it’s like to be the “It Athlete” going into the Olympic Games. Phelps has been candid about his mental health struggles during his competitive career, and is so passionate about this issue, he created a foundation which, as one of its primary goals, encourages people to confront their own mental health issues and work towards greater wellness. What a dick.

But there’s always gotta be a turd in the punch bowl, and in this case, there were more than a few privileged white men who couldn’t help but to pile on. Piers Morgan, that bloviating bag of swamp gas, called Simone a “snowflake” who “did badly” and is not a “strong role model.” Piers even managed a few crocodile tears for Biles’ sponsors “who’ve paid huge sums of money to support [her].” I mean, if there’s anyone we should be feeling sorry for, it’s the billion dollar corporations who for years have been making money off of Biles’ name and likeness and will no doubt continue to do so in the future. Unlike Piers, many of those sponsors – Visa, Athleta, and United, to name a few – don’t spend their life as though they had gerbils nibbling on their buttholes, and have issued statements of support for Biles.

Then there was Charlie Kirk, who I had never even heard of until today, but who apparently has an ultra right-wing podcast for those in search of Black people to hate for no reason. Charlie was slated to go to my Dad’s alma mater – West Point – until “a far less-qualified candidate of a different gender and a different persuasion” stole his spot. Fuck, man! Charlie also believes the Surfside Condominium collapse was an act of terrorism and that social distancing is the result of a “Democratic war on Christianity.” Anyway, Charlie thinks Simone is “immature” and a “shame to her country.” In fact, she’s an example that America is “raising a generation of weak people.” Charlie also advised Simone, “don’t show up. If you’re not ready for the big time, we’ve got thousands of young female gymnasts that would love to take the place.”

Yet another idiot – deputy attorney General Aaron Reitz from Biles’ home state of Texas – also weighed in, lauding Kerri Strug for continuing to compete in vault at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics “despite a severely injured ankle” (because her coach told her to), calling her a “great one” and contrasting her with “our selfish, childish, national embarrassment, Simone Biles.”

And who better to join this troika of clueless cat licking butt farters than Ben Shapiro, who wants to make sure no one applauds Simone (or Naomi Osaka, for that matter) for prioritizing their mental health over sport. According to Ben, it’s a gender thing: “We would never apply this standard to any male athlete of any kind. If Tom Brady threw two interceptions in the first half of the Super Bowl and said…I need my backup to take over, we’d all be like ‘wow that’s a choke.’” No, Ben, we’d say, “God, I fucking HATE Tom Brady!” Which is what normal people say whenever his name is mentioned. Shapiro went on to opine, “heroism is when you overcome the obstacle, not when the obstacle overcomes you.”

Never mind that Piers Morgan once stormed off the set of his own talk show because another presenter called him “diabolical.”

Never mind that Simone Biles has already brought great acclaim to the US by virtue of 30 Olympic and World Championship medals (most of them gold).

Never mind that that vault ended Kerri Strug’s career, and never mind that what men like Ben Shapiro don’t EVER understand is that GETTING HELP FOR MENTAL ILLNESS IS NOT A SIGN OF WEAKNESS.

What these Four Horseman of God, I’m a Pubic Hair on Your Cheesecake failed to address was the very real possibility that continuing to compete could have seriously injured Biles, who withdrew from competition not so she could get a manicure and eat Oreos by the pool, but ONLY after she began to experience the “twisties” – a term gymnasts use to describe what happens when, in midair, their body disconnects from their brain, and they are unable to control their movement. Catherine Burns described the “twisties” this way: “Suddenly, in the middle of driving on the freeway, right as you need to complete a tricky merge, you have totally lost your muscle memory of how to drive a car.” Laurie Hernandez, who was a also member of the 2016 Rio Gold Medal team, further explained, “the rhythm is off, and your brain will like, stutter step for half a second, and that’s enough to throw off the whole skill.”

Recognizing the danger she could encounter if she continued to compete, Biles chose to step down – which means that she didn’t fall on the beam on her HEAD, as Dominique Moceanu did in Atlanta in 1996. Biles’ decision came as a shock to her much younger and less-experienced teammates, all of whom looked to her for leadership, but they persevered. They understood – as the roughly 99.99% percent of us who aren’t elite gymnasts cannot – that Biles had every reason to stay in the competition if there had been any way she could have, and that she bowed out not because she wanted to, but because she knew it was the right thing to do.

Unless you’re like Aaron Reitz, who thinks she should have risked paralysis in order to represent her country.

Unless you’re like Piers Morgan, who likes to smell his ball sweat and thinks tending to one’s mental health – so it doesn’t get worse – is not something a “strong role model does.”

Unless you’re like Ben Shapiro, who thinks that being subjected to neglect and food uncertainty as an infant, being placed in the foster system as a young child, and having to accept that being serially molested as a necessary part of doing the thing she loved more than anything else is not “an obstacle.”

It’s probably worth mentioning that Simone had enough humility to understand that there might possibly be other members of her team who might possibly be stronger competitors that day…or that she was gracious enough to allow them the opportunity to shine while cheering them on the entire time, keeping them loose, and letting them know that, contrary to what many have said, Team USA was a force to be reckoned with even without Simone Biles on the floor.

It’s even more worth mentioning that the kind of woman Piers and Aaron and Charlie and Ben appear to value is one who does whatever she’s told, blindly obeys a domineering male coach despite agonizing pain, always puts her own needs last, and never considers if she’s really okay until she’s downed a bottle of pills or put her kids in a car and rolled them into a lake. That’s certainly the kind of women I want to raise – ones with no voice, no agency, no insight, and no sense of self-determination.

We’ve just come out of (or maybe are going back into) a pandemic that has ravaged the mental health of so many, and if there has been anything positive about COVID, it’s maybe that more Americans are seeking help for their mental health challenges – which benefits everyone. More and more people – including those with penises – have come to see that, as Michael Phelps has famously said, “it’s okay to not be okay,” and that it’s even more okay to seek treatment when the world seems too hard to navigate.

Simone Biles is a hero, and not because of the hardware on her shelves or the money she’s made. She’s a hero because, at a moment when the whole world was watching, she said, “I need help.”

Simone Biles owes us nothing, but at what must have been an excruciating moment for her, she gave us something far more valuable and lasting than a Team gold medal: She showed us it’s okay to ask for help.

It is. And I know four pus suckers who really, really need it.

When I think of all the things I didn’t let Caitlin Mary do when she was younger…no Spice Girls or Britney Spears (overt sexualization/objectification of women) or Rugrats (because the kids were such irredeemable brats) or Goosebumps books (because they were poorly written) or Pizza Hut Book rewards (because reading is a joy and you shouldn’t have to get an award in order to do it), and so many more…as a punishment, I once made her clean the oven, and then there was the list of “how you’re supposed to behave in church” that I made her write (when she was 6).

She’s now an hysterically funny, brilliant, accomplished young woman who has friends from childhood who continue to adore her and a husband and daughter who think she’s the best. She is decent and kind and lovely and my role model for that trait I have always been so aware that I lack: Gentleness.

In spite of the rules her shit-butt mother came up with, she’s everything I hoped she would ever be, and more. When she was born, I recall thinking someone must have given me the wrong baby – there was no was I could have produced something so transportingly beautiful and perfect. For many, many years, I felt unworthy of her, that’s how in awe I was of this spectacularly splendid little person she was. Damaged, rough-edged, clinging to the ledge by my fingertips people like me did not create such exquisite goods. Thank you, Jesus, that her father wasn’t a Transylvanian lunatic like me.

Being Caitlin’s mom has always been the hardest – not because she was the hardest, or because she was hard to love, but because she was the first, and even at 30, she is still the first, and I’m still learning how to be her mom. If her sisters have had a more relaxed, level-headed parent in me, they have Caitlin to thank, and as magnificently as she has turned out, there are so many, many things I wish I had done differently. It’s like they say about making pancakes…you mess up the first couple, and then you figure it out. Is it any wonder Caitlin prefers French Toast?

I wish I hadn’t called the dean of housing to insist a change of room for her when she was a senior. I wish I’d let her have the stupid Pizza Hut pizzas. I wish I hadn’t made religion such a big part of her early years. I wish I had limited my “you’re in trouble, and here’s how it’s going to impact you 20 years from now” lectures to 45 seconds (or just skipped them entirely).

I wish I had understood how sick she was her senior year of college, or that I had spent a few days before graduation helping her pack up her room. I wish I had let her play the saxophone instead of the flute, when she asked, and I wish I had noticed how thin she had gotten during her gap year. I wish I had said to her, when she said she wanted to go to med school, “are you crazy? That’s Steph’s dream, not yours. You want something else.” I wish I had made her and Meg MHart take that cross-country trip in 2014. I wish I hadn’t laid so much responsibility for her younger sisters on her at such an early age.

Mostly, I wish I had just listened a whole lot more than I talked.

Caitlin is now raising her own little girl – beloved Mimi – and I am in awe of the patience and joy and softness she shows, and mostly – oh, how I wish I could go back and do this for Cait – how she lets Mimi just be who she is.

I love that she regularly allows Mimi to paint. With paint. In. The. House. I think I let the kids do that a total of twice in 30 years.

I love that Mimi is allowed to wear her snow boots to the park in May, with shorts, if she wants. I love that Caitlin tells Mimi to use “kind hands” when she is petting the family cat and allows her to play in the sink for as long as she wants…man, do I wish I’d thought of that. She’s really just a great mom.

My oldest is about the best friend I have. During a very difficult week, I called to share with her how donkey-dick-sucking the last few days had been, and just having that calming, gentle voice on the other end of the phone centered me and helped me recalibrate. She is a gift, an example, a most grounding and graceful voice to my storms and doubts and fears.

I love you so much, Caitlin. Pizza on Wednesday?

Love, Mama
xoxo
❤️

Took a lovely walk at the Parkway this morning with the pups…beautiful breezes, many others frolicking dogs. It was a nice chance to enjoy our lovely Valley, chat with my guy, say hello to other walkers, and feel grateful to be alive.

A lot of people enjoy this little gem, for walking, running, fishing, picnicking, and biking. I’m a slow walker and keep to my right. Almost always, bikers and faster walkers coming up behind me will call out “left!” Or something like it to warn me. I appreciate it, because I have very poor spacial reasoning and this helps me not get mown over by a mountain bike.

Today, as M and I were finishing our walk, we were musing about the difficulties this year has presented, most notably with respect to my mom’s dementia and my sister’s refusal to let me see her for 7 months – and her allegations that I starved her, medically neglected her, stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from her, and kept her in a state of squalor. It has been a very trying time. Walks like this morning’s have been one thing that has helped keep me sane.

At that moment, our son-in-law, Kyle Svecz, called to say he’d found an injured cat and wanted to take it to a shelter. He was calling to see if we had a cat carrier.

Just then, a guy comes tearing up around us like he’s running the 800 meters in Tokyo, and he shouts, really aggressively, “there are other people on this path!”

I guess M and I and our admittedly large dogs walking four abreast were too great a barrier for this asshole to surmount (though he did). Don’t know why he didn’t call out “left!”

“What a dick,” I said to Michael. I mean, the entire world is dealing with COVID Month 18, people are out of work, and there are a lot of people out there with bigger problems than TWO VERY NICE PEOPLE AND THEIR EXCESSIVELY FRIENDLY AND FURRY DOGGOS IN THE MIDDLE OF THE PATH AT THE PARKWAY!

I mean, the sun is shining. It’s 72 degrees. He’s healthy enough to be running faster than me towards a pizza, or away from an elliptical machine, and his running gear looks pretty high end, so he’s probably got a job, food in the cupboard, a roof over his head, and running water.

So I said to myself, maybe HE has a mother with dementia, or HE is involved in expensive, stressful litigation with a lunatic, like me, or maybe he’s having marital difficulties or he is experiencing a very nasty genital infection, unlike me, or maybe his parents were mean to him or he was bullied as a kid, and I tried to think of all the things it would take for ME to shout at two middle-aged people and their dogs, “there are other people on this path!”

And you never know what you would do in a situation that has never happened to you, so I can’t say I wouldn’t ever be that much of a dick. I hope I wouldn’t. But I don’t know.

What I do think, at least a little bit, is that what this guy actually meant was, “this is MY path, get out of the fucking way!”

I also think that even if I give him the total benefit of a doubt, he’s probably just an asshole who behaves this way all the time.

Michael, being Michael, shook it off, but it bothered me. How hard is it to say, “left!” Or, “coming through!” I do not have eyes on the back of my head, and if I’m ahead of you and you want me to move, then let me know you’re on your way.

I think this guy must be an angry, entitled dick who spends his life snapping his fingers and expecting people to jump. I’ll bet he didn’t notice that it was 72 and sunny, or how beautiful our dogs are.

And also, the nasty genital rash.

I’m a litigator.

For the last 30 years or so, my professional life has been about helping clients whose disputes could not be handled out of court.

I’ve helped clients who haven’t been paid for the goods or services they provided.

I’ve helped clients whose neighbors have not been careful in their tree-trimming.

And I’ve helped a lot…a LOT…of clients who have been sued because other people think they’re responsible for causing them harm.

In my current position, I mostly defend clients who have insurance. Their insurance carriers retain me. Motor vehicle, slip and fall, with the occasional defamation or bar fight thrown in. These days, I get the call after the lawsuit has been filed, but there were days when clients came to me for counsel. They had a beef. The other side wasn’t budging. They wanted to sue.

I’m probably the worst attorney out there in that whenever I have been asked for legal advice – by paying clients or by family members who ask me what I think and then do precisely the opposite – I have, almost 100 percent of the time I’ve been asked, counseled those who have asked me, not to sue.

I tell people, your case isn’t strong.

I tell them, litigation will take 2-4 years of your life away from you.

You will fret and stew and be angry for much of that time.

You will hate your opponent more and more each day.

When all is said and done, you will likely hate your own attorney.

And even if you win, you will lose.

Because you will never, never, NEVER get what it is you want – an acknowledgment of responsibility – or an apology – or whatever it is you think you lost.

You can win millions – except you won’t, most likely – and even if you do, after fees and costs, it’ll be a whole lot less than those dollars you’ve been spending for the last 3 years.

Litigation benefits no one, except in very rare cases. And even when a plaintiff rings the bell…well, most would rather be where they were before the Defendant they are suing entered the picture.

Don’t sue. Don’t litigate.

My mantra. The way I stay sane, even as litigation pays my bills.

Right now, I find myself in the peculiar position of potentially becoming a litigant – not because I wanted to, and not because I’m looking for a windfall.

I’ve become – through woefully misplaced trust – embroiled in an ugly, desperate situation in which my integrity has been challenged and in which I have to consider where one should draw the line between (1) a shared history, blind love, and survivor guilt; and (2) emotional health, clarity, and the shelter of a loving family built day by day over 35 years BY ME with intention, grit, and a will strong as steel to make sure a healthy family came from me.

My father died from dementia-related ailments on October 16, 2016. He was a very flawed man, who gave my older brother and sister good reason not to want to be there for him during his final illness. On his last day, I sat with him, in his room at the memory care center to which we had entrusted him, and read to him while he slept. I had become very familiar with this facility – when my mother finally told me, during an urgent Friday morning phone call, that she just COULD NOT DO THIS, ANYMORE…I called the facility, my husband (the doctor) filled out the intake paperwork, and after attending an event that we had committed to 2 weeks earlier – and sending multiple emails to my siblings to tell them of my mother’s decision and requesting their input – my husband and I found a 24/7 Target where we bought sheets, towels, blankets, and a comforter, which I then washed at home as I assembled photograph montages of the people he loved best.

Later that morning, I drove to my parents’ home, lied to my father and told him I was taking him for lunch, and then watched as he gazed, with the excitement of a child, out the window, as scenes that were once familiar passed him by.

At the facility, my husband and my mother signed the paperwork. I was given the task of taking my dad into the facility where we were having “lunch,” He eagerly dug into the meatloaf and mashed potatoes while I gulped back my anxiety and tried to make things seem normal.

Eventually, it was time to show him to his room. I took him back, asked him if he wanted to nap, and sat with him as he tried to figure out what was going on. Eventually, he told me he was ready to go home.

“This is your home now,” I said.

“I want to go home,” he insisted.

My sister had told my mother she should write a card to my father, to give him at the time we left him there. I didn’t agree. My mother and sister overruled me. I handed him the card.

And I sat there and watched my Dad sob as he read the words that told him he was never going home. I finally kissed him goodbye,

I visited him every day for the next 10 weeks. After a few weeks, my mother – so relieved to be done with the work of caring for him, for sixty years – could barely stand to spend 15 minutes with him. I didn’t blame her. But I showed up.

Every night.

Every night.

And then he died, and I was the one who sat with his body until it was taken away, and I who made the phone calls. My sister and brother ….they showed up for the funeral and accepted the attention and kind words of friends and family.

I cried, because every time I visited my father, he asked about everyone except me.

Then I took my mom into my home, with excitement and joy. Neither my brother nor sister ever considered what should be done after my Dad died. They were happy to let me take on my mom.

I did. My husband did. My children did. For three years, our Little Mommy lived with us, ate with us, traveled with us, prayed with us, watched television and enjoyed lovely summer evenings and became one of us. We loved her.

In 2020, she began to fail. I railed against it – who loses two parents to dementia? Me, it turns out. With my sister in North Carolina and my brother 2 hours away, it fell to me to upend my life to get an official diagnosis, take my mom to doctor’s appointments, assume responsibility for her medical and financial and legal affairs. I did my best.

My siblings were unsurprised, and unmoved, by my mother’s decline. They had long suspected that she, too, would succumb to dementia. I had not. I believed my Little Mommy would be there, serene and sanguine and neurologically intact, until the end.

When I heard the diagnosis, I was devastated. I cried. I was furious. I was furious at my beloved Little Mommy. I could not begin to compute how this could happen.

I vowed she would stay with us, in our home, forever.

But that didn’t happen, because taking care of a parent with dementia is really, really hard – especially when you have a disabled adult child, a child who is attending college at home virtually because of COVID, and you are a busy litigation attorney, and your husband is a primary care physician – dealing with COVID.

I did my best. Eventually – and against my better wishes – I allowed my mom to move in with my sister – who is single, with a dog, no children, no job – into her new house that I arranged for my Mom to pay for – because I had no other alternative.

Three days later, my sister got mad at me for no apparent reason – a thing she does – and for the last 6 weeks, I have been denied access to my mom.

I agreed to turn over the POA to my sister. She hired an attorney anyway who immediately demanded I return things of my mother’s she had either promised to me or told me she didn’t want. I was also told I had to prepare a financial accounting based upon account documents I had already turned over to my sister.

She took my mother’s car. She took money for her house. She accused me of misappropriating my mother’s funds.

The sister-in-law she accused of immigrating to the US illegally became her best friend. The nephew she had labeled an “anchor baby” forgave her everything.

I am the bad guy, and I have not seen my mother in 6 weeks. I have no idea if she is healthy, if she is well, if she is happy. No one will tell me, and her attorney has told me I am not to contact her, even as she has sent me items in the mail which have been intrusive, upsetting, threatening, and violative of the very rules her own attorney set.

I’m so sad. I’m sadder than I have ever been in my life. It is hard to imagine that I will ever not be sad.

I could hire a shark – a ball buster of a lawyer – and I know plenty. I could unleash a maelstrom that would rain hell and fury – and I’d win – because I’d hire the best, and because I am the best.

But I won’t, because I’m a litigator, and I understand that the benefit of a pyrrhic victory inures only to the attorneys.

So there’s apparently a couple in Ohio – Myka and James Stauffer – that adopted a child from China in 2017. At the time, they were told that the child had some special needs but claim that the full extent of the little boy’s medical and intellectual concerns were never revealed to them. Although they were the parents of three kids already and were understandably daunted by the prospect of a special needs child, “God softened their hearts,” and they brought the one-year-old child home.

Turns out that Huxley, as he was named, was autistic and also had significant sensory integration issues. My daughter, Allie, does, too. Myka and James, who apparently are YouTube/Instagram influencers, had deals with a bunch of companies like Fabletics, Danimals, and Playtex, and I guess those contracts were pretty lucrative.

If all you knew about this family was what you saw on Myka’s Instagram account, you would assume that her kids never took their diapers off and smeared their poop on the walls, hit each other with fireplace shovels, or drew on a brand new sofa with a pink highlighter (all things my children have done). This is a Perfect Family. Their photos could be the ones they put in picture frames before you buy them. They could be the sample Christmas cards photos on the Shutterfly website. They’re THAT perfect.

Well, turns out things weren’t quite as perfect as they looked: Seems Myka and James “rehomed” Huxley because they thought it was better for everyone to do so.

You read that right.

After parenting this child for nearly three years, they gave him to another family. They did NOT put him in foster care, or go through any formal adoption process. They found another family, that family adopted Huxley, and at age 4, Huxley left the only home and family he likely remembers to live in a new home with new people and process with his non-neuro-typical brain what that means.

Now.

I have to say first, that many of the articles I have read seem to suggest that the decision to find new parents for Huxley was Myka’s alone, and the mother-bashing has been predictably loud. Let’s not forget that two parents adopted Huxley and two parents had to sign off on relinquishing him, so if you’re gonna bash Myka, make sure you bash James, too.

Second, as I said earlier, I have a child on the spectrum who had sensory integration issues (that she has, praise cupcakes, outgrown). She had a whole host of other concerns that made day-to-day life with her extraordinarily challenging for many, many years – for everyone in our family. So, I get it. Parenting a child on the spectrum is hard. Like, really, really, REALLY FUCKING HARD.

And one thing that can make it hard is that kids on the spectrum can be tough on their siblings, and don’t leave parents a lot of time for other kids. Which is why if you have three kids, and adopt a fourth, with special needs, who turns out to have a lot MORE needs than you thought, you maybe should work really, really, REALLY HARD not to get pregnant.

Which Myka and James apparently did not too long after Huxley came home.

I know.

Now, truth be told, if Myka and James could not give Huxley the attention, love, and specialized focus he needs, it’s probably a really good thing they gave him up. Kids with special needs deserve parents who are committed to doing all they can to maximize their well-being and potential. Since Myka seems more interested in coordinating her kids’ outfits and taking adorable photos of them doing Christmas crafts wearing Santa hats, I’m gonna say that doing home OT and speech exercises, behavior interventions, and food trials are probably not her thing.

So Huxley now has parents who will, it is to be hoped, focus exclusively on him and help him work on the things that challenge him. Myka and James can go back to being perfect – minus the big bucks from their many corporate sponsors, most of whom have dropped them in light of their sort of horrifying decision to return their rescue child to the shelter. One imagines the Stauffer Family will land on its feet – people like that always do.

But what of the Stauffer kids, who have now learned the lesson that if a person – a sibling, no less! – is not “normal,” or needs more time, or help, they should be disposed of. It’s Eugenics for the already born. What a tragedy for those children. How will this influence them in their relationships going forward? What will they do if one of their own children has special needs?

And while it probably is better the Huxley is with parents who want him and are willing and able to give him what he needs, what a gift the Stauffers have thrown away. Our Allie is about to turn 26, and while her early years were difficult, this young woman has been the single-greatest reason if I am a kind, empathic, and humble person. I feel sad, really, for families that don’t have an Allie, because their hearts will never grow as big as ours have.

My friends with special needs children know this. I think some people who don’t know it, too.

And Myka and James take really great family photos.

There are so many American traditions in which we can all participate on Memorial Day…parades, Taps at Arlington, flags on soldiers’ graves….to properly honor our war dead.

We can (responsibly) gather with family and friends for beginning-of-summer festivities after a difficult, quarantined spring to share fellowship, hamburgers and hotdogs, and gluten-free brownies (hey, Brittney O’Connor!) to reconnect with loved ones and remind ourselves that our personal relationships and devotion to family are some of the things that bind us together as a nation.

We can also hang effigies of elected officials (in this case, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear)…in the presence of very young children… while Lee Greenwood plays in the background…

Because – I guess – he was concerned that people might get sick or die from COVID.

Or because he hates democracy and just wants everyone to be miserable and is trying to destroy the economy so he doesn’t get re-elected, and “Kentucky” continues to be the punchline of pretty much any joke.

What a dick, that Andy Beshear. Why doesn’t someone just shoot him already?

I mean, the most American thing in the world is to lynch people. It’s so American. In an ideal world, when the rest of the world thinks of “America,” ideally, they automatically think, “Lynching!”

Like, if you don’t like someone’s politics, or color, or sexual orientation, just lynch them! Sort of like the Nike slogan, “Just do it!”

“Just Lynch Them!”

So catchy!

I just think that, rather than have any sort of civil discourse or consider whether the edicts of an administration are lawful, just, or compelling, or take a step back to ponder the impact of such directives on public health, I think we should all act independently and call for the public lynching of any person whose politics don’t mesh with mine.

Because that’s what our war dead fought for.

They fought so that whenever an American didn’t like something done by an elected official (that is, the person elected by the MAJORITY of the population), they could urge the assassination of that person.

(Even when those actions conformed to the recommendations of another Governmental agency…)

I am so proud to be an American if being an American means allowing this sort of behavior.

I am proud that my father’s mental health was sacrificed in combat in service to his country so that others could later get away with this kind of nonsense under the aegis of the First Amendment.

I am proud that on Memorial Day, so many Americans died to protect and defend this country, which includes people who think it’s okay to “lynch” public officials.

That’s the best of us. 244 years later, that’s the best of us.

Sometimes people are dicks, and you say, “Universe, am I a dick?”

Sometimes the Universe says, “yes,” with proper punctuation, and you know you’re screwed, and maybe you need to try harder.

Sometimes, the Universe sends a gentle breeze, a New York style Cheesecake, or a furry Canadian beastie your way, and you give yourself a little hug and send some good energy back out there to everyone.

It’s easy to get discouraged. Then your husband walks through the door and you aren’t anymore.

These are hard times.

People can be disappointing.

We forget that hurricanes and wildfires and pandemics don’t care about our best-laid plans.

All we can do is our best.

All we can be is our best.

To all people, in all circumstances.

Regardless of our faith, that is what we owe each other, even if we are different colors or don’t like each other’s politics.

Beyond the well-being of those I love, the only thing I pray for is to be worthy, and not a dick.

So you all know how I feel about the current president. I’m not going to go into it, except to say, right now, I’m tired, I’m scared, I don’t know when things are going to get better, and I’m worried about what life is going to be like once the immediate threat is over. Young, healthy people are dying from a virus we were told was no worse than a serious flu. It now turns out that, several weeks ago, we should have been observing protocols we were repeatedly told were unnecessary, and it appears that if the entire country had adopted social distancing and mask protocols a month ago, well…

Hindsight is 20/20. We will learn what we did wrong – those of us who respect science, anyway.

But this is unchartered territory, and while so many have shown unprecedented humanity, compassion, and heroism – AND THANK YOU – I don’t think I’m the only person who is white-knuckling it and really, really, REALLY wishing that the person in the Oval Office cared more about his people than himself.

Over the last several weeks, he has shown himself to be exclusively focused on what is good for Donald Trump, displaying the misogyny (“don’t be a cutie pie”) and contempt (“you are a terrible reporter”) we have come to know so well. He has had a million chances to comfort and unite his people. He has squandered every single one of them.

And some people who support Trump have even issued death threats against Anthony Fauci, M.D. because he has dared to speak science to Trump’s nonsense. Others continue to insist that his administration’s response was perfect, that he has done everything right, and that he is ever beyond reproach.

Over 7,000 Americans dead as of today. The first death was on February 29, 2020. That’s over 200 people every day since. It’s expected to get worse. Even if you believe Trump is perfection itself, and that every decision he has made has been the best possible alternative to contain and prevent further infection, the fact remains that over 275,000 Americans are sick, with many more surely to come.

And so, it might be nice for them, and for their families and loved ones, for their president to provide words of solace – even if it’s not his fault (some of it is), even if his response has been “perfect” (far from it), because that’s what leaders do. You know. To give comfort to those who are struggling. It’s called “empathy.” Doesn’t cost a dime.

It might be nice also for the caregivers on the frontline – the ones who are working endless shifts without proper PPE or sufficient equipment, the ones at risk for getting sick themselves, the ones who are self-quarantining in a basement or a garage to keep their families safe – for their president to issue a heartfelt, humble, “thank you.” It’s called “gratitude.” Also free of cost.

Haven’t seen either. Don’t expect to.

Donald Trump is a horrible, horrible human being. If you didn’t know it before, now you do.