Not hating, Just stating…

As most of you have probably heard already, Miss Bea Arthur of Golden Girls fame has passed away.

I took some time to reflect on “friendship”. And after the weekend I have had, I REALLY know what friends are supposed to be. I know some folks, I have some close acquaintances, but as Gabby said on Desperate Housewives last night, there are friends with a LITTLE “f” & there are Friends with a BIG “f”. The Golden Girls were Friends. Everything was out in the open. There was no mistaking the fact that they thought Rose was dim… ROSE knew that but she also knew that they loved her anyway. There was no mistaking that they thought Blanche was a slut… Blanche KNEW she was but she also knew that they loved her no matter what.

Being a friend isn’t about “smile smile smile, fun fun fun” ALL the time. It is about being able to sit down over cheesecake & keep it REAL with each other. It is about looking someone in the eyes and telling them how you feel. And not from a place of judgement, but from a place of TRUE concern. THAT is the most important thing that I learned from the Golden Girls. Learning to be honest with yourself is the most important part of being a friend. Being able to ask yourself, why does this bother/concern me about this person. Am I truly concerned? Am I disappointed? Am I frustrated? Am I jealous? It is imperative to know where you stand within yourself and not try to convince yourself otherwise. When one of the Girls had a problem with the other. They went to one other person for a reality check and then, if necessary went to the person. Once the issue was on the table, discussed & concluded. That was it.

How awesome would that be? Let me tell you, when you have a Friend… it is awesome! This weekend I was able to spend time with close acquaintances, friends & Friends and it put so much into perspective for me. It gave me a CHARGE to know that when it all comes down to it, what REALLY matters is being together on one accord with no secrets, no pretense, no nonsense… JUST FUN! there COULD have been division, there COULD have been disdain, there could have been all of those things… But, at the end of the day: WHO CARES?

Bea, thanks for teaching me how to be stern, straightforward, and dryly hilarious… but most of all thanks for teaching me how to be a Friend!

For those of you who do not know. There was a dust up @ the Berlin Zoo this weekend when a woman jumped into a polar bear enclosure at feeding time. Oh yes, feeding time.

The news report I read said they have no idea why the woman did this. OH, I DO! For lack of a more clinical term… she was crazy! I know that word is a no-no in the mental health field, but sometimes, without a proper record review and administering a battery of tests and an MSE… crazy just FITS! When I first heard of the crazy shenanigans, my mind went STRAIGHT to Katt Williams: (NSFW)

Then I watched video of the rescue… OH YES THERE IS VIDEO!

Scaled the FENCE did she? Trying to reach the world’s most famous poalr bear, Knut, was she? Got what she deserved? DID SHE EVER! My girl, K says she was ISO her 15 minutes of SHAME! And now she got it.  I am still befuddled by the idea that she was trying to get close to the “world’s most famous polar bear”. Ummmm, the Coca-Cola polar bears were real? Because that is who I think of when I think famous polar bears. But apprently that isn’t why Knut was famous… I read the wikipedia page & I STILL can’t figure it out. So I gave up on caring. Because at the end of the day, the polar bears did what polar bears do! And the biscuit headed lady got what she deserved. GO POLAR BEARS!!!

I attend a grad school that has what they call blended courses, partially online with a 3 day weekend in class. This weekend we had class and I was ready to put a face to the names I had seen online attached to some of the more “interesting” posts to our online classroom.

There was one particular classmate that some think may be a little learning disabled, or a sufferer of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome or maybe a crackbaby. Her posts are like word salad, and the lettuce was WILTED… I had taken to skipping them because they gave me a headache.

We get to class & I am sitting next to my “lil sis” and she informs me that the girl sitting in front of us on the end is the chef of the word salad online. She introduces herself & is supposed to be explaining what she wants to do with her degree… I have NO idea what she was saying… something about crime scenes and fire and a few I don’t knows. I was scared.

As the weekend progressed, I noticed that she had some pretty bad habits. Including, CONSTANTLY saying “whatsever”. I kept score, she said it 6 times. Yeah, I kept score. But I started to feel like a joke was being played on me because there is NO WAY, this girl was in grad school. The teacher asked if everyone read his bio & what they thought of it, she blurts out: “Your job seems boring, but I guess you find it interesting.” Where at do they do that?

Throughout the weekend, she gave various indications that she wasn’t all there. The teacher asked a question & in the middle of her answering, she says: “DAMN, I forgot!” Then commences toTOTALLY mispronounce the name of the author of the MAIN textbook we use. My entire row sat there in complete & utter disbelief. She then, decided to mispronounce the MAIN FOCUS of the class: COMPENSEE… leaving out an entire syllable. I turned to my girl T & wasked her what “compensee to stand trial” meant and, bless her heart if she didn’t try to explain COMPENTENCY to stand trial to me. Until I stopped her & said: I said COMPENSEE not COMPETENCY. We laughed & shook our heads.

The entire weekend, we waited with bated breath for her presentation because we were soooo sure that it would be entertaining, to say the least. The schedule for presentations was already given out so everyone knew when it was their turn… EXCEPT HER! We all sat looking at her and finally the teacher called her name & she exclaims: OH SHYT! AGAIN WADTDT? She announces to the class that she feels dumb because she didn’t understand the assignement. Which I found both easy AND hard to believe. Theselection of presentation topics was laid out in the syllabus at the beginning of class and the topic had tobe approved by the professor AND the subjects to be discussed in the presentation and the paper were outlined in the schedule for the weekend a week before we met. Yet, somehow, despite alllll of that, she managed to get it wrong. Hm!??! Immediately, my entire row began to text one another. She HAD to know we were doing it. But, then again she was oblivious to everything else. She said ax instead of ask, deaf instead of death, and made a very curious reference to 1994s as if it were SEVERAL years instead of one. At the end she kept using the word reassualts and it took me several minutes before I was able to figure out that she MIGHT have meant reasserts. The world may NEVER know.

I really want to see her transcripts. I sincerely hope that with all the hardwork I have put into my graduate school education and my AWESOME way with words that I have BETTER grades than she. Perhaps if she were simply socially inep, I wouldn’t have bothered even blogging about it. But because she seems to not only be inept, but also waaaay out of her league & over her head, I demand ANSWERS! What a travesty!

I’m not hating, I’m just stating.

I haven’t said THAT in a while…