When I send e-mail, I'm all about the PS. A lot of times, this is different, because I'm looking for my Op-ed close-up in a way that probably only happens in movies anyway, but I think Ta-Nehisi Coates used to blog a lot.
I do feel for the kids who missed so much during the heat of the pandemic. I do wish, that when I missed things during my own youth(and I probably had hundreds of thousands of compatriots...if you're reading this, and you think this fits you, the world owes us all a hell of a good time and a moment in the spotlight during which the phrase "it really makes you think," is never used once.) that the response could have been more compassionate and less full of thoughts like:
"What did you expect?"
"You have to understand..."
"Be realistic..."
"People get uncomfortable..." or, for a multi-generational occasion "They're from a different era," accompanied by much helpless shrugging.(Maybe we could normalize apologizing when our Forebears should be impolite? Realizing of course that life isn't a Norman Lear show and that the person themselves will not appreciate a confrontation--that man really did skew my expectations, sometimes. But sometimes "I'm sorry. I love her and I love you, But sometimes she doesn't get it." might have been good.
Not only did none of this bullshit help when everybody "hung out without me", trying to live it out and extend this harshness-disguised-as-wisdom to other people has made a callus on my soul hurt. It makes it hard to be good to people when realism is the same as eating a shit sandwich.
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