On a Failing Filter

Getting on in years can make a gal pretty crotchety. You find, like Maxine, that there are lots of things that ran around in your brain for years and got trapped in your mouth filter. Now they are falling out, willy-nilly, often without invitation or provocation.

There is no medical process to replace a worn out mouth filter. Eventually, those things you didn’t say for a half century will come tumbling out. The real ‘you’ that few people know is exposed. The worst of it is that the thoughts that festered unspoken for fifty or sixty years, when finally spoken, can expose a lifelong hypocrisy. That’s what Granny’s Desk is for – to give mine a soft landing.

For much of my life, I tried to be trustworthy, loyal, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent. I trashed obedience some time ago. It was too constraining, with too little return. Reverence left the room, too. Irreverence is so much more fun. Courtesy is probably next up. The page about being nice just for the sake of being nice is fading from my playbook. Thrift is a no-brainer when you are competing with church mice for survival. Clean is optional unless somebody else is paying for the water.

I am counting on trustworthy, loyal, and brave to see me through to the end. They still fit well. Cheer may be the last to go. I like laughter. I plan to die laughing.

My mouth filter is failing, but I'm not upset in the least. I guess I am prepared for the fallout, because I’m not too bothered about letting it all out any more.

When I finally announced to the world, on social media no less, that I will exit the planet as a registered Democrat – that was part of my failing mouth filter process. It was the public admission of long-held private and unspoken opinions. I will not leave the planet as a hypocrite. There will be no untold tales, and few secrets to baffle visitors to my grave. No mysteries unrevealed, if I can help it.

I am a Democrat because I want historical government records to show, long after I am gone, that this year I openly stood in opposition to the majority of my newly elected government. And that I had the courage to stand by my beliefs in a public record and on a public platform.

Between 1773 and 1783, a host of my direct blood ancestors spoke up for their convictions. Most fought openly to separate the colonies from the King. Two were loyal to England; they left the colonies for Canada. Whichever their choice, it was public, and their names and faces were attached to their actions, and still live in public records. Their mouth filters didn’t filter their political choices. They had courage. I owe them no less than to show my own.

And while we are on the subject of courage. Although I acknowledge the historical significance of the Boston Tea Party, I have believed for at least sixty years that the perpetrators were cowards. Those men dressed up as Natives, Indians, to make their dubious tax point by destroying private property for which an innocent shipmaster was fully responsible. How brave was it to take that action and shift the blame to someone else, an entire population that didn’t give a rat’s ass if white man’s tea was taxed? If they had gone to the party without the costumes, and taken responsibility for their revolt, and repaid the shipmaster for his cargo, then that would have made it a courageous act. Don’t brag to me about your Tea Party ancestors. I call bullshit. None of mine were there, but I'd feel the same if they had been.

Whew! I’ve kept that one in for a long time. Dear Lord – for so many decades. I’ve so seldom called Bullshit!, even when I saw it, even when I smelled it, even when I was standing in it. [Although, I do remember a my colleague Tom Porter saying “Tell me how you really feel; don’t hold back.”]

My friend, the late and very dear Barry Kittler. Barry bought a new truck once- about 1999. A small Dodge. He wouldn’t pay for power windows or air. The first July after he bought it, he whined incessantly about the heat inside his truck, and the smell from his dog. All because he wouldn’t pay for air or power windows. When I had had enough of his whining – and my mouth filter failed and I said “Not my fault you don’t have air and can’t reach to put the windows down, so suffer, you cheap prick.” We laughed for years. People still remind me of that. Especially when we remember Barry.

Don’t ask me how I feel about privatizing American education. I might just tell you. And it won’t be pretty. Be aware that my obscenity filter is a little compromised, too.

If you're an Evangelical, don't proselytize to me. I will choose my own method of salvation. I may be unkind in rejecting yours. Don't risk it. It's my defective mouth filter, you know. 

Don’t test me if you can't bear to hear an old lady rant. My mouth filter is failing. I will probably tell it as I see it, and you likely won’t describe the response as ladylike in any way. If you can live with my handicap, the broken mouth filter, bring it on. I'd love to talk with you.

MRP