Christmas Eve with a Repug Mother who is OUTRAGED that

[Gloria]

in California, some schools are adapting "The Little Engine that Could" to a girl's perspective rather than a boy's. Yes, my mother is scandalized that an engine could be a girl. She is blaming the '60's and horrible people like me for this. She has invoked the name "Kerry."

My mother is totally brain dead. Ok, she's 82, but that's no excuse. She goes off on everything that doesn't fall in line with whatever the hell world she is in. Oh, I forgot, it's Chimpy's world.

Oy. Please, help me.

Can you feel the love? Why are these people so THREATENED????? They are positively full of hate. Awful to dislike your own mother....

[spotbird]

1. My father-in-law can barely speak to me.

It seems that once the people had spoken and had given * the mandate I was supposed to admit I was wrong. He doesn't get that he wouldn't have done anything of the sort.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

2. My mom passed at 80.

Towards the end, it was the same thing. Oh, she was not in love with The Chimp, but rants? You betcha.

Eh. Enjoy the good times with her while you can.

[wiggle-room]

16. ooops

[Malva Zebrina]

3. She is eighty two and you can't stand her?

what is the matter with you and all the others who hold their parents in contempt?

Your mother is a human being who knew you before you knew her.

She is now OLD.

And you hold her in contempt?

She was once a child, who shed tears and who did the best she could to survive her own condition.

She cried like you. Was sad as you are. She has lived a life and survived to the age of eighty two, and has an enormous amount of experience and wisdom beneath her belt.

How dare you.

What has happened to people today.

This eighty two year old woman would best be served by telling her children to shove it.

[lolly]

5. Was she always like this?

Age doesn't make a saint out of anybody.

Is this a new thing--possibly the result of age-related dementia or a stroke? Or has she been impossible all her life?

If you're wrong, you're wrong, whether you're 82 or 18.

How much "wisdom" does someone who thinks the world is coming to an end if we incorporate girls into school books have?

If AWOL lives to be 82, will all his crimes and evil ideas be OK, then?

[NightTrain]

8. Get down off your high horse, for chrissake!

Some parents deserve their kids' contempt. Simple as that.

[CatWoman]

9. oh, grow the fuck up

[DS1]

35. Catwoman!

Where did you learn to talk to people like that? :spank:

:hi:

[qnr]

10. What has happened to people today, is that we have to deal with

people like her. Wise up.

[MercutioATC]

12. Where the hell did THAT come from?

Some people are hard to be around...age is now supposed to make a difference?

[NightTrain]

14. My guess is Hell.

By the way, I work as a driver for one of the only pharmacies left in my area that still delivers prescriptions. As such, a lot of my customers are elderly--and I mean people who are as old as 90+. Thankfully, my experiences with those people to date has been generally positive.

It is extremely rare that one of my customers goes off on me for any reason at all. In fact, many of them are lonely and sick and are usually glad to see me, if only for the few minutes I'm in their house.

So what's my point? That if a 90-year-old woman who is missing one leg, has lost all but a few of her teeth, is goddamned near blind, and needs a walker to get around her house can refrain from being petulant and mean, so can pretty much everybody, including the original poster's mother.

And as Joe South put it, "Before you abuse, criticize and accuse/Walk a mile in my shoes."

[Malva Zebrina]

18. too bad

and so sorry you lack compassion and understanding.

Maybe someday you all will when you get to be eighty two and have lived a life that none of you apparently are willing to review or take the time to put yourself in another's place.

And so sorry that you have such disregard for an eigty two year old woman and such a quick trigger to dispense so eagerly with her aged, out of touch, views.

I am so sorry that the aged are not understood and am tired of seeing them trashed here by people who apparently have not the slightest bit of the ability to understand or even to try.



Send this woman who has the nerve to have her own views, according to her own perceptions,over her lifetime of living, to a nursing home!

And be done with her!

She apparently is useless to anyone in these modern times.

[MercutioATC]

20. Don't be sorry about my level of "compassion and understanding"

I'm comfortable with it.


What disturbs me is attacks from people who have no involvement in the situation based solely on the age of the supposed "victim". My grandfather was a rotten bastard until the day he died. I don't feel his age gave him a pass.

I'll say it again. Some people are difficult.

There's nothing wrong with voicing frustration in a (supposedly) safe environment.

[Malva Zebrina]

22. Yes some people are difficult and so were their children when they

brought them up. Some children were VERY difficult, indeed and continue to be so in the eyes of those who live to an old age.

[MercutioATC]

25. True. That has nothing to do with the subject post, though.

[Malva Zebrina]

29. It has everything to do with self absorption and the diminishing of the

parent who seems to be the victim of demanding children, even though those children are grown adults.

[MercutioATC]

30. "Demanding children"???

I'm through hijacking this thread. We obviously see the situation very differently.

[Malva Zebrina]

32. Hijacking a thread?

Bye Bye--

I am not hijacking the thread. I am presenting an opposing view and will not give my consent to this apparent trashing of an elderly, eighty two year old person who has lived a life according to whatever times she was born into and according to what her experience has been over those years.

She may have some of the afflictions that affect the elderly--poor circulation, deterioration of the cognitive abilities, the eroding of the blood vessels or hardening of the same or simply getting old and has no energy but to cling to that which she knows is safe and has known and now it is out of sinc with the modern world, according to her children.

Send her to a nursing home--she is an annoyance and a thorn in the side .

[Kurovski]

21. It has nothing to do with age.

It has to do with being personally attacked by a person who is such a blazing asshole that they blame an entire era on you.

Love and respect are two-way streets. The kind of unquestioning "I'll eat-shit-to-show-my-respect" you speak of is non-existant in a healthy relationship.

That said, I would gently challenge your mother Gloria, let her know you love her, but that her attacks are hurtful.

Unless you no longer love her.

But after she's gone would be a bad time to realize that you actually do indeed love the old pain in the ass.

[wiggle-room]

19. I Agree, and To The Original Poster -

Older people see the world differently. The world has changed since their views hardened. The world changed on them, they didn't change on it. It will challenge us as well. Throw in the family dynamic and the religion dynamic and the government dynamic, American style, and you become what you become. Your mom is a victim.

If there's no malice on either side, why not go to her and say, "ok mom, Merry Christmas" and set it aside.

Family is something you can't buy or earn, and you'll only have one mother, and when she's gone, she's gone.

How that pov goes over here really shouldn' t matter.

[SharonAnn]

4. If it's dementia, these traits become more and more pronounced.

The "black and white" thinking becomes more prevalent, the inability to deal with change or anything new becomes more difficult.

I've had a couple of older friends go through this. One changed to this behavior, if he had had some thinking like that before, he kept it hidden for more than the 20 years I knew him first. Another had these tendencies but they became more and more pronounced as the disease advanced. And he was relentless in talking about it, over and over again.

[CatWoman]

11. Sharon Ann, is that your actual name?

cause my sister, right before me, is named Sharon Ann :hi:

[Laelth]

6. Hmm ...

The original little engine was female.

"Chug, chug, chug. Puff, puff, puff. Ding-dong, ding-dong. The little train rumbled over the tracks. She was a happy little train."

That's how the original book by Watty Piper opens. What have we here? Troll bait?



Move along. ;)

-Laelth


Edit:Laelth--messing with the HTML. What's the code for a cool quote box again? Please?

[MercutioATC]

13. A REALLY stealthy troll....10000+ posts stealthy...

:eyes:

[Kurovski]

23. I think Laeth was kidding

If the wink is any indication.

Gloria has been here a long time and we know what side her bread is buttered on.

[MercutioATC]

24. My apologies.

Too many "troll" warnings posted here lately.

My brain's a little addled.

[Laelth]

26. Sorry to raise the alarm.

:) No offense taken. And, certainly, no offense intended to Gloria, either, but I am curious about grandmom's outrage. I swear the little engine has always been a girl.

-Laelth

[MercutioATC]

28. I got the "boy" books when I was a kid...born in 1967.

I wonder when they changed it.

Thanks for your graciousness, by the way. My fuse was apparently a little short.

:)

[antigone382]

7. I thought "The Little Engine that Could" WAS a girl.

In the book, in the movie, she's always been a girl.

Wierd. :shrug:

Ah well. Some day I'll be going through the same thing with some of my relatives (luckily not my mom; she knew repugs were evil by the time she was nine, when Nixon was president).

[yardwork]

34. I just checked my reprint of the original, copyright 1930, engine is "she"

"She was a happy little train."

Anyone who thinks that the book has been updated to be a girl, well, the joke is on them! Sounds like something O'Reilly or Rush would be ranting about. Get a clue, dudes. The engine has always been a girl. How embarrassing for them.

[Gloria]

15. I have no idea WHAT sex the damned train was/is...I'm just

reporting what my mother claimed to have picked up. She only listens to RW media, who know where she got it, but she was pissed over it!

I, personally, don't remember if it was a boy or girl....last time I heard the story was about 45 years ago....

As for the person who thinks I'm disdainful of my mother...well, it is very possible to dislike a certain aspect of a person, even if it is your mother!! She is old, and I let a lot pass...but she is positively vicious if you disagree with her. She has always been a dominating person and I think she's just getting moreso. Obviously at 82 you've got fears and are more rigid....but not everyone is like this. I think this is an extension of her personality and her doctors don't see anything wrong with her faculties. So, mother or no mother, putting up with demanding, nasty, and insulting attacks just because I don't worship at the Chimp shrine does not make me a bad person!!

And I have to say...this is the first time I've ever been called a TROLL! I guess the people at Buzzflash haven't found out yet....LOL

[NightTrain]

17. Call me unimaginative, but I always thought trains were gender-neutral.

Christ, the things right-wingers find to complain about...!

[Agnomen]

27. Been there, done that

listened to my 80-yr old mother's unequivocal opinions on every issue, arguments firmly based in lunacy, imaginary slights, and the rest of it. Realization that her stances have absolutely no bearing on my reality was liberating. It takes two to argue, so my smiling and nodding kinda took wind out of her sails. She's gone now - and I miss her.

[AntiCoup2K4]

31. Uh.....it's a fucking TRAIN and they want to obsess about its "gender"??

What corner of Hell do these morons come from?

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

33. Ya, at least she didn't waste her life or anything. Worrying about stuff

like this, that is. Heh. :o

[Raster]

36. these people are so threatened because they are whipped into...

...a constant "hate frenzy" by their talking heads. People are always potentially the most manipulatable by their hates and fears, and it's all about manipulating the herd to run, jump, vote or kill the way you want. And to get rational, decent people to vote for someone like bush*, you've really got to hit 'em hard with hate and fear. You've got to make them think they're threatened and make them put their conscience on hold. If you cross your fingers behind your back then sometimes the end does justify the means. You constantly reinforce that you're the good guy and sometimes good guys do questionable things..."gotta break a few eggs to make an omelet..."

Once they are adequately threatened and you've got them frothing at the mouth angry, you give them something to focus their hate on; gays, minorities, foreigners, brussel sprouts. Doesn't matter. Having something to hate is important. Then once you have the whole cycle started, you guard against any rational thought creeping in and ruining the hate and fear effect. You have to keep introducing and/or manufacturing divisive elements. You vigorously censor any information that contradicts your message. And remember, it's always US AGAINST THEM.

[ThoughtCriminal]

37. When Railroaders invoke gender for a locomotive

I think they generally use the female pronoun. ie: "She's a great locomotive".

[KittyWampus]

38. Trains Aren't Animate Objects, They Have No Sex & Can't Reproduce

however, if trains WERE animate objects they would most likely be females as they carry people inside them just as a woman carries a child in her womb.

[ThoughtCriminal]

39. AH HA - I have an ORIGINAL 1930 Copy

The Little Engine was FEMALE!

"The little train rumbled over the tracks. She was a happy little train for she had such a jolly load to carry."

From "The Little Engine That Could" by "Watty Piper", copyright MCMXXX by Platt & Munk Co. Inc.

[CBHagman]

40. I feel for you.

I've given up trying to change the mind of and eighty-something relative who says things I consider incorrect or downright incoherent. In some cases, the person isn't particularly lucid. In general, though, such people are a tad set in their ways. I don't know what kind of cataclysmic event it would take to change the person's perspective.

The most I would try is gently joking about it, and not in a personal way. You know, the "You say to-may-to, and I say to-mah-to" sort of thing.

Good luck!