Mincey’s Musings
Year Two, Week Nineteen

In one of my favorite episodes of Bonanza, Hoss Cartwright is in jail, having been arrested for stealing a horse of a murdered man suspected to have had lots of money. The townspeople keep asking Hoss what he did with the money. With increasing frustration, he tells them he knows nothing about any money. In one scene, the preacher asks Hoss if he can help him in any way. Hoss tells the preacher he can tell him why no one is listening to him. The preacher tells Hoss that if he wants people to listen to him he has to tell them what they want to hear. Hoss replies that he told them the truth, to which the preacher replies, “That’s the last thing most people want to hear.”

Take, for example, those who ask us on occasion, usually in a rush to get somewhere else, “How are you today?” Usually we say, “Fine, how are you?” The sad truth is that some of these times we are not really fine, and we don’t care how they are, either. Consider an encounter like this:

“Hi, how are things going?”
“Really lousy! Do you want to hear about it?”
“Sorry, I’m in a real hurry now.”
“How are things with you?”
“Oh, fine.”
“Good, because I didn’t want to have to listen to your problems, anyway!”

It might not be pretty, but at least it’s honest.

Many times honesty comes from the asking. It is only after we ask the question that the answer reveals that we really didn’t want to hear the truth after all. I had an aunt who took great pains to be honest at all times. The subject of drug use came up in conversation one day when I was a teenager. She asked me if I had ever taken drugs. I asked her what she thought, and she replied that she figured I probably had at some time or other. As one of my contemporaries says, “I was most offended!” Her opinion was not pretty, but at least it was honest.

Sometimes the truth is presented to us even without our asking for it. I remember once in a high school class I tried to strike up a conversation with the guy sitting behind me. He had the same last name as some of my relatives, and I asked him questions trying to find out if he was distantly related. He asked me, “Why don’t you turn around and shut up?” To my reply that I was only trying to be friendly, he let me know he could care less. Not pretty, but honest. I never spoke another word to this fellow, and I have to say that even today if I encountered him and knew who he was the ball would be in his court to start any kind of conversation with me.

My sister gave me a wrist watch for Christmas when I was seven. She asked me if I liked it, and I told her it was better than what she gave me the year before. Not pretty, but honest, and at the age of seven it was considered cute. It might be cute if a seven year old told me I was a nerd, but it was not nearly so cute when a child my mother babysat when he was in kindergarten told my niece who was in his high school class that I was the biggest nerd he had ever seen. Not pretty, but honest from his perspective. My perception and memory of the cute kindergartener was certainly tainted. I looked his picture up in the yearbook to make sure he was not as cute in living color as his ruddy cheeks in kindergarten portended. And, joke on him—he wasn’t!!!!! [Want to bet he looks worse today?]

It would possibly have been cute if my niece had told me when she was seven that I was the biggest nerd she had ever seen, but it certainly did not set well with me when she told me that in front of someone else in a church serving line when she was twenty. Wasn’t pretty, but at least it was honest from her perspective. [Let’s just say she didn’t get a Christmas present from me that year, or any year! Lets’ be honest, she wouldn’t have regardless.] I let my niece know that I was not only a nerd, I was the King of the Nerds!!!!! It would be wise to remember an adage I once heard, “Be nice to nerds. Someday you’ll be going to them for a job.”

And then there was the support staff worker in a school to which I was assigned who was supposedly an upstanding churchgoing individual. This fine Christian told me that I seemed like such a nice person—she couldn’t understand why everyone hated me. While she might have known some people who either did hate me or who she assumed hated me, I do know that at no point in my life has everyone who knew me hated me. Not pretty, but honest, at least from her perspective. I have always at all times been blessed with at least one, and often several, very good friends. I replied to her, “I just want you to know that for everyone who hates me I hate them ten times more than it is even possible for them to hate me. The only difference in me and them is that I don’t go around talking about it everywhere!” I wonder if she got the point? Perhaps, but we never had a similar conversation.

I wonder how many people remember the slights they deliver to others? Probably only those who are slighted bear the painful memories. Alternatively, to those of us who are slighted, are we ever guilty of the same thing? Possibly we have slighted others or hurt their feelings and never knew that we did so.

Google relates that the English saying “to err is human, to forgive divine” is from Alexander Pope’s “An Essay on Criticism.” Even the Lord’s model prayer states, “For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” (Matthew 6: 14-15 KJV) Forgiveness is difficult, but the consequences of pent up anger can be greater.

Yesterday was Memorial Day, a day when we remember those who have gone to their eternal destiny. In my next article, I will tell you about some of my cemetery visits.