As I sit here and type this post for yet another What the Heck? Wednesday, I’m thinking that it’s a pretty damn good thing that I write a blog and don’t have a radio show or something like that.  It’s also a pretty damn good thing that I’m not lined up to do any sort of public speaking engagements in the next couple days.  (The offers keep rolling in and I just can’t seem to choose from them).  And it’s also a pretty damn good thing that yesterday was my little man’s 4th birthday and that he got all sorts of cool new Playmobil toys and is completely engrossed in them this morning and hasn’t really tried to engage in much conversation with me.

Somewhere around 4:00pm yesterday, I started to lose my voice.  I’m not sick, but I’m pretty sure that there is something in the air that I’m allergic to, because this is about the third time in six months that I’ve lost my voice.  As much as I love Connecticut, I really think that there is a definite possibility that I’m allergic to this state.  Did I mention that Bloggy Boot Camp is this weekend?  Yep, that’s right.  BLOGGY BOOT CAMP.  The place where I finally get to meet some of my blog buddies in real life and also meet a bunch of new bloggers, learn about how to make myself a superstar (there’s a session on that, right?), and network and get some blog questions answered.  Something tells me that this whole networking thing is going to be a bit tough if I can’t actually TALK to people.  What the heck?

I didn’t spend much time on the computer yesterday because it was my son’s birthday and I had all my attention focused on him and the Ghost Pirates and Skull Island Play-set that we were enjoying, but I still couldn’t resist having my I-phone in close proximity so that I could check emails from time to time, etc.  I recently figured out how to set up my comments so that they come straight into my email inbox.  I love reading them and responding to them throughout the day.  I was thrilled that I seemed to be getting such a great response from Monday’s post all about parents who let their children behave like animals in public.  I was so happy to find out that I’m not the only mother out there who expects her child to refrain from belittling and bullying other kids around them, even when her child is practically exploding with energy as a result of being cooped up in the house like a chicken all winter.

Apparently not everyone shares my “Do The Right Thing” attitude.  The chick who left comment number 40 certainly didn’t.  What the heck?

According to little miss “SuperNanny would absolutely shit a brick if she had to deal with MY kid”, as I will so fondly refer to her, “boys like to roughhouse and if someone else’s kid gets hurt or upset it is not her problem because that’s what boys do.” She also threw in a nice little jab at the end of her comment and told me that, “if my kid can’t hack it, keep him at home.”

Keep him at home if he can’t hack it, huh?  NEWS FLASH: He’s FOUR.  FOUR! He doesn’t even know what it MEANS to hack it, let alone actually be able to defend himself against a NINE year old who is a foot taller than him and outweighs him by forty pounds!  WHAT THE HECK???

Keeping in tradition with the lunatic that I become when someone really ticks me off, I immediately got on Facebook and Twitter to vent my frustrations about this comment. To be honest, I really only expected my closest friends and maybe a few bloggers to actually go back into my post and check out what this chick had to say.

What happened next was nothing short of awesome.  SO many people had my back!  I cannot say a big enough THANK YOU to all of the wonderful bloggers, in addition to friends from the non-blogger world who came to my defense and shared my sentiments in being pretty angry at this woman.  I’ve always known that I have some pretty great people behind me, but I have never felt as supported as I did yesterday when the comments and emails and Twitter and Facebook posts started rolling in one right after the other in response to this nut-job.  And you know what? That deserves a big HECK YEAH!

I was all set to go in and delete that nasty comment, but I changed my mind.  I’m keeping it.  And I’m keeping it because I think that bullying is a subject that should be taken seriously.  I know that kids will be kids, and if I’m not mistaken I even stated that in my post, but if there aren’t some limits placed on children’s behavior when they are little, then what kind of examples are we setting for them as they grow into young adults?  If they are taught that it is ok to push a younger, smaller, defenseless child to the ground just so that they can be the first one to go down the slide, then aren’t we pretty much giving them a get-out-of-jail free card and a perfectly good excuse for beating the crap out of another kid (or worse) in the locker room simply because he is smaller and “CAN’T HACK IT?”

I know that I may sound a little over-the-top here, but it’s because bullying is something that I worry about every day.  It seems to be getting worse and worse with each generation, and I truly fear for my son’s safety once he becomes a teenager.  I wonder how this woman would’ve felt if she’d been a parent who lost a child at Columbine High School.  I know that example is on the very extreme end of things, but if parents don’t take the responsibility to ingrain the Golden Rule into their children at an early age, then they are just setting them up for a potential disaster down the road. And since this woman obviously has no idea what the Golden Rule is since she felt it necessary to leave such an inappropriate comment on my blog, here’s a refresher:  “Do To Others What You Would Like To Be Done To You.”

In closing, I’d like to personally THANK this woman not only for reminding me what a wonderful support group I have, but also for making me even more passionate and even more confident about being a blogger.  She made that comment to upset me, and it did, but it also made me feel EMPOWERED.  It made me feel like I HAVE A VOICE. And people are listening…even though they can’t hear me right now!

HECK YEAH!

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