Sanity, Civility and

“He said,”

“She said,”

I am sooooo weary of listening to this boring rhetoric.

The endless dialogue brings me back to my youth, but not in a pleasant way. Rather I am standing on the corner of Ninth Avenue listening to two elderly friends of my Aunt repeat a tiresome story about their neighbors.

“And do you know what? She said………………….”

“Then, can you believe, he said………………………”

I was probably about ten years old when I overheard those words, but the conversation seemed endless. Granted it was their only method of communication. There were few, if any, families in Hell’s Kitchen privileged to have telephones during those years and texting and emails were long in the future. Still it was repetitious even for a child listening to the tedious, tiresome, monotonous dialogue.’

My Aunt enjoyed the rants and perhaps even the accusations she was hearing. I suppose it was entertaining since we didn’t have TV either. Possibly it might be considered an earlier version of Housewives of NY, but I loathed listening. Since I was unable to walk away and continue our errands alone, I stood and listened and today remember a hot afternoon on a New York City street corner.

The difference is that today on a sunny patio in Southern California, I can walk away and stop listening to the name calling, and I have and I will continue to do so.

Frankly I could care less what Mika/Joe say or think, and I truly wish our President would eliminate Twitter from his diet. It is time he realized trivial childish street fights are not what the country needs or wants on this Independence Day.

Instead we want a commitment from the government to fix what is broken, concentrate on the security of our country and dedicate itself to the job everyone in Washington was elected to accomplish.

Beyond that we expect valid news from the media and wish they remembered they are or should be primarily journalists not fishmongers waiting to repeat gossip, opinion or personal innuendo.

Of course, this is Utopia I am asking for rather than the reality of life in July, 2017. However, since I do remain an optimist, I dare to hope that sometime in the near future, sanity, a sense of decorum and perhaps civility might emerge again.

I truly miss it.