IN AGREEMENT

Oh boy is this a fantasy or what? The only time you really have people agreeing on something is when it is to get together to beat up on somebody else. So, hate produces loyalty, but it is tenuous and unpredictable at best.

I know that seems very negative, but I just think by nature most of us want to be in control. And depending on others requires trust, which is a form of surrendering control. So instead we give lip service to the idea and smile, but inside we are filled with doubts and thoughts of how are we going to spare ourselves from any risk this person will stab us in the back.

Still, we love to make the show don't we? To demonstrate how trusting we are even if we really aren't. It all looks and sounds wonderful no matter how much it is crap.

Anyway, I had to laugh the other day. I was over at the mall doing a little poking around. That is my term for checking out the action in hopes that a small city Mayor who is bored might get lucky and find some equally bored housewife. No sale this time I'm afraid.

I did run into this woman I knew though. Not someone I would care to take home in a shopping bag unfortunately. Oh she is attractive enough and probably a pretty good sale, but she's a control freak. One of those types who knows everything and wants to constantly tell you what to do.

So naturally whenever I see her she wants to tell me how things could be done better in the city if I took her advice. I never do. Oh I pretend to agree, but that is just to shut her up.

I don't know, but when you are talking about a person who is recovering from an addiction to pain killers and working on her third marriage to a guy who spends most of his time working so he doesn't have to come home it doesn't impress. Plus her kids won't ever talk to her any longer, which she claims is because they are too lacking in will power and hate having her tell them so.

I just have a hard time seeing her as a good source for advice since it is obvious she's not exactly that functional herself. But what is really sad is that she thinks she is the opposite. To me that is a tragedy.

Personally, I know I barely function at times. And most of the people I deal with are in serious need of therapy, which probably wouldn't help anyway since I think they do love their dementia.

So I just smile and we do the agreement thing. I agree to not ask too many questions and they agree to not share too much information that will depress or tell me just how demented they really.

It has been said silence is golden. Sometimes it is shear survival, providing you don't talk about it for the sake of agreement.