A male coworker just emailed me to let me know I no longer needed to handle a particular task he had asked about. Being a fun-loving individual, I replied, "Party time!"
But. I originally typed "Panty time!"

And now I'm mentally playing out a horrifying Sliding Doors scenario about what happened next to the version of Helen who hit send before she could correct her typo, and thus declared 12:37 pm to be "Panty time" at the office.

Someone I knew 15 years ago died suddenly yesterday.

To call him a friend would be a mis-characterization of our relationship and would trivialize the many full, dear friendships he did have in the impressive life he lived.
I knew him best in freshman year of high school. We sat at the same table at lunch. And we argued. Every day, we agreed to disagree, and we exchanged words, and we rolled our eyes at each other, and we laughed. We called each other terrible names that we didn't mean. We called each other terrible names that we did mean. And we smiled and gesticulated wildly and we thoroughly enjoyed each other's company. "Fighting" with him was often the highlight of my day. We respected and reviled each other.

After our lunch schedule changed, we fell out of touch. I didn't know him at all after high school, except for what I learned from Facebook, which seems to be an accurate account:
He was in law enforcement, a parole officer.
He had a wife and three boys under the age of three, whom he loved dearly.
He loved God and shared this love with others.

He and I have been Facebook friends for years, but I don't think we ever interacted -- not one Like, not one comment. We were still on opposite ends of the political spectrum and I had to force myself to refrain from arguing with him on more than one occasion. His opinions, though always expressed intelligently and diplomatically, made me angry -- not playful high-school-lunch angry, but irrational Internet angry. So I didn't engage. We were not friends.
Still, I watched his Facebook life in awe. He had a beautiful family for which he was demonstrably grateful, and I loved seeing pictures of his sons. He had grown into a father, a husband, and a proud public servant. He was a good man, and to hear his friends tell it, he was a Godly man.

I don't fully comprehend the sadness I feel. I valued him, but I didn't really know him. I don't even know if I liked him. But he was a good man and a friend to many, and his death is just flat-out unfair.
He touched my life more than I was conscious of. His ripples were far reaching. All of ours are.
I am so profoundly sad for his wife and children. Having a child, I can't help but try to imagine what she's going through, and even just the imagining is insufferable. I am sorry. I am sorry. I am sorry.

...

He filled a page in my freshman yearbook -- an epic poem in Sharpie -- full of swears, obscene inside jokes, and confusing stick figure drawings. And then, upon hearing that my mom might see it, he scribbled out the obscenities and replaced them with kind words. He was thoughtful like that.

I find myself in the awkward and surprising position of being an apologist for The View.

I don't watch The View, but I have seen A LOT of hate and anger in my feed about what was said about Miss Colorado on Monday's show.
I have watched both relevant videos, and these are my thoughts:

• I have no doubt that Miss Colorado is an amazing nurse, and -- her profession being her primary talent -- I love that she wanted to showcase that for America.
• Wearing scrubs on stage and reciting a story about a guy saying she was a great nurse is not a demonstration of her talents as a nurse. To me, it is akin to wearing a robe for the swimsuit competition and saying, "Every time I wear a bathing suit, people tell me I look way hot." That said, it was a bold move, and I thought it was pretty cool. It was also unusual and surprising.
• It is the job of the ladies at The View to talk about -- and make fun of -- things that are unusual and surprising.
• When you are speaking off the cuff, you sometimes use words you wouldn't have chosen had you had time to think it over. Those of us not on TV enjoy the privilege of not being subjected to hundreds of angry "open letters" and occasional death threats every time we misspeak.
• You can poke fun at something an individual does without making a statement about the group to which that individual belongs. You can think Miss Colorado's monologue about nursing was weird or silly or ridiculous, and it doesn't mean you think all nurses -- or all beauty pageant contestants, or all Coloradans, or all women -- are weird or silly or ridiculous.
• Nurses are awesome. Only an asshole would intentionally be disrespectful of nurses and their profession.

Anyway, the guy from The League pretended he was a 9/11 survivor. So I think we can move on from this.

In the past few weeks, I've seen a bit here and there and everywhere about how people just need to stop being offended, how we're building mountain ranges from various molehills, and how we all just need to chill the fuck out and think about something else.

On my commute this morning, I found myself behind someone whose views differ from mine. This happens constantly (we're all unique snowflakes, after all, and, living where I do, I occasionally find myself a bluish snowflake in a sort of reddish snowbank [metaphors!]). It's fine/dandy, and I'm seldom aware of it. This particular fellow, however, was thoughtful enough to print his beliefs out in 72 pt. font, laminate them, and tape them to the gate of his pickup truck. These are the words he chose to represent himself to other motorists:
"AIDS * Ebola * Obama - Thanks a lot Africa!"
and
"Have you ever noticed how women using food stamps always seem to be pregnant?"

We are blessed to live in a country where freedom of speech is protected. I'm into it. Go USA. Go first amendment.
You are allowed to hate and/or fear black people, women, the poor -- whoever you like -- and you are allowed tell us all about it.
And -- here's the thing -- we are allowed to react to it. You are entitled to share your views, and I am entitled to weep, or dry-heave, or think you an asshole, or write an overlong Facebook treatise in response to those views, if that's what my body wants me to do.

Never feel bad for being offended by something that truly disgusts or threatens you.

In high school I proclaimed that I wasn't easily offended. More accurately, I just watched The Rocky Horror Picture Show a lot. And I let myself believe that people like the Staunch Racist and the Casual Sexist were relics, or at most, harmless caricatures with no influence. I was proud of the notion that I was so open-minded and unflappable. And I was wrong, as past versions of ourselves often are.

Spewing intolerance and ignorance, or -- to another point -- flying a flag that makes a large portion of the population feel uneasy or unwelcome (regardless of the flag-flyer's intent) is protected speech. And being offended is just as protected. It's wonderful.

Hate is offensive. Be offended. You owe it to yourself -- and to America -- to say what you feel and to feel your feelings thoroughly. Speech is power, and you can use it to shift the energy. Or, at the very least, you can use it to passive-aggressively shame a guy in a Ford pick-up whom you'll never see again, and who will never know how you feel.
I probably should have just flipped him off.
But I was afraid of offending him.
There's still a lot of work to do.