I CARE, JEFF ADAIR!

“Into thy hand I commit my spirit:  thou hast redeemed me, O Lord God of truth.” (Psalm 31:5)

I enjoyed Jeff Adair’s column in yesterday’s (Sunday, Jan. 6, ‘08) MetroWest Daily News.  It’s on page H3 and is entitled, “It pays to keep cool”.  The column was all about a big guy who was essentially a bully and a jerk to Jeff as he was just trying to remove snow from his property.

That column blessed me for a number of reasons.

Probably the biggest is I can just hear all the people out there who would say, “What kind of a column is that?!  Who cares if some guy was a jerk to him as he was removing snow?!  Who cares how he felt?!  Who cares how he chose to deal with it and what a lesson that was for him and for readers?!”

I can relate, because I’ve been on the receiving end of those kind of comments by superficial, self-confident, conceited individuals more times than I can remember.  It’s happened a lot recently.  Over the past month, I put out a few of what I call “mass e-mailings” asking people to read pieces on my blog and to give me some feedback.  Virtually none of those who were “solicited” were strangers.  All were people who at one time or another I’ve had SOME contact with.  I’m of the belief that one of the greatest tools of the internet is the ability to relate and communicate with people, in a sense of community, where we all respect one another and help one another to grow.

Boy have I been naive!

I got one reply from a female attorney who wrote that she receives over 300 e-mails at a whack.  About my writings, she said, “You’re always complaining about the same things”. 

I am?

In the (almost) two years I’ve had the blog I don’t think I’ve ever twice complained about the same things.  And, if she meant the same kind of things, I’m not even sure THAT’S true. 

I wrote her back a sort of polite but terse e-mail saying that since she has so many more important things to deal with, I won’t send her any more e-mailings.  She responded with sort of a “well, don’t get upset” reply.  Well, I wasn’t furious or in a rage or anything like that, but as I wrote back in my final e-mail to her, if there’s an issue which I feel directly or indirectly should concern community leaders in Framingham, then I’m going to raise my voice (use my blog, whatever) to make an issue about it, and I don’t think Ineed to feel guilty about that.

More disappointing was the comment of a fellow minister when I asked him to read my blog.   He replied that he never reads blogs or mass e-mailings and has no desire to waste his time with such matters.  Yet, this man sends ME a regular e-mail newsletter and expects me to be vitally interested in his ministry, even to the point of financial support.  Do you think I had a good reason to feel hurt about his comments?  Well, whether it was a valid reason or not, I did feel kind of hurt and bewildered.

I listen to a lot of talk radio and I’ve listened to a lot of talk radio for a long time.
This will absolutely shock many of my friends and readers but if I ever had a talk radio show, it would most resemble that of radio talk show host Tom Leykis.  I can just hear those who know who that is incredulously yelling, “TOM LEYKIS??!!  TOM  LEYKIS??!!  YOU would be like Tom Leykis?!  How can that be?!”

Well, granted, Tom Leykis is an atheist, and I’m a committed born-again Christian.  Tom Leykis has a pretty foul mouth at times, and I don’t.  Tom Leykis is a political liberal and I’m a political conservative.  Tom Leykis was arrested for domestic violence when he was doing his show in Boston back in the early 1990s, and NO I’m not guilty of domestic violence!  What I always DID like about Tom Leykis is how REAL he is.  His show (on WRKO in the early 1990s. later nationally syndicated in the mid and late 1990s from the west coast) discussed “things YOU really care about”. One show was about how he feels like a jerk when he goes to Home Depot.  One was about a huge water leak on his property that the city of Los Angeles refused to do anything about.  One was about the bad treatment he got from a pizza shop.  One was about funny experiences people have had at funerals.  (I was an on-air caller for that particular show, and he loved my stories.)  Tom talked at times about his father who couldn’t handle credit cards and who was never treated right by his boss.  Tom even talked about a big emotional break he had with his dad at age 18 and the effects of that.  He also talked about his desire to never have children and how it caused him to be alienated from some friends who have a disabled child.  At times, Tom did programs entitled, “Ask the atheist” in which he defended atheism.  As you can guess, I didn’t care for those, but what I loved was his vulnerability, his openness, and his frankness.  He just talked about LIFE, and if you listened and thought about it, he usually had something to teach you in his own peculiar way.  So, if I was ever a radio talk show host, I’d be a kinder gentler Tom Leykis.

This posting may explain why I write some of the pieces that I do on this blog.  It may also explain why I SO appreciated Jeff Adair’s very “Tom Leykis-like” column. 

Yes, some of us like to spend hours debating the war in Iraq or global warming.  Others like to talk about what we learned from a confrontation with a bully in a snow-shoveling situation!

I care, Jeff Adair!