It's a big bag of weird in there.

Kind, useful, truthful: three words I don’t always associate with my comments. My thought process tends to follow that of Lorelai Gilmore, “My brain is a wild jungle full of scary gibberish. I'm writing a letter, I can't write a letter, why can't I write a letter? I'm wearing a green dress, I wish I was wearing my blue dress, my blue dress is at the cleaners. The Germans wore gray, you wore blue, 'Casablanca' is such a good movie. Casablanca, the White House, Bush. Why don't I drive a hybrid car? I should really drive a hybrid car. I should really take my bicycle to work. Bicycle, unicycle, unitard. Hockey puck, rattlesnake, monkey, monkey, underpants” (Santa’s Secret Stuff) and what I say tends to follow suit. However, despite the occasionally questionable uselessness of my comments, what I find I struggle with most is kindness. 

  A lot of what I say doesn’t have the outward appearance of kindness. It also doesn’t help that I often find myself “swearing like a sailor, on leave” (Rory’s Birthday Parties). While I am at home, I strive for silly replacements to my usual curse words. The ones I use most often are ‘fudgsicles,’ ‘fudgemuffins,’ and ‘oh popsicles.’ They are all replacements for the same word, which I will refrain from stating at the present moment. Coming into today, I figured I would have the most trouble keeping my language G-rated or something close to it, and it wasn’t until after I had finished complaining about some ‘asshole who had called me at 8 in the morning’ that I realized today was the day for kind, useful, and truthful comments. While my rant was truthful and also useful--I seriously needed to get that off of my chest--it wasn’t the kindest moment. Nor was it kind when I said the man who called me must have been on Speed.  What I did find, though, that while I remembered to make kind, useful, and truthful comments, I actually felt restricted in what I was allowed to say. 

I don’t have the worst vocabulary you will ever find, but I say my fair share of less than stellar things. What I love doing most is ranting. Now, ranting for me happens when I get extremely passionate or upset or frustrated about something, and I can’t help but tell, and this is unfortunate for that person, whomever is in my most immediate vicinity. I would like to take this moment to apologize to you, in advance, if this ever happens to you. I can speak very rapidly and wind my thoughts in a cyclical manner though those circles eventually get to ellipses, then the continuity ends, and we throw in some hyperbolas that then leads to the 1/x functions and turns into exponential functions and before you know it, the other person is going, “Uh, baby, you lost me at carrots. Which, uh, by the way, was the first draft of 'you had me at hello'” (But I’m a Gilmore). Actually, my best friend is the only person I know who would say that to me, but in my ideal world, we would all quote Gilmore Girls. 

Luckily, a lot of what I say is Gilmore Girls, so much of the time, when I get a strange look from people that is akin to ‘was-that-a-foreign-language-not-yet-offered-by-rosetta-stone‘ crossed with ‘I-have-perfect-hearing-but-I-still-don’t-think-I-heard-you-properly‘, I am just able to say, “Gilmore Girls,” and that tends to end that conversation. 

However, and I hope this earns me Brownie Points, I do find I like to end my conversations on a positive note. After ranting about the phone call, I was mindful to add that that was the most consecutive sleep I had gotten in weeks for which I was very grateful. 

Practicing this self observation, noticing what I say, is extremely difficult, especially when I slip into old habits, i.e. ranting. I wish I had the awareness enough to make all of my comments kind, useful, and truthful, but as the society which we live in moves at a rapid pace, so do my thoughts and so do my words. Plus, I do find that the world needs some comic relief every once in a while. 

“What is this?”

“Strawberry ice cream.”

“It has strawberries in it.”

“I don’t even know how to respond to that.”

Note: All quotes are from the TV show Gilmore Girls.