Why Are My Words So Egregious?

If you read my post about G3’s Eagle Court of Honor and it angered you, please answer my question because I am genuinely perplexed. Why did my commentary about the Committee Chair (amended to read ‘troop representative’) piss you off so badly, but you are unbothered by her false accusations toward G3 and her attempt to have him ousted as Senior Patrol Leader? Why are my words so egregious, but her actions are acceptable? I am not looking for an argument, just dialogue. Why is my reflection piece causing such an uproar, when so few of you rose to my son’s defense last year? How is it that my narrative regarding another adult stirred so much negativity, but her actions and accusations, aimed at a child, were shrugged off and left unchallenged—except by leaders who are no longer with the troop? Please explain this to me slowly and carefully. Don’t leave anything out. 

Yes, the troop representative does a great deal for the troop, and you all want to keep her involved, but how would your opinion change if it were your child she targeted? How would you feel if your child worked incredibly hard to achieve something and an adult wielding a great deal of power tried to take it away? Did my son deserve to win the SPL election? I think there is a great deal worth debating in that question. But in a democracy, the win doesn’t always go to the most worthy candidate. In a democracy, there are rules and you don’t get to remove someone from office simply because you don’t like them. Tell me again, why is it okay—in your opinion—for my son to have endured his reputation being tarnished, but you take offense to me calling out the person who did it?

What I think I’m most troubled about is that I’ve been writing for years, and most of you never even bothered to take a minute to read what I had to say. Even in the post that pissed you off, how many of you actually read the whole piece. If you had, you should have realized that my comments regarding the troop representative were minor compared to the entire narrative. The main idea of the post was to celebrate my son’s achievement while simultaneously grieving the fact that my father did not live long enough to participate. Did you get that part? Did you even bother to read to the end?

Three months ago my memoir about my dad’s death was published. I paid for an advertisement to run on the placemats used for the pancake breakfast last spring. I was excited about the release of my book and thought I’d take the opportunity to publicise it. I emailed  the advertisement to the troop representative, informing her that the advertisement I wanted to print was attached to the email. When she didn’t respond, I followed up to confirm that she got it. She said she did, but the day of the breakfast I discovered that she didn’t have it printed on the placemats as promised. Instead, she printed the cover of my book which she found on my email signature. At the time, I questioned her motives, but I was willing to believe that it might have been a mistake. But now, some of you want me to believe that the incident regarding the church scheduling was a mistake or a misunderstanding. Seriously, how many mistakes and misunderstandings can occur with one family before it’s acceptable to become suspicious?

If you had read the whole piece, you might have commented on my son’s speech, the one he wrote and read to honor and give thanks to the leaders who have supported him on his journey. You might have caught his apology to the one man he managed to annoy more than anyone else. You’d have seen him take ownership for his less than stellar behavior and demonstrate that while he might have had conflict with an adult, even at fifteen, he was man enough to recognize how valuable that adult had been in his life, how much he benefited by his steady presence.

If you read my essay in its entirety, you might even have asked about my brother and if his car got fixed—if he made it home with less strife than he had racing to New Jersey to be with his nephew at his Court of Honor. If you read the piece fully, you’d have understood that I was writing about the headaches that took place behind the scenes, because the debacle with the troop representative wasn’t the only thing that went wrong. You might have even commented on the fact that I acknowledged that in the end it didn’t matter what any of us dealt with that morning because “G3’s Court of Honor was a great success.” 

But here’s the thing—and you’d only know this if you are a loyal follower, if you read my work regularly, not just a handful of sentences because someone tipped you off that it would enrage you—this essay is part of a larger arc. Most of the essays written under the Empty Bench category are letters I’ve written to my dead dad. This essay was an exception because while the missing was very much present, I didn’t want it to overshadow the celebration. Dad has missed a great deal—nearly six years of my son’s life—and this is my way of communicating with him. I used to tell my father everything. I suppose I still do. So if a woman does something to hurt my son, to soil his reputation, you better believe it will be part of my narrative. I had a writing professor once who said, “If anyone ever complains about how you write their character, you should respond simply with, “I guess you should have behaved better.” If the troop representative had never made false accusations against my son, if she had never tried to have him removed from his position of leadership, I wouldn’t have had anything negative to say about her. Because if you were paying attention to the whole post, that’s the bit that galled me the most. Her accusations that remained unfounded and her lack of an apology.

Anyway, remember you entered my home. You clicked on my blog and stepped into my head, so please remember your manners while visiting. I didn’t solicit your attention. I didn’t force you to read my words. You came looking for me, but I welcome you, provided you are respectful. My website is a repository of my thoughts. Mine. When you cross the threshold into my world, remember what you see here is my experience, my opinion, my perspective. I never claimed otherwise. You don’t have to agree with me, I only ask that you take a moment to respond to my initial question: Why did my commentary about the Committee Chair piss you off so badly, but you are unbothered by her false accusations toward G3 and her attempt to have him ousted as Senior Patrol Leader? Why are my words so egregious, but her actions are acceptable?