Pizza Serenade...

Glad to be back in this most beautiful place...

Played Zola's on the Harbor Boardwalk...the seagulls really seemed to enjoy it, although the Pelicans were a rough crowd. I don't even want to discuss the seals..

4 out of 5 Proctologists Agree....

Think of the two people in your life who you believe love you in the purest, simplest, most uncomplicated way possible. Just love you...without expectation, and because of who you are. These people are big fans, and smile inside when something good happens to you. They feel pain when you are hurting. They feel defensive when someone threatens you. It just goes without saying that they can trust you.

But, what would it suggest if those very same two people ended up so betrayed and wounded by you that they didn't even want you in their life anymore?

What if common descriptions of you to others included warnings about your character, trustworthiness, or emotional interactions? What if anyone looking at your past would find a trail of broken relationships, hurt feelings, anger, and people who did not think very highly of you? Wounded friends, betrayed lovers, family resentments and skepticism, no one willing to trust anything you say?

It would have taken an awful lot to damage the basic love I felt. Even in a different role in life, my caring would have remained...enduring mistakes, finding forgiveness, emerging in a new way. It would take somehow coming to the conclusion that the person was not who I thought they were at all...and in fact, was a person I needed to protect myself from...one of those basically "bad" people who make habits of using others, and are emotionally kind of cold...accept no real responsibility for wreckage around them...can flip in an instant...and would stab even the people who love them most right in the back...

I can't say I wasn't warned.

Ouch.

Painful yes. A gift to have finally realized what I stubbornly refused to even listen to before, and became hostile with those suggesting what I now see as true...it is....

4 out 5 proctologists agree. Do not bend over in the presence of those type of people.