Histrionic

I know I have you running for the dictionary now but I had to find the right word for this post. Histrionic, means overly dramatic. In an effort to try to stick to the one word theme of this Blog I had to do am little searching for this post!

I had lunch yesterday with the closes thing to a brother I have on this earth. I have known Red for 50 years. We grew up together have done things together we are proud of and some things, maybe more than we would like, that we are not so proud of. We have been through the deaths of our parents together and the birth of our children. I think you get the picture we are close.

I was feeling rather sorry for my plight and myself yesterday so I decided I would eat with Red and tell him all of my worries and see what he thought. We I opened the lunch with, what I thought to be, a sack full of problems. He listening intently as he always does and offered his view, which is always a different, prospective from mine and I found it to be helpful to me.

Then I asked the sixty four thousand dollar questions. “How are things in your world?” What followed was a five-day span our occurrences that if they had happened to me I would be going down I-55 on a pogo stick naked!!! His middle daughter is leaving her husband, and moving in with him and his angel of a wife. Then his brother gets kicked out of his house for some improper behavior and he moves in. Here is a good place to say his brother and his wife are vinegar and water not mixing them! Then his youngest daughter loses her job and tears up her jeep in the same day. And the end of this brief period he has picked up 2 more mouths to feed and 2 more cats bringing the total cat count to 12!!!

As I sat there listening to him my mind couldn’t help but wander off thinking what a dick I was. Here I was feeling sorry for myself being so over dramatic, hence the word histrionic, as to think the little bit of unrest in my life was worthy of all of this fretting I am doing and here is my best friend in the world literally going though circumstances that, if it were me, would have sidelined me. And he is working and plugging along as if nothing is really a matter. What a crybaby bitch I was becoming. I offered support and a comedian moment or two during his story and we parted both better for the lunch. Me, due to the fact he opened my eyes to how truly blessed I am. Him, for a quiet moment where we slipped back in time to a place where there was no kids, responsibilities and pressure and enjoyed just simply being together as best friends.

As I sit here and rethink the entire lunch I realize that basically we all are histrionic in some form. We all feel like our problems are greater than anyone else’s and woe is me. When really all it takes is a ride downtown, a trip into a hospital lobby, or numerous other places where we can find people with much heavier crosses to bare than our on. So in the end as always I find that I am truly a blessed man once again. Here my best friends taught me that there is always someone who is worst off than you and we should find the blessing wherever we can. Red even told me that as we were wrapping up. He said at least I have my familt together for the holidays. Damn what an attitude all of the pressure and stress and he is glad to have all of his family close. Turns out he is blessed as well.
Well I am going to try to live as if I understand there are people out there much worst off than myself and if I find one maybe reach out a hand an offer a little help.