No sooner does the chill set in than things heat up again; it was downright balmy today. Such fickle weather (!), making me realize/remember it's not quite over yet. And the same applies to politics: things are heating up. I know I shouldn't touch the subject — and I won't; not in any real way — but it's astounding to hear (and consider) the words that are being bandied about. They're harmless enough, I guess; they're just words (right??). And isn't that we were always told and taught and what we sassed back time and again on the playground?? Sticks and stones may break my bones ... you know the rest.
But it's so untrue (!). In many cases, it seems (to me) that words hurt more than sticks and stones. And the hurt may be longer lasting, not to mention farther reaching. They may even hurt the speaker more than his or her subject/object — or not. Who knows??
I'm being vague, I realize, but politics is (are??) a touchy subject. At least some remain local, just as they're supposed to, just as we were always told. My favorite words of the campaign season — just because they seemed relatively harmless though not terribly kind — appeared on a sign propped in a weedy lot alongside Memorial Boulevard. I stopped short on my bike to take a closer look at them. The incumbent's name is Weed, in the event you're not from Rhode Island, which may or may not carry the suffix "and Providence Plantations" by this time next week. And I'm not saying I'm for or against Weed (you could take that in so many ways), or weeds for that matter. Weeds are, um, reality. Sometimes they're even pretty. (It drives Mr. Betty crazy when I say that; he's the gardener in the family, i.e., always weeding.)
Back to the subject at hand: words in election season tend not to be pretty, even though every attempt is made to make them sound pretty, at least initially. But, in the end, a choice must be made. And it sure seems that the way one gets where one wants to go or climbs over someone else to get there is sometimes not something to crow about ...
Just for the record: Mr. Betty planted all those flowers, and they're still blooming like crazy. I had nothing (or very little) to do with them.
