Don't Forget The Victims

Sometimes it is really hard for me to keep what I consider reality in my thinking when there are so many people out there who seem to feel sorry for the person who committed the crime.

I read a post today about Christa Pike. It talked about her childhood, her trauma, mental illness, relationships, brain development and what her life has been like in prison. And I get it. All of those things may help explain how she became the person she became. But explaining something doesn't make it okay. It doesn't erase what happened.

Because somewhere in all of that was Colleen Slemmer. Colleen was 19 years old. She had a whole life ahead of her too. She should have had the chance to grow up, make mistakes, fall in love, have a family, change her mind, become a different person and live out the rest of her life. Instead, she was beaten, tortured and murdered.

And this isn't just about Christa Pike. I see this kind of thinking all the time now. People who spend so much time talking about what happened to Lindsay Clancy and wearing pink like idiots that the three children she killed seem to become secondary. People who believed Karmelo Anthony deserved another trial. He admitted to doing it! People who don't seem to have a problem with someone being here illegally even when they kill someone. And I find myself sitting here thinking...when did we become so forgiving of the person who did the terrible thing? You cannot just forget the victims and the families who had to suffer because of it.

I don't even have compassion for them. I don't care if it's mental illness, childhood trauma or someone's life circumstances. After the crime, it simply doesn't matter to me. The victims matter.

Whatever happened to Christa growing up may help explain how she became who she was. But it does not erase what happened to Colleen. Plenty of people survive horrible childhoods, abuse, trauma and circumstances that I can't even imagine without going on to torture and murder another human being.

And maybe that's the part I struggle with. I don't need to understand every detail of the person who committed the crime to know what matters. The bottom line is that someone was hurt or killed, and their life should not become nothing more than a footnote while we spend years trying to understand the person who took it from them.

If we're going to tell someone's whole life story, tell the victim's story too. Remember who they were. Remember their family. Remember the life they should have had.

Don't make the victim the footnote.

Listen LINDA! Hard Didn’t Just Get Invented

You ever notice when you tell somebody something that might actually help them—advice from your own life, something you struggled with, figured out, and did to better yourself—the first response is, “Well, it was easier back then.”

That’s bullshit.

It wasn’t easier. It was different.

If it had been easy for me, I wouldn’t have had to figure out how to overcome it in the first place. I didn’t magically get handed a life with no obstacles just because it happened 10, 20, or 30 years ago. I had bills. I had responsibilities. I had kids. I had setbacks. I had times when I didn’t know how in the hell I was going to make something work. And somehow, I figured it out.

Were things cheaper? Some things were. You know what else was cheaper? My paycheck.

Did we have different opportunities? Sure. We also didn’t have half the resources people have today. There wasn’t an app for everything. You couldn’t Google how to do something, apply for 20 jobs from your couch, work remotely, have groceries delivered, start a side business online, or find a YouTube video showing you step-by-step how to do practically anything.

Every generation has advantages the generation before it didn’t have, and every generation gets handed a brand-new pile of problems to go with them.

That’s life.

So when somebody who has already climbed over an obstacle tells you what worked for them, maybe instead of immediately explaining why you can’t possibly do it because they had it easier, listen to what they’re actually saying. Their exact solution may not fit your life perfectly. Adjust it. Change it. Find the modern-day version of it.

But don’t dismiss the lesson just because it came from a different time.

Sometimes “it was easier back then” really means, “I don’t want to hear that fixing this might require me to do something hard.”

Times change. Circumstances change. The details change.

But hard has always been hard. And excuses have always been easier.

The Math Ain’t Mathing

I’m sorry, but I have several people on my feed selling different get rich type things, so I’m just gonna say it. If you’re constantly on social media telling people how to get rich and achieve “financial freedom,” eventually people are going to look at your life and realize the math ain’t mathing.

You don’t have to actually be rich to look successful, but if you’re selling wealth, there should eventually be some evidence that what you’re selling works. If you’re still working a regular job, living in a rental, driving the same cars and using the same old technology while telling everyone else how much money your “investments” are making—people are going to start questioning it.

And you can only use “I’m paying off debt” for so long. At some point, if this opportunity is making the kind of money you claim it is, something should change.

There’s nothing wrong with working a job. There’s nothing wrong with renting. There’s nothing wrong with not having expensive things. But don’t sell those same people a fantasy of financial freedom when you aren’t living it yourself.

Meanwhile, people who have spent decades working, building careers, saving and investing are buying the cars they want, building their dream homes and enjoying what all those years of work created.

If you’re selling “get rich,” eventually you need to look like it worked.

Otherwise, stop selling the dream and READ THE ROOM.

Some Kind of Dennis Voodoo Shit

I have memories from childhood that make sense to remember. Driving the boat with my dad. Going to Clothes World with my mom. Things that actually happened and were important enough to stick with me.

And then I have THIS one.

I was probably 9 or 10, right around that age when your little world starts getting bigger. I was old enough to venture farther from my own yard, play with more kids on the block, and start meeting the older kids my friends and siblings knew.

There was a boy named Scot who played with my best friend’s brother. Scot had older brothers and sisters, just like I did. One of his brothers was named Dennis, and for some reason, I can still see myself standing there on our block, looking toward their house.

Nothing special was happening. It wasn’t some big childhood moment. As far as I remember, it was just an ordinary day, an ordinary house, and a 9- or 10-year-old girl thinking about absolutely nothing important. Then somebody mentioned his brother. Dennis. And I remember looking toward that house and thinking, **“I don’t like that name.” **That’s it. That is the ENTIRE memory. Nothing happened. Nobody named Dennis traumatized me. 😂 I apparently just stood there, heard the name Dennis, and decided I did NOT like it.

But WHY do I remember that? Think about how many conversations I had as a kid. How many people I met. How many names I heard. How many completely ordinary days came and went that I couldn’t tell you one thing about today. But my brain decided THIS needed permanent storage.

And then, years later… I MARRIED A DENNIS.

Every once in a while, I think about that little girl standing there looking at that house and having that completely random thought. Of ALL the things my brain could have saved from childhood, why that?

Was it coincidence? Was the universe screwing with me? Was 9-year-old me getting some weird little preview of my future? Or was it some kind of voodoo shit that eventually sentenced me to a lifetime with a Dennis? 😂 I have absolutely no idea.

But maybe this is exactly why my blog is called Insignificant Thoughts, because that’s exactly what this was.... One completely insignificant little thought from a little girl standing on her street. It meant absolutely NOTHING at the time. Yet somehow, my brain held onto it for more than 50 years.

And after all these years, I can still picture myself standing there thinking: I don’t like that name.

Apparently, life said…

“You will.”

When the House Goes Quiet

Nobody really prepares you for the day your children grow up and leave. You spend years raising them to become independent adults, and then they have the nerve to actually do it.

For years, I was the center of their little universe. I knew where they were, who they were with, what they ate and usually what they were mad about. “Mom, can you bring me my bloomers?” “What’s for dinner?” “Where are my shoes?” “Do I have to ride with him?” “Tell her to stop!” “If you go somewhere… come and get me!”

The house was loud. Band practice in the garage... and I am talking with a full on drum kit!  Guitar, bass, a cowbell and a friend on a pogo stick! Friends came and went. Someone always needed a ride, food, money or a referee. And while I was busy with all that, childhood was quietly slipping by. Then one leaves, then another, until eventually the last one walks out the door.

They come for dinner and bring spouses, grandchildren, dogs and enough chaos to remind you of the old days. Then they go home—to their own homes, schedules and lives. Exactly what we raised them to have.

What I miss most is the ordinary stuff: everyone asleep under my roof, the door opening after school, the pantry door opening 20 times a day. I  miss being the chauffeur or referee. I miss the children they were.

Then grandchildren come along and, for a little while, the house gets noisy again. There are toys on the floor, little voices in the kitchen and someone wanting a snack five minutes after refusing lunch. Sometimes you catch your own child’s face in your grandchild’s, and it stops you cold. This time, though, you know how fast it goes. So you read one more book, give one more hug and care a whole lot less about the mess. And let them have the snack they want.

There’s also the small pleasure of watching your children become parents. Sooner or later, you hear your own words coming out of their mouths and think, Well, well, well. Look who turned into me.

People say children need wings. Sweet thought, but they’re not birds. We spend nearly two decades building a life around them, then smile proudly while they walk into theirs. And we are proud. We just might cry all the way home. Because while you rejoice in their accomplishments you find sorrow in an ending of your dreams.

Eventually you realize their leaving is proof you did your job. The little people who needed you for everything became adults who built lives of their own. That’s the goal. It just hurts like hell when you succeed.

And if you’re lucky, those children someday bring children of their own through your front door. For a few wonderfully loud hours, there are shoes by the door, toys on the floor and someone hollering, “What’s for dinner?”

Then everyone leaves. The door closes. The house goes quiet. And you finally understand: all those years you thought you were raising children, you were also living the days you would spend the rest of your life missing.