"I've always relied..."

'...upon the kindness of strangers."

~~Blanche DuBois, A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams

Kisha was kind enough to give me something to talk about (if you know that song, take five points) in the comments of my last blog post. I pondered on this for a bit. There are quite a few synonyms for "kindness":

~helpful

~nice

~humanity

~compassion

I know...this is beginning to sound like an English lesson, and I don't mean for it to become one. I am a firm believer in 'playground rules.' Those of you who know me might get that; others, not so much.

Ya see, LDs, no matter how old I get, I can still see the world with childlike wonder (never, never confuse 'childlike' with 'childish.' That is all.). I need sunlight and fresh air and gentle rains and dirt and love to survive. (well hells, we've gone from English lesson to hippie lesson) I could play outside for hours - Mr Realist and I still have 'work clothes' and 'play clothes.'

What I mean by playground rules can be summed up in Robert Fulghum's prose, All I Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten. Google it. I'll wait.

Got it? His first few lines tell us some great things.

Share everything. I'm the kind of person who will give you the shirt off her back (as long as I've got something else to cover Thelma and Louise) if you need it. There are times I bitch and moan (no, it's not Monday yet) about doing things, but I don't really mean it. And if I do mean it, I'll do it anyway because someone needed my help.

Play Fair. How hard is it, LDs, for people to just play fair? Take turns? Let everyone enjoy the game. Some may not be as good at it, others are far superior. Once you start being petty and only letting the 'good' players play, it becomes unfair. However, when kids are learning to play a sport and they're all getting turns at spots and positions and whatnot, what's the harm in letting them keep score? I started playing soccer at six, and we kept score from Day One. Guess what? I understood that you can't always win. It didn't damage my psyche, and I'm a fully functioning member of society (I can't say normal - you all know that I'm not remotely close to what passes for 'normal'). It just pushed most of us to be better players.

Clean Up Your Own Mess. I'm not your maid. I'm not your mom. You made the mess, you clean it up. It's called learning responsibility.

Say You're Sorry When You Hurt Someone. Nowadays, people are too concerned with getting what they want that they stop caring about someone smaller than they are (I use 'smaller' as a generic term. Could be younger/older/thinner/fatter/different). If you knock someone down unintentionally, give them a helping hand up and apologize. I can't count on all the toes of all of my LDs how many times I've seen rudeness and selfishness and greediness take precedence over all else, including when they've hurt someone else.

I seem to have possibly gotten off course here somewheres.

Kindness. Bill S. Preston, Esquire, one of the Wyld Stallyns duo, succinctly put it when he said:

"Be excellent to each other."

It's not hard. Just remember back when you were four or five and in the sandbox. When it came to other kids, there were no strangers. Just friends you hadn't met yet. And you accepted them unconditionally. That was kindness in its purest form.

Heepwah, and be safe out there.

Your kind and childlike

Mrs Dreamer