a post Christmas use for mistletoe.

Even though the Christmas season is over, I am not putting my mistletoe away.

Nope. Not putting it up. It’s going to spend the rest of the year hanging from my shirt tail where it belongs.

A while ago some idiot soccer mom looked at me in a checkout line and told me that she was offended by the man ahead of her. I looked up and saw he was some kind of a heavily inked biker type, the kind of person to me that is simply a part of the woodwork.

“Lady, to me that’s just part of the scenery,” I said. “I happen to know the guy. He’s a damned good machinist and he’s the real deal. He goes through life making his way, taking nothing and also letting things slide. He’s live and let live and demands it from others.”

“Yeah, but…” her husband chimed in.

“Yeah, but what? I interrupted. “You’re offended by his appearance? Too damned bad! I’d take him as a neighbor over the two of you any day.”

The man in question, Lester, is the real deal. He’s simply one of those people that has adopted the biker lifestyle. The ink, the leather and the Harley. He is a well paid and highly skilled machinist that has found his niche and made his peace with the world.

As far as I know, he doesn’t do drugs and although he probably tips a few on the weekends, I’ve never heard of him getting out of hand and tearing up anything or anyone.

I’d most certainly rather have him as my neighbor than the soccer mom and her nerdy little jerk husband. Lester would overlook the inevitable laughter that goes with Neighbor Bob and I tipping a few in the back yard.

Those two would try and have us raided by the State Police.

These days everyone seems to think that they have

A God Given Right not to be offended and I’m getting sick and tired of it.

When you think about it, just about everything that anyone does manages to offend someone somewhere.

People are different and while some are out and out harmful, most are not.

I have no desire to own a Harley, but I wouldn’t mind going to the Sturgis biker thing there. It would be interesting to look around and see another lifestyle, even though I have no desire to change my lifestyle.

Then again, I have no real desire to hang out with some outlaw 1%ers for any length of time because I am not stupid. I DO know trouble when I see it.

One of the things I tend to notice about the various little sub-cultures in this country is that when there is a meeting of some sort, there are a lot of things that go out the window.

From what I have seen about Sturgis, it is common enough to see a leather clad doctor or dentist talking with some deformed guy with missing teeth and treating him with great respect because the person has a special knack for balancing an engine or shaping steel.

The bullshit goes out the window.

Yet this same guy that God gave a visible deformity to and gave a special skill of knack to instead would be referred to as a ‘greasy little deformed dwarf’ or something along those lines by a lot of mainstream society.

People like the soccer mom and her nerdy little husband would look at him and be offended and demand they not have to look at him.

I have seen much the same thing firsthand back during my tipi days when I was in the black powder set in the Rocky Mountain region during the early 70s.

I remember one wild-eyed, shaggy faced buffoon that was a real character that you might see in a mountain man movie. While he wasn’t raising hell at a rendezvous, he was a Civil Engineer that built bridges.

Let’s go back to the soccer mom we met with her nerdy little husband in the store line.

The husband seemed upset when I told him that him and his wife would make lousy neighbors. He grew uppity and asked me why I would say a thing like that.

“Because you two are uppity little intolerant snobs,” I said.

“”Yeah, well….” He answered, making it clear he was losing confidence.

“If you don’t like it,” I interrupted. “Please feel free to use the piece of mistletoe attached to my shirt-tail.”

I didn’t hear another word from either of them and as far as I am concerned, the mistletoe is going to stay right where it is. It will stay attached to my shirt tail.

my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/