Half a Mil

Man, did you see the kids berating that school bus aide in the Rochester area?

That poor woman took some serious abuse. So much so that they took up a collection in her name to send her on a little vacation.

The fund is well over a half a mil now, right?

And a bunch of us were talking about it at a wonderful graduation party on Saturday night.

I've been called a lot of things in my time. Most of the nicknames I deserved. Some of them made me laugh out loud at myself.

I'm not sure that there's anything that you can call me that would bother me enough to ruin my own healthy self-image.

Bald?

"You can't have hair and brains too."

Fat?

I know what I eat and how much I enjoy it. There are times in my life when I actually aspired to be fatter because that meant I was eating more. Stupid skinny people will never know the pleasure of eating until pain.

It's fun!

Stupid?

I'll take all of those jokes as well. Usually I get something like this:

"Your stupid."

We went over this but correcting the English in a two word sentence usually takes the steam out of such a claim.

What else? Where else can we go with the abuse?

Of course, I felt bad for that poor woman. There isn't anyone in the world who should have to listen to that from a bunch of snot-nosed kids. She did an amazing job staying calm in the face of such abuse.

I don't think I could've found it in my heart to mutter something as senseless as:

"If you don't have something nice to say don't say anything at all,"

while some little rat bastard was announcing that I was obese.

But in hindsight she has to be thrilled that it all went down as it did.

Her vacation is gonna' be a long one.

And here's another hint...

...I'd keep every freaking penny.