Day 61 - March's first Friday's Eve

Today is the 5th day of the 9th week, the 2nd day of the 3rd month, the 61st day of 2023 if you are using the Gregorian Calendar.  It is 9 Adar 5783 in the Jewish calendar,  Sha'ban 21 145 AH in the Islamic calendar, I couldn't figure out the Hindu calendar, the 2nd month 11 [gui-mao] in the Chinese calendar, and 23061 if you stuck with the Julian calendar.  It is also:

• Dr Seuss Day -  the 119th birthday of Theodor Seuss Geisel, American children's book author and cartoonist with more than 60 books under his belt 
• Feast of 'Alá (Loftiness), First day of the 19th month of the Baháʼí calendar (Baháʼí Faith) and first day of the Baháʼí Nineteen Day Fast
• International Rescue Cat Day
• National Banana Cream Pie Day
• National Hospitalist Day
• Old Stuff Day
• Read Across America Day
• World Book Day
• World Teem Mental Wellness Day

Quote of the day:

"A library is a medicine cabinet. What can heal one person may not work at all for somebody else." 

~ Sandra Cisneros,  A House of My Own: Stories from My Life

Now and then, whether out of idle curiosity or because I am noodling about for an idea to write a cohesive blog post, instead of a collection of random thoughts, I go and look up writing prompts.  Today's is:

Drama: Write about a time when you got stuck in between two parties fighting with each other.

I can honestly say I have never been in a physical altercation where I was trying to hold the two contestants apart, but that would be a very narrow interpretation of the word "fight", wouldn't it?

Oh I remember witnessing arguments, some pretty intense and unpleasant, especially between my parents.  I remember times when I had those kids of arguments myself with parents, family, spouses, kids, friends, fellow workers, teacher, et al.  But I don't actually remember a time when I was physically between two people going at it.  There were plenty of times when the argument was long term and I was squarely in the center of it, trying to interpret or moderate or even ameliorate the discussion and/or issue.  I wasn't very often successful at that.  It seams that when I rolled for my RL character stats, I came up low in charisma, and that has impacted my ability to be persuasive at times....

One thing that I learned from my mother was how NOT to fight.   If we started out with a heated discussion over drying the dishes [never could see the sense of wiping them dry, why not just let them air dry?] to total character assassination in seconds.  My mother was excellent at surgically wielding memories and sarcasm to whittle you down to nothing, and we never stuck to the issue at hand and always ended up with metaphorical blood on the floor.  Took me a long time to learn how to have a fight on the topic at hand only without going for the jugular.  It has enabled me to have some real knock-down-drag-out fights with folks, and then when we both fall silent, ask something along the lines of "okay, where are we going for lunch?"  because we don't get down and dirty personal.

One of the joys of social media is that you can get involved with all kinds of online confrontations and arguments.  For the most part, I have stayed out of those, altho more than once I hit a trip wire when I made an contrary comment on a post.  But from the color of that blasted dress to how to take a shower, there are plenty of opportunities to launch yourself right in the middle of an online fight if that's your thing.