The husband and I watched Casablanca tonight. He had never seen it and I hadn't seen it since high school. And the movie meant a whole lot more to me now than it did back then.

My husband remarked how absurd it would seem to modern viewers to have a woman leave the man she loves to stand for a cause. Nowadays, you'd never break up true love at the end of a movie, especially not for war aims. Rick makes Ilsa go because "the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world." Few people talk like that these days. Fewer still think like that.

But Casablanca came out in 1942, long before the outcome of the war was certain. It was a beautiful story of sacrifice in difficult times. Rick and Ilsa gave up love for the greater good.

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1 I have never seen this movie before and my brother keeps getting on me about it. It is next on my Netflix right now.

Posted by: Kasey at February 07, 2008 05:36 PM (tttDj)

2 I bought that movie a while back, but I haven't seen it yet. Now I gotta dig it out and give it a try.

Posted by: Erin at February 07, 2008 07:15 PM (y67l2)

3 My wife and I also watched it this weekend. She had never seen the whole thing, just bits and pieces. I could not find it at the rental store or the library so I bought it. I love the Inspector Reynaud character. It remains an excellent movie, 65 years later. I think it was a total surprise to those involved that it 'worked' as well as it did - it was not significantly different than dozens of standard studio productions of the time, and in addition it was affected by war effort comings and goings of writers and other personnel during production. The script evolved through several writer changes and writing barely kept up with filming. I think it was just one of those 'magic' accidental combinations of story, cast, direction, script and historical timing. Many would hold me blasphemous, but to me the most analagous 'modern' movie is the original Star Wars - science fiction instead of historical fiction, but romance, heroism, an array of interesting characters, and some memorable lines, which all really 'worked'.

Posted by: Glenmore at February 07, 2008 07:22 PM (RnFyI)

4 One of my alltime favorite movies. Inspector Reynaud was also my favorite character. When I worked at the jail, everyone became quite familiar with the phrase, "Round up the usual suspects!"

Posted by: R1 at February 08, 2008 06:04 AM (y1Xat)

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I'm officially too old for my new cell phone.

I went to set the ringtones, and absolutely none of them are appropriate for my age group. This one's techno. This one's gangsta. Eww, this one sounds like s-e-x. The "oriental" one, that's just racist. I have it set on just plain ringing like a phone because I cannot imagine using any of the provided files.

I am a fogey...

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The Flag has to come first
if freedom is to survive.
--Col Steven Arrington--

Every once in a while, something on the internet takes my breath away.

Over Our Dead Bodies

This is something I don't like to talk about because it makes me seem cold and cruel. I also think it makes me somewhat out-of-the-ordinary. And some will think I'm plain psycho for even thinking such things. But I believe in the premise of this article, that man is dispensible for the greater cause.

My husband is one of those dispensible men.

I have tried to come to terms with exactly how that makes me feel. And Lord knows I don't ever want to have to put my convictions to the test. But should I have to, I will come back and read that article again and find solace, and I will try very hard to remember in my grief what I knew to be true before grief struck.

I have thought about this a lot over the past years, as you must when your husband's job is war. But I've thought about it in other scenarios too. There was an episode of 24 where terrorists hold a wife and kid hostage and send dad out to provide a detonator to the man holding a nuke. Dad would do anything to save his family, even enable a nuclear weapon.

No way.

I put myself in those shoes, and I just couldn't do it. There's no way I could kill 20,000 to save my 2. I'm not going to go Keyser Soze on my family, but there's no way I will cooperate in arming a nuclear device just to save my husband.

He and I have also talked about this in regards to Jill Carroll and the Brit hostages. I will not beg and grovel, I will not trade his life for the lives of others, and I will remember in my heart the brave Fabrizio Quattrocchi as I do the hardest thing that could ever be asked of a person.

My husband is dispensible.

I do not say that lightly. Not at all. The moment I typed the words, I felt the beginning of tears.

But my personal happiness is not more important than my country. I will do my best to remember this, even when I often think that the Middle East is not worthy of my husband. I will remember that surely there were wives who thought that their husbands' lives were not worth taxation without representation, the end of slavery in far away states, or fear of the domino effect. Yet they sacrificed their husbands, and I would do the same.

That is our profession. Harooh.

I think the movie 300 took people by surprise. The Spartans were not a perfect society, not by a long shot, but they lived by the credo that men are dispensible for Sparta. And the movie resonated with people because they still want to believe that such men are out there. They want to believe that 300 would step up and defend our country too, risking all.

But I think they're afraid that those 300 don't exist. Most of the moviegoers don't number among them.

Some have asked me how I'd feel to get pregnant before my husband deploys. The thought makes me sick to my stomach. I want to raise a child with my husband or not at all. But I asked him while I was pregnant if it made him feel better or worse that he would leave a child behind should something happen to him. He said he did find comfort in thinking like the Spartans, that only men with progeny should be sent to battle. Thus I pray we get pregnant before he leaves again soon, so he has the peace of knowing that his legacy lives on.

And as hard as it is for me to think of my husband as dispensible, it will be all the harder to think of that child as dispensible too.

But the flag comes first.

(Thanks to Kim du Toit for the article and for writing "Not all of us are at the mall. We are with you as surely is if weÂ’re going out on patrol with you, or standing next to you in the chow line back at camp.")

********

I sat on this one for a while, mulling it over. And in the meantime, I came across an article that Baldilocks' father wrote.

If you are so convinced that an ideal is vital for your society, then shouldnÂ’t you make it your duty to live long enough to help your society to realise it? Once you are dead, of what use are you?
...
But, clearly, a soldier is much more important than a tool. That is why the law on self-preservation is even more significant to humans. Sure, a good soldier fights bravely in battle. But his bravery must include every stratagem that helps him to return to base unharmed.

Only then can he be available for another battle. Hence the saying: Live for your country: never deliberately die for it.

Trust me when I say that we also know this to be true. No one was more diligent about not dying needlessly than my husband was the last time he was in Iraq. (That's why he put two soldiers in jail when they failed to ensure the safety of the other men.)

My husband is the last man to promote swashbuckling or chest-thumping. But some must go to fight the Dragons, and those men must be ready to be dispensible.

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The husband did our taxes this weekend and somehow, against all odds of us trying to contribute the bare minimum, we are still getting a refund. The husband just said, "Sweet, the government is hooking us up!" And I feigned horror and said, "Do not ever say anything of the sort again. They are not 'hooking us up'; they are merely only keeping $7000 of our money instead of $9000."

If everyone looked at taxes that way, maybe we could get some reform.

And as I was digging around for receipts on charitable contributions and my husband was trying to figure out how much state sales tax we could deduct, we kept muttering how nice the Fair Tax would be.

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I was popping in on people's MySpaces and came across this...

Have you ever tried to philosophize about life, as I am trying right now? I was on one of the three interstates (H-1) on Oahu the other day in bumper-to-bumper traffic while the other side of the road was packed with rush hour cars zooming by.... I thought to myself, "Life is like a highway." ...A few minutes of silence went by in my car... "You know, maybe life isn't like a highway." (end thought)

And for whatever reason, it just got to me. And made me laugh.

Sometimes I think we try too hard to make sense of things when, usually, they just are what they are. There's not much point to trying to make them deeper or more significant. And most metaphors suck.

I had my last round of bloodwork this week.
I'm finally not pregnant again.

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Some of us SpouseBUZZers are reading the book The Airmen and the Headhunters for an upcoming author interview. I am thoroughly enjoying this book, and it's just starting to get really exciting.

I don't want to spoil anything, but there's one event that I can't get out of my head. The Dayak people have finally decided that the only way to protect the American airmen is to start fighting back against the Japanese. But they needed a foolproof trap, so the Dayak leader asks the most beautiful young girls in the village to bathe naked in the river to distract the Japanese soldiers long enough for an attack. Nudity is not acceptable in Dayak society, but the young girls did it anyway to help protect the airmen. They laid the trap for the Japanese.

I have been thinking about how it must've pained the Dayak leader to ask the young women to do this. I have imagined my father asking me to expose myself in the middle of town for the greater good. I can't imagine asking so much from a young girl. And I've also tried to put myself in the girls' shoes, letting go of their shame in order to save lives by facilitating the taking of other lives. But if I could run naked through the streets of Baghdad, and it saved just one soldier's life, it would be worth it.

Maybe we should add Girls Gone Wild to the Surge?

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1 Isn't it an awesome, inspiring, and wonderful book to read right now when there seems to be such a dearth of books with anything hopeful in them? I know just the scene you are talking about - and it was very moving. The Dayaks risked and sacrificed so much for our boys...

Posted by: airforcewife at January 15, 2008 08:53 AM (mIbWn)

2 That sounds like a really great book. If I wasn't in the middle of 43 others, I might look into reading it.

Posted by: Erin at January 16, 2008 05:12 PM (y67l2)

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Erin called me this morning to talk about me, my feelings, my life, my stuff. And then later in the conversation she reminded me of the date. All of a sudden I burst into tears, realizing once again how small and petty my own stuff is.

Today is not about me.

And so I sit here today with tears on my cheeks, thankful for all I have and thankful for men like Gunnar Becker.

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Remember when Halle Berry won her Oscar and the media crammed it down our throats that it was a major step for The United Racist States of America? How it was a major milestone for black people? That it somehow proved that we were healing as a nation from Jim Crow?

How come people aren't saying those things about Obama's win last night? Isn't being selected as the top Democrat in a ridiculously white state more groundbreaking than a black actress getting an award from her liberal peers?

I don't get it.

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Bill Whittle lays a smackdown on a commenter. He then goes on to write:

Many people hear or read something like “american’s” rant and think that because it is structured and literate there must be something to it. How many college students today, when presented with such nonsense, would read it and think that they are approaching the days of a Nazi state?

Lots.

Damn it! Lots of them would. Why? Because, like the 9/11 conspiracy “troofers,” no one bothers to call these people out. Thinking about this response took half again as long as actually typing it did: which is to say a few minutes. That is because I know how far from reality this diatribe is. These are things I think about every day, and likely, so do you. Realizing from scratch that his point was absurd, the specifics were easy.

We can no longer afford to let this anti-American garbage pass unchallenged. As a kind and secure people, we tend to let a lot of this go under the bridge, but this kind of crap gets more and more traction, and those days I think must come to an end for a while.

Now normally I do not employ personal ridicule, but I was writing in the heat of the moment and I thought it was no less than such a puerile attempt deserved. These people need to be challenged, factually defeated, thrashed, and mocked.

There was a time when common sense was prevalent enough that arguments this absurd would be laughed at on the street. I mean to return to those times, one self-righteous idiot at a time.

I have struggled with this dilemma for years, ever since I read Carl Sagan's story of the taxi driver. It's the dilemma from the monorail in Vegas, and my husband's right: as long as we keep giving people permission to promote crap, they will keep doing it. I blogged about it before the 2004 election, and now here we're already in another election cycle, battling the same baloney. And I am still struggling with the same dilemma.

By the way, Whittle is back. Settle in and read Forty Second Boyd and the Big Picture.

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232 years ago this morning, George Washington and his Continental army won the Battle of Trenton, effectively turning the tide of the American Revolution and putting us on the road to independence.

From the last week of August to the last week of December, the year 1776 had been as dark a time as those devoted to the American cause had ever known -- indeed, as dark a time as any in the history of the country. And suddenly, miraculously it seemed, that had changed because of a small band of determined men and their leader.

A century later, Sir George Otto Trevelyan would write in a classic study of the American Revolution, "It may be doubted whether so small a number of men ever employed so short a space of time with greater and more lasting effects upon the history of the world."

(from pg 291 in 1776)

I couldn't be prouder to think that 232 years ago, bedraggled and freezing men were fighting to establish the wonderful country I now live in. And were paid $6 per month for the pleasure.

We owe them so much.

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I think the secret to a good marriage is meta-knowledge.

During a class on cross-cultural communication, we read the book That's Not What I Meant! How Conversational Style Makes or Breaks Relationships. That book was probably the most useful thing I ever read in college; it changed my life. (And people say that all the time, that books changed their life, but usually they're being hyperbolic. I am super serial here.) What this book teaches you is how your metamessage -- the tone of your voice, the way you're standing -- conveys a stronger message than your words, and how men and women typically employ different metamessage strategies. Once you're able as a couple to talk about your metamessages and not just the words you've said, it opens up a whole different level of communication.

This meta-knowledge -- for example, that men listen to complaining to find solutions, while women complain to create a social bond -- is a crucial part of getting along. My husband and I hardly ever argue anymore after reading this book because we are able to step back and actually say nerdy things like, "Right now I am acting like a stupid woman. I know what I am saying is unreasonable, and that you want to try to fix the problem for me, but I don't need you to fix it, I just need you to listen and nod along with me as if you understand what in the hell I'm upset about. It's OK if you just pretend you understand, that works too." Understanding that your emotional systems work differently is a blessing for a relationship.

I am so glad I had to read this book.

Anyway, I thought about this today when I read SarahJ's description of dropping the bookcase on her foot. Now there's a couple with meta-knowledge! If you can fight with this sort of self-awareness, you have a great relationship, in my opinion. You still have a busted toe because you were being a damned woman, but at least you don't have a busted toe and a divorce, right?

Heh.

(Todays links, as usual, found via Conservative Grapevine, the coolest round-up on the internet.)

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Wanna hear something humbling? Thomas Jefferson was 33 years old when he wrote the Declaration of Independence.

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1 heck I am over mine.... crap, this is bad news. I cannot even seem to get laundry done and put away in a timely fashion.

Posted by: awtm at December 11, 2007 03:29 AM (LxlNZ)

2 hm... I guess I'm past it completely.. But then that sort of genius only happens very rarely. A Renaissance man like that would be so wonderful to see in a position of power again. So far.. Nope. LAW

Posted by: liberal army wife at December 11, 2007 02:13 PM (R+g0A)

3 Well, poo. I AM 33, and all I've managed is to get kicked off the Montel Show. Just doesn't have the same panache, does it?

Posted by: airforcewife at December 11, 2007 04:06 PM (mIbWn)

4 Similarly, though in a less intellectual vein, Alexander the Great was 25 when many of his conquests were finished. Hi from an old blogging friend, by the way.

Posted by: Leif Johnson at December 12, 2007 04:55 AM (DA7so)

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Here's another funny quip about that woman who got herself sterilized:

“Having children is selfish, “ says Vernelli, “it’s all about maintaining your own genetic line at the expense of the planet.”

I couldnÂ’t agree more. Every really selfish person I know has like twelve kids.

Why just the other day, as I was sitting, unbathed and exhausted, in the kitchen selfishly riding herd on three screaming children, all of whom were simultaneously demanding that I continue my genetic line by providing them with juice boxes, goldfish crackers, hairbows, wardrobe changes, sno-cones, candy, lunch, water, DVDs, computer assistance, reading assistance, diaper changes, judicial intervention, and “milkey, he-a-uh” (milk, heated up), I thought to myself, “Man, am I selfish!”

I had a discussion a little while ago with CaliValleyGirl over whether having children is selfish or selfless. I completely believe that it's selfless, that the point of having children is to raise adults who will provide benefit to society, not just to have a little version of me to cuddle. And raising upstanding members of society is hard. How much easier would my life be to just keep merrily knitting along in between vacations and spending money on myself? That seems like the selfish choice to me. I think instead that I have a duty to my society to breed at no less than replacement rate and breed well, so that my progeny make our country a better place.

But who knows, maybe I'm crazy. I did read America Alone while I was trying to get pregnant, so that may have screwed with my head.

Posted by: Sarah at 04:07 AM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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1 “Having children is selfish, “ says Vernelli, “it’s all about maintaining your own genetic line at the expense of the planet.” Spoken with all the wisdom of one that does not have children.

Posted by: Bubba Bo Bob Brain at November 28, 2007 04:22 AM (AKSWt)

2 It is neither selfish nor selfless. It is about a choice one makes for themselves. Discussion of selfish v. selfless for childless v. having children is mostly a discussion of self-justification. Have children; don't have children. The choice is individual and personal.

Posted by: Badger 6 at November 28, 2007 04:54 AM (TRbf/)

3 The choice to have or have not in regards to children is most certainly individual and of itself neither selfish or unselfish. However, once you HAVE children, you must practice a degree of unselfishness that is unimaginable when there are no children present. You must give up sleep to rock cranky kids, clean up someone else's poop when you'd rather let them sit in it, eat chicken nuggets instead of going out to that cool new Mexican restaurant down the street because of the money factor, and so on and so forth. Not all parents give up the majority of their selfish leanings when they have children - but the necessity of having to consider someone else's wants and needs before your own is definately a lesson in how to put your own desires second. Especially since, for quite a large bit of the lifetime the child spends living with you they are absolutely ungrateful little brats hell bent on undermining you every chance they get with no clue about the real world (even while they think they have all the answers, of course). And yes, I do have a teenager.

Posted by: airforcewife at November 28, 2007 08:14 AM (mIbWn)

4 Okay, 3 excellent comments already. I might add that having children could only be "selfish" if the goal of the human race was to become extinct. As I have never heard of this being a stated goal for any living being - I have to deduce that having children is unselfish. It's very hard work, requiring the adults involved to give up much of their own life pleasures.

Posted by: Teresa at November 28, 2007 10:22 AM (rVIv9)

5 What Badger 6 said. BTW, on a related but hopefully not a selfish note, I'm thinking in about...what, 7 months this blog isn't gonn'a be.

Posted by: tim at November 28, 2007 11:01 AM (nno0f)

6 Badger: I am not sure if I agree with you because I am not really sure what you mean by "self-justification." As in, you justify your choice after the fact? What if you justify it ahead of time? What if you don't like kids and aren't sure you particularly desire them but have them anyway because you think it's the right thing to do? Is that "self-justification"? It doesn't seem like it to me. Tim: I swear, this will not turn into a mommy blog. I want to keep it the same. We'll see how much time I have to devote to it, but I fully intend to keep the same format. And to try to get content up in between diapers and naps.

Posted by: Sarah at November 28, 2007 11:10 AM (TWet1)

7 Cool Sarah, but I, as I'm sure others, will totally understand the lack of content then. While I don't have any first hand experience, I hear babies tend to require alot of attention.

Posted by: tim at November 28, 2007 11:57 AM (nno0f)

8 By self-justification I mean they feel the need to explain why they choose to do what they did or are doing as morally superior to others who choose differently. The person in your hypothetical would be engaging in self-justification when they start telling other people that they too should have children because "it is the right thing to do." As I stated make your decision for yourself, the idea that you "owe" your society or your species something is silly. Your individual choice will not make a difference to those large groups. Don't conflate justification with deciding. Deciding is what you do for yourself. Justification is defending that idea to others. I think the choices we make regarding having children should be respected regardless of what that choice is.

Posted by: Badger 6 at November 29, 2007 08:54 AM (TRbf/)

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My husband pointed out the article yesterday about the lady who got herself sterilized because breeding leads to global warming. My immediate reaction? Excellent. Almost with a Mr. Burns accent. If she honestly thinks that, then I don't want her breeding either. So it's a win-win.

Lileks nails it:

She expresses frustration that other people are unable to accept her decision. I suspect she means “my mum” by “other people,” and I suspect she confuses “acceptance” with “full-throated endorsement."

Of course I accept these people’s decisions not to have children. What am I supposed to do, break into their homes, duct-tape them together into the double-backed beast and play whacka-chicka 70s porn soundtracks until they’re in the mood? But “acceptance” is part of the usual recipe: first we must tolerate, which no decent person should have any problem doing. Then we are asked to accept, which for most means slump-shouldered acquiescence. Eventually it’s not the norm, but it’s standing alongside it on stage, nudging its way into the spotlight.

As Mr. Garrison eloquently said, "Look, just because you have to tolerate something doesn't mean you have to approve of it! ... "Tolerate" means you're just putting up with it! You tolerate a crying child sitting next to you on the airplane or, or you tolerate a bad cold. It can still piss you off! Jesus Tapdancing Christ!"

And Lileks has more. Much more. Plus funny reviews of Redacted and Die Hardest.

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1 Dude, Mr. Garrison is so wise and he has the best exclamations on TV

Posted by: Kate at November 26, 2007 09:09 AM (tB/4l)

2 If only more of her kind would follow her example. Stumbled across your original blog as a result of comments you left on "The Smallest Minority," which I found through Kim du Toit's blog. It's great that we have such eloquent and profound thinkers as yourself representing me and my fellow Americans. Keep it up!

Posted by: Lame-R at November 26, 2007 09:42 AM (nt98J)

3 What a nice compliment, Lame-R! Thanks for the nice comment. I have no memory of what I wrote on The Smallest Minority, but whatever it was, I'm glad it brought you here. Thanks for reading!

Posted by: Sarah at November 26, 2007 11:21 AM (TWet1)

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I had a discussion with my husband a while back about the Constitution. And how perfect it is. And how strange that seems, since it was written by mere men. And how I don't think I would willingly sumbit myself to any document written by mere men today, but have no qualms about accepting every sacred word that was written 220 years ago. And how odd that is. And yet how perfect I still think that document is.

My brain runs in circles.

But as I was reading The Second Amendment and the Personal Right to Arms (via Instapundit) this morning, I was struck by one paragraph that reminds me again how beautiful our Constitution is:

There is, to be sure, in the Second Amendment, an express reference to the security of a "free State." It is not a reference to the security of THE STATE. There are doubtless certain national constitutions that put a privileged emphasis on the security of "the state," but such as they are, they are all unlike our Constitution and the provisions they have respecting their security do not appear in a similarly phrased Bill of Rights. Accordingly, such constitutions make no reference to any right of the people to keep and bear arms, apart from state service. And why do they not do so? Because, in contrast with the premises of constitutional government in this country, they reflect the belief that recognition of any such right "in the people" might well pose a threat to the security of "the state." In the view of these different constitutions, it is commonplace to find that no one within the state other than its own authorized personnel has any right to keep and bear arms--a view emphatically rejected, rather than embraced, however, by the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. [emphasis mine]

The perfection of our Constitution lies in the fact that the people of the United States are more important than the government. Obviously this is common knowledge for anyone who knows a darn thing about the founding of our country, but it bears repeating, lest we forget just what a unique and wonderful experiment our country is.

I am just so happy to have been born here. It sure saved me the time and energy of having to get here.

And I really miss Bunker right at this moment. That man knew the value of the Constitution and would've loved that I was having these thoughts. I sure miss his attagirl comments.

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Ben Stein was awesome today. If you missed it, you can always listen to the archives to hear how he got so danged pro-military, his financial advice, and what his favorite breakfast cereal is. He was great fun to talk to.

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Guess what my husband is doing at work today? Yardwork. Ha. They have all the captains and majors doing yardwork today. My husband told his Major buddy that he should refuse to do it and sit in the hot box while they all whistle for him à la Bridge on the River Kwai. We had a good laugh at that last night.

But I love what my husband said next: "But I am not going to complain about doing yardwork because there are people who are deployed right now, getting injured and killed. Yardwork is nothing compared to that."

I am so proud of my husband's perspective.

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Today on SpouseBUZZ radio we will be talking about Ben Stein's book The Real Stars and doing a short interview with the man himself. You can read more about Mr. Stein and the book at SpouseBUZZ. If you can join us live at 1430 EST, you can listen in here at Blog Talk Radio. Otherwise, all our shows are archived on the same page.

I want to put in a short plug for Blog Talk Radio. They provide a free service that has allowed us at SpouseBUZZ to do radio shows with some exciting guests. And by "us," I mean Andi, AWTM, and AirForceWife. I usually don't participate because talking on the radio makes me want to throw up. I remember having this conversation with Mary Katherine Ham at the Milblogs Conference when she asked if she could video interview me; I said, "I'm a blogger, I started blogging so I could write about things, not talk about them." She seemed to think that was pretty funny. I know a lot of people have moved on to radio, podcasts, and YouTube, but I'll stick with my printed word, thankyouverymuch.

But how often does the chance arise to talk to Ben Stein? I had to go for it. I mean, he's one of my two favorite Steins (er, Steyns).

Keep your fingers crossed that I don't say something dumb. And listen in on an interview with a man who totally groks.

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My life is so awesome.

Last night I had a dream I was invited to a potluck dinner. I showed up and didn't have any plastic cups. I had to go find some, and ended up at a gas station where the man wanted to sell me cups at a dollar apiece plus a 33% tax rate. I was so mad. I woke up from the dream and was still grumpy as all get-out that I had gotten ripped off. And I went back to sleep and kept dreaming about those stupid cups, trying to find a better deal from someone else.

My real life is so devoid of stress that I spend my dreams arguing over $1.33. I am such a lucky person.

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My Swedish friend just called; she saw what I wrote about her a few weeks ago.
I really hurt her feelings.

This post is about our resulting conversation. It is written to vindicate her. I am writing for the sole purpose of showing what a bonehead I am, because I want you readers to know that I screwed up, that I learned from it, and that the original post was never meant to be rude towards her.

She's a far better person than I am.

She was really hurt that I would use the word "superficial" in describing our friendship. She thought our friendship was fine, that it was deep, and that we've always managed to get along swimmingly. Sure, I like guns and she doesn't always get me, but she likes sports and doesn't feel like we have less of a friendship because I don't care about sports.

She then laughed and said that probably sports isn't the same thing as the Constitution.

It was really hard for me to explain why I wrote that post in the first place. I blog to work through things in my mind. To grok, literally. I needed to get this feeling off my chest and see what advice commenters would give to me. It wasn't a major problem; I didn't think it was something I needed to sit down and discuss with her. It was just a feeling I wanted to throw out there and see what you readers would say. And you came through for me with flying colors, giving me good advice and helping me realize that I was focusing on one small aspect of what it means to be a friend.

But my friend didn't have two weeks to work through things in her head; it was fresh to her and I needed to give her answers fast. I tried to explain why I wrote about it in the first place. If we had had a disagreement over health care or even Iraq, I am not sure that would've prompted me to write. But the right to bear arms is so fundamental, so important, so illustrative of someone's entire mindset. It's the 2nd Amendment that backs up the 1st. It's that important. That's why a discussion of firearms was a reminder to me of fundamental differences my Swedish friend and I have in our worldviews. It's not just that we don't see eye to eye on violence.

I am not even sure that I did a good job of explaining it to her again. I don't think I will ever be able to explain just how fundamental this right is in my opinion.

But she tried to grok. And that's what I had left out of the original post.

My Swedish friend may be European to the core. We may never really truly understand each other's values. But she always tries. She always listens and she always tries to see things from my point of view. She never judges me based on her own value system but tries to put herself in my shoes and offer whatever advice she can.

Like I said, she's a better person than I am.

What I conveniently forgot a few weeks ago when I got wound up over how deep (or not deep) our friendship is is that it's easy for CaliValleyGirl or Erin or AWTM to see eye to eye with me because they're almost always coming at the problem from the same worldview as I am. Shoot, it's easy for us to be friends. It's a far more impressive thing for my Swedish friend to have stayed friends with me for nine years, despite our differences, despite the fact that I couldn't care less about sports and she thinks knitting a gun for a baby is atrocious.

And what I realized through the course of our conversation is that our discussions are not superficial at all. I talk to her about other issues in my life, things I don't ever blog about. She made me realize that different friends fill different needs. If I want to talk to someone about linguistics, I would probably call Amritas over Erin, for the obvious reasons. If I want to talk to someone about the Army, Erin would make a better choice than Amritas. They're both my friends, but they have different expertise to fill different roles.

My Swedish friend definitely has a role to fill. And while she may not be the first person I'd call to say my husband wants to volunteer to go to Afghanistan, I would never feel like I had to hide that part of my life or values from her, and she would never make me feel weird about it either.

But she already knew this. She acted like it was the most obvious thing in the world, that it was bizarre that I'd even need to work through this sort of thing. All I could do is apologize and say that no one's ever accused me of being a genius. I hadn't fully thought it through when I blogged about it; that's why I blogged it. I wanted other people to point out the pieces of the puzzle that I had missed.

And I'm glad my Swedish friend gave me even more insight into what I was feeling. I'm just sorry that I had to hurt her feelings in the process. It was never my intention.

So the answer to my original post is that, yes, we can be friends despite our differences. Good friends. Or, at least we can if she still wants to be friends with me. I really screwed up.

All I can do is say I'm sorry for hurting her. Again and again.

Posted by: Sarah at 11:46 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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