BANISHMENT 13: Self Pity

Do you know what The Worst is? The Worst is spending long stretches of time listening to someone talk about how bad their life is. How their lawn mower doesn't cut their grass at perfect ninety degree angles and how they, poor dear things, have a broken food disposal and a dinner party on Friday night. Self-pity is the redneck step cousin of venting - the normal human release of anger. Venting is letting the steam out so it can frolic in the air and go play with other pieces of oxygen, leaving room for you to do healthy things like bake cookies and alphabetize your DVD collection. But self pity is a whole other breed of human ugly. It's letting the steam out only momentarily until you scramble ferociously to catch it in a plastic bag, haul it back down to reality, and then let it out again. It is the pimple-faced, Venting YoYo.

My friend, who is neither subtle or simple minded, says indulging in self pity is no less than climbing into a pile of your own doo doo, clumping it in your hands, rubbing it all over your face and hair, then sitting there all day waiting for people to walk by so you can dramatically hunch your shoulders and say, 'Look at everything I have to go through!" When, let's just be honest, you could have left the poo on the ground where it belongs, gotten out of Toilet Valley, and taken a long hot shower called Moving Forward. 

For Lent if I could, I would 100 percent buy a remote and press a prolonged Mute command on anyone who began telling me how angry they were that their JCrew sweater frayed after three weeks or how their manicure chipped while they were cutting into a steak at Ruths Chris. Self pity is 1) highly unattractive, 2) pretty uncourageous, and 3) the first thing I would club in the face with a nail-covered baseball bat.