A few years ago a friend  and I were driving to the Mall to do a little Christmas shopping when the song ” Baby It’s Cold Outside ” came on the radio

With one bony finger she reached out and punched the select key and changed the station.

I looked over at her and she crinkled her nose up and said, ‘ that song is a rape-y don’t you think? I think we can find something a little less rape-y to listen to, don’t you think? ”

What I thought was, it was my car and my radio and also words like ” rape-y are stupid. If you are trying to make a point and you use a word like ‘rape-y’ in your argument then you lose that point.

So she chose a rock station and the song that was playing was by AC/DC and though the song playing wasn’t rape-y it was about someone who would rid you of a authority figure or a lover who annoys you to death by simply making a call. I’ve heard thatt song millions of times and I’m pretty sure you can choose  the manner of death. The Killer has at his disposal tools like TNT, concrete shoes and cyanide. Pick one, hell pick two.

It’s not a rape-y song though, so I guess in my bony fingered friend’s world that makes it ok.

I’ve also learned from a few articles that drifted my way that Rudolph was the victim of bullying and that the reindeer and Santa only liked him when he had something that they could use- who writes a story like that for children and should we encourage kids to keep watching it? What kind of message is Rudolph sending?

I’ll go out on a limb and say it’s about a reindeer who got picked on and ran away and in the end he chose to help the people in his life who let him down. People do that in the real world everyday. If we are all a bunch of D$#% who screech KARMA and walk away the world gets to be an ugly place. Don’t believe me? I invite you to check out the newsfeed on your favorite social media platform.  It’s nasty out there and I don’t feel the need to add to it.

Rudolph wouldn’t like it.

And then there’s Harry Potter’s creator- J.K.  Rowling. The hate there is real but when people start demanding I burn my book and toss away my DVD’s  to show my support for the community she wronged I have to point this out.

My favorite author – among all of the authors that I love is Charles Dickens.

When I read my Dickens books I read them slowly. Maybe a chapter or two a night. Sometimes I read them out loud because books written in that era were designed to be ‘performed’ and when you read them out loud it heightens the experience.

On top of that, let’s face it, Christmas as we know it is haunted by Dickens famous story, ” A Christmas Carol. ”

So along with being a great writer Charles Dickens humiliated his wife, Catherine Dickens by not only banging a girl young enough to be his daughter, he tried to have his wife committed to an insane asylum so that he could be unencumbered  with his true ‘love’.

Do you know what they DID to people in those places during the Victorian era? It was truly a hell on Earth and Dickens tried to have is wife sent there.

Tragically Dickens chose to  use his creative talents to paint the Mother of his children as fat, ugly and dim witted. Charles Dickens had an amazing talent for creating characters that people could see, that they could hear. When he chose to turn that talent to recreate Catherine there was no way he was going to not be successful  it.

The reality is, Charles Dickens is my favorite author, but he is not my favorite human being.

The empty house that you could call my self esteem has had it’s windows smashed by the men in my life and to be honest, I never got them repaired. I just covered them with plastic and called it good. I suppose you could assume that I would hate Dickens with a brain burning passion. I mean I have been painted as the slow witted, fat and unattractive significant other to the more deserving males that I suppose I should have been grateful for having spent time in my life.

That being said it’s say to say I might even make it my mission in life to wipe Dickens and his ‘brothers’ out of existence. But I won’t because the windows that I mentioned earlier aren’t going to magically fix themselves because Charles Dickens and husbands or boyfriends like him don’t exist anymore.

However, when I read Dickens books and I see a dark hearted character come to life I guess I understand where that character came from and when I see the characters in Dickens stories reach for redemption- redemption that sometimes they achieve that and sometimes they don’t,  I understand what is going on there. It’s a little sad no matter the outcome. But in the end understanding who Dickens was adds to the experience of reading Dickens work.

In a life where we can point, click and delete someone or something into or out of existance I have to wonder what the world will look like after we’ve done all of those reality edits.

Now there’s a story to tell on a dark cold winter night when you’re all alone with just your thoughts for company.

Providing of course, they don’t upset anyone and you’re allowed to keep them with you.