Lessons to be learned

You know, some people really need to let things go. I know that is something strange coming from me, but come on people. This girl in Waxahachie got her panties in a wad because in a group photo in her high school annual she was identified as black girl. Coming from a newspaper background, I immediately knew what happened. The editor or whoever was doing that page didn't have her name and used a term that would help her remember to find the kid's name. She was the only black girl in the group. It helped identify her. When pages were proofed, someone missed it. But, here id the deal. She is black and she is a girl. No one said nappy headed bitch. No one said fat chick. Nothing offensive was used as the placeholder. It was simply black girl. This chick said on the news that she'll never be able to look at her yearbook again. Why? Because someone made a mistake and called you a black girl? That just seems silly to me. It would be like a photo caption of me with the soccer team and it says soccer mom instead of my name. Ok, that would be a way to describe who I am. Old white lady. Whatever. If it isn't offensive, why get so bent out of shape over a mistake?

When I was working as a reporter in West Texas, we would list our "daily budget" on the computer. That essentially was the list of stories and art we were working on for the day. One afternoon we had a meeting of the Eagle Forum, which was all the old lady conservative Republicans in the area. We would list it as the "blue hairs meet" or something along those lines. One day, the old gals came in to make sure we were covering their event and I called up the budget and they were looking over my shoulders at the list. Fortunately, their eyesight wasn't good enough to read the small print because there it was: blue hair luncheon. Yikes.

Two lessons to be learned here. First, be careful of what you do as placeholders, etc. Someone's feelings could be injured by what you write, even if no malice is intended. Secondly, lighten the fishstick up! If the worse thing this chick could be called is a black girl, I think she's doing pretty good. My FRIENDS call me worse!