Be A Duck...

Be a Duck…

While venting one day to my friend, Charlotte, she told me to, “be a duck”.  I wasn’t quick on the uptake so I asked her what that meant.  She said, “You just have to let things roll off like water on a duck’s back.”  Sometimes that’s easier said than done and if you are a “duck” does that mean you let people walk all over you?  Or, are you taking the high road and not causing conflict?

         

For those that don’t know me I have a tendency to say whatever is on my mind, especially if there’s alcohol in my body.  It may come as a surprise to those that do know me that I often bite my tongue to keep if from wagging.  In fact, I just deleted an entire paragraph from this blog because even though I used a fake name to protect the guilty, I would rather not have to deal with the attitudes of people when I call them out on their $*#%.  Someone that can admit shortcomings will laugh and say, “Oh, I do do that, don’t I?” A person that doesn’t like to see their faults and own them will get angry and start to shift the blame to me or you or whoever is in a dead cat slinging radius.  When that happens, I have discovered that those people are the most difficult to try and drive a point home.  That’s when you become a duck because you can’t argue with stupid.

I have friends and acquaintances that say that they hate drama and try to avoid it.  Yet, they are somehow always involved in it.  If you’re a duck, you let things go and choose your battles wisely.  To those that somehow avoid it, bravo to you.  To those that are constantly involved in it, you may need to look at a life change.  And to those that try to avoid it but somehow get thrown in the middle of it while kicking and screaming, you tried but some people just can’t help but bring others down to their level.  When I hear things that people have to say about me that don’t associate with me let alone hang out in my circle of friends, it used to anger me.  Now, I’ve become a duck.  If I got in a tizzy every time someone talked about my business, which FYI, is rather boring, I’d stay wound up. Once I started letting those things go, the feeling in my left arm came back and the dizziness went away. There’s a saying that’s famous in the South, “Honey, don’t talk about yourself, I’ll do that when you’re gone.” And the classic, “The good thing about living in a small town is when you don’t know what you’re doing, someone else does.”  I’ve had to be a duck many times due to such nonsense.  I just shake my head and roll my eyes. I’ve rolled my eyes so much, though, that they may stick that way just like my mama told me they would do.

I’ve had many cases in life where I have said things to people to put them in their place or just to let out some hostility that had been building.  Sometimes you just got to let that stuff out or you will explode like a volcano.  There’s nothing wrong with expressing yourself as long as you know the time and place to do it and is it that important that you could lose a friend?  Of course, if you lose a friend over speaking your mind to them when they rub you the wrong way, were you really that great of friends?  Let me answer that for you…no.  Then there are the times when you just smile and nod while ferociously biting your tongue because sometimes, it’s O.K. to let things go and be a duck.  There are lots of great ducks throughout history.  There’s Daffy and Donald and speech impediments aside, they were pretty cool.  Sure, they were always second fiddle to Bugs and Mickey but they let it roll right off just like a duck.