**It’s late and I’m a little rant-y here. I use the word ass a couple of times, and imply the word bitch. If that kind of language offends you, please come back another day. If you read on, no complaining about my saltiness,  because I warned you!**

Before we go any further, let me point out my bona fides here. There is someone in my family who fits into any number “special” groups. I’m the mom of a big family, one kid has learning disabilities, one is in a wheelchair, one was stillborn, one is in public school, five are homeschooled, I’m a teacher and a writer, my father was adopted, my mother has a TBI (traumatic brain injury)….in other words, we’re so special that our family is exactly like yours in that we all have issues and every one of us fits into some kind of specially labeled box.

All that to say that I’m beyond tired of the blog posts about what we ought not say to people – 15 things to not to say to people with chronic illnesses, 12 things to never say to teachers, 5 things to not say to women over 30, 10 things to not say about an adopted child, 10 things to not say to sleep deprived parents, and the lists are endless. At this moment in time, there are no fewer than 11 of these lists in my Facebook feed with a total of 135 things I shouldn’t be saying. I’m torn between the notion that people either really are this clueless about how to behave, or that bloggers have run out of things to talk about. Either way, it’s left me wondering exactly how many groups of people are out there being innocently offended every single day.

After the mind-numbing slog through all of these “not-to-say” posts, I can tell you that they’re all pretty much the same when you break them down. The individual “rules” may be different, but that doesn’t matter. Let me break it down for you, just

DON’T BE AN ASS!

See how simple that is? It really does apply to just about every situation. Just stop being an ass to other people, and you’ll stop offending the vast majority.

If you’re a parent, your first job is to teach your kids to love God, and your second is to

TEACH YOUR KIDS HOW TO NOT BE AN ASS!

There you go. As long as you follow those simple rules for dealing with other people, you’re good. It’s not really all that difficult at all.

For those of us who fall into some sort of special group (which is all of us), we need to

STOP BEING SO FREAKING SENSITIVE ABOUT

EVERYTHING!

The truth is that most of the people who say things which hurt your feelings or get you in a huff don’t mean to. They’re ignorant, and they’re Mamas clearly didn’t teach them any better. (Bless their hearts.) Whether or not you’re offended is a choice that you get to make. The dumb stuff isn’t forcing you to be upset, you’re choosing that for yourself. (Unless they’re being rude on purpose,  then you should be upset,  because that guy is a jerk!)

Chances are, that if you’re hearing the same dumb things over and over again it’s because most people don’t know, and it’s a common misconception! If you have the time and the inclination, you can always educate them kindly. The world will be a slightly better place because you took the time to shine some light into the darkness of their ignorance. If you don’t want to or don’t have the time to enlighten them, you can always walk away unscathed, because they weren’t doing it on purpose!!!

Yes, I know that it’s hard. I know that it’s painful when people ask why (insert whatever it is here), or say dumb things, or stare at you or your children and it would be nice to b*&#h slap some sense into them. I get it. Smacking them won’t smarten them up though, I promise. All you can control is yourself and your reactions. Perhaps the better choice would be to not live in a constant state of outrage and prickly over-sensitivity, because no matter how dumb whatever they said was, THEY probably DIDN’T MEAN IT THAT WAY! So let it go.

All you can do is to pray for the stupid ones, instruct the ignorant…and you should probably pray for the mean ones too. I will admit that I like to instruct the intentionally rude ones first though. I find that a disgusted look and “You’re too (old, smart, funny, clever, whatever) to be this much of a jerk” (I say ass, but I promised my mom that I’d try to keep the bad words on my blog to a minimum) is very effective.

That’s all that you can do.

So please remember the next time that someone says something dumb to you, they most likely don’t mean it to be as dumb as it sounds to you. The majority of humanity really do mean well. Cut us some slack, and for the love of Pete, please stop telling us what not to say.