this page from Snopes.com<\/a>\u00a0on the screen, disproving the story.<\/p>\nNow Jackie is at a moral crossroads. She has to make a choice. The actual facts do not appear to be in dispute, but she is invested in this story. She has told it before, several times. She has endured quite a bit of discomfort at airports because she believed it to be true. Forced to choose by the Snopes page confronting her on Dan\u2019s phone, she will either have to disavow or double-down.<\/p>\n
When it comes to it, this kind of moral crossroads is rarely experienced as a difficult dilemma. A choice must be made, but that choice will almost always be based on the kind of person making it \u2014 based on the character and habits and practice that have shaped that person up until this moment of choosing. A good Jackie will take one path, a bad Jackie will take the other.<\/p>\n
Good Jackie will quickly realize that her co-worker led her astray. The persuasive personal embellishments about the magazine and the cousin must have been outright lies. Good Jackie may have to talk with her co-worker about this, and will trust her less in the future.<\/p>\n
She will then be dismayed to recall the other occasions on which she repeated this story, reminding herself that she will need to correct that at her next opportunity. That will be somewhat embarrassing, as it will involve admitting to a measure of naivete, but Good Jackie, being good, long ago realized that such small embarrassments were never as painful or as damaging as the sort of preposterously defensive lies one becomes trapped in if one attempts to live a life wholly free of embarrassment.<\/p>\n
Good Jackie, being good, also has a sense of humor and that will be her saving grace. Having a sense of humor entails finding a joke funny even when you yourself are the butt of it, as Good Jackie quickly realizes she has been here.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh my goodness,\u201d she says, laughing. \u201cWhen I got back from California I had to pee\u00a0so bad<\/em>\u00a0and I held it all the way home because of the stupid spiders.\u201d She works this into a long, funny story about an enormously uncomfortable cab ride ending with a massively overlarge tip because she couldn\u2019t bear to wait one more second for change. That story will, for you and all your friends gathered there, be forever linked to the urban legend about the South American toilet spiders. None of you will ever spread that legend, but you\u2019ll retell it again and again just to set up the story of poor Jackie squirming in the cab, doing those lamaze breathing exercises the whole way home. (It\u2019s funniest when Jackie tells it because of the faces she makes when she does the breathing thing.)<\/p>\nAnd forever after, whenever any two of you are together in an airport, you will make jokes about toilet spiders and you will laugh warmly because Jackie is your friend and you love her.<\/p>\n
The story of Bad Jackie does not end as happily. Bad Jackie chooses the other path, doubling down and defending the story despite the evidence confronting her on Dan\u2019s iPhone.<\/p>\n
Like Good Jackie, she also recalls having told the toilet spider story many times. Unlike Good Jackie, she tended to appropriate the personal embellishments for herself \u2014 saying\u00a0she<\/em>\u00a0read it in a magazine, and that her\u00a0own<\/em>\u00a0cousin knew the unfortunate woman. That wasn\u2019t true, but it wasn\u2019t something she had planned to say or thought about much even as she was doing it. It just seemed like that was how the story needed to be told. That was what made it exciting and fascinating to her, so she needed to make it just as exciting and fascinating for the people she told it to as well. But because she said those things, her own credibility is tightly tied to the credibility of the story. Accepting that the story is false would be much more embarrassing for her than it would be for Good Jackie.<\/p>\nBad Jackie cannot tolerate embarrassment, which means it is very important to her that she is never wrong \u2014 almost as important to her as pointing out when others are. Bad Jackie has got it in her head that this is where her value comes from. If she is right and others are wrong, then they are bad and she is good. So if she were to accept being wrong \u2014 even due to having been innocently deceived \u2014 then she would be bad. And she knows that deep down she has a good heart and so that can\u2019t be true and she must be right after all. She\u00a0must<\/em>\u00a0be.<\/p>\nHer identity is at stake, you see. Her self-concept and with it her self-worth. This doesn\u2019t excuse what she does next, but it can help to understand, and to understand is always a step closer toward forgiving.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt happened!\u201d she insists, swatting away Dan\u2019s phone and suggesting he\u2019s gullible to take \u201csome blog\u2019s word\u201d over her own.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a moment of tension as the rest of you exchange the nervous glances you share whenever Jackie gets like this, telepathically communicating \u201cJust drop it \u2014 you know how she is.\u201d You can see the fight-or-flight instinct taking over in Jackie and Big Drama seems imminent. Dan looks like he\u2019s about to say something \u2014 this Dan is a less patient, less kind person than the Dan in the other variation, because this Dan has spent years hanging out with Bad Jackie instead of with Good Jackie \u2014 but just then Susan cuts him off and saves the day by telling a long funny story about the spiders in the outhouse when she was dating Outdoorsy Guy and he took her to his cabin in Maine for the weekend. This segues into a lively, nonthreatening conversation about whether indoor plumbing might constitute a necessary, if not sufficient, condition for romance. Everyone is glad and relieved to move on as though the whole bit with Bad Jackie and the toilet spiders hadn\u2019t happened.<\/p>\n
But everyone remembers. And whenever any two of you, not including Jackie, are together in an airport, you will make jokes about toilet spiders and laugh, coolly, because Jackie has been your friend forever and you love her. But sometimes it\u2019s just so much easier when she\u2019s not around.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A choice must be made, but that choice will almost always be based on the kind of person making it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
9\/19 Flashback: Bad Jackie<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A choice must be made, but that choice will almost always be based on the kind of person making it.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2022\/09\/19\/9-19-flashback-bad-jackie\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"9\/19 Flashback: Bad Jackie\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A choice must be made, but that choice will almost always be based on the kind of person making it.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2022\/09\/19\/9-19-flashback-bad-jackie\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"slacktivist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2022-09-19T11:00:02+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2022-09-16T19:11:23+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Fred Clark\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Fred Clark\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2022\/09\/19\/9-19-flashback-bad-jackie\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2022\/09\/19\/9-19-flashback-bad-jackie\/\",\"name\":\"9\/19 Flashback: Bad Jackie\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2022-09-19T11:00:02+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2022-09-16T19:11:23+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#\/schema\/person\/32666545e535b697afb93d9848dcfc47\"},\"description\":\"A choice must be made, but that choice will almost always be based on the kind of person making it.\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2022\/09\/19\/9-19-flashback-bad-jackie\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2022\/09\/19\/9-19-flashback-bad-jackie\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2022\/09\/19\/9-19-flashback-bad-jackie\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"9\/19 Flashback: Bad Jackie\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/\",\"name\":\"slacktivist\",\"description\":\""Test everything; hold fast to what is good."\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#\/schema\/person\/32666545e535b697afb93d9848dcfc47\",\"name\":\"Fred Clark\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/7083ccd514d4fb8d5043041756d766a0?s=96&d=identicon&r=pg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/7083ccd514d4fb8d5043041756d766a0?s=96&d=identicon&r=pg\",\"caption\":\"Fred Clark\"},\"description\":\"Fred Clark is a graduate of Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary (now called Palmer Seminary), of Eastern College (now called Eastern University) and of the fundamentalist Timothy Christian High School (still fundamentalist and still called Timothy Christian High School, but not really thrilled to have a snarky, liberal, tree-hugging, pro-choice, pro-GLBT, peacenik, commie, evolutionist as such a vocal alumnus). 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark1\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/141"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60793"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60793\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}