Grace, Why Has She Been Cancelled?

Humans. We are stupid. Especially humans with limited access to their prefrontal cortex. Part of the human experience is literally learning from all the dumb things we do. That is why I love Grace. When we were kids, we had a neighbor that would yell and throw dirt clods from her garden if she heard “devil music”. It was Grace that brought us down from the trampoline and taught us that it wasn’t nice to sing The Devil Went Down to Georgia over the top of the fence line. It was mean. funny to watch, entertaining to dodge projectile dirt bombs, but mean none the less. Grace always forgave us and then taught us how to be better humans. The problem is that Grace doesn’t come around much anymore, not since some jerk named Cancel moved into the neighborhood.

Cancel showed up and garnered popularity through social media. He gives his lackeys a false sense of power over others. He has a huge following that enjoys destroying lives completely. Nothing is ever learned, and no one ever walks away a better person after interacting with him. I had a brief altercation with Cancel when my youngest was four. His preschool teacher was exceptionally upset and wanted to call in Cancel for sexual harassment because my pre-schooler lifted the tutu of another kiddo in the class. After calming everyone down and explaining to my four-year-old that it was unacceptable to put hands on anyone without permission, I asked him why. It turned out he was curious about what to wear underneath because it looked itchy and he was seriously considering trying one on. Thankfully, Grace entered the room and dictated that we not Cancel the child with a sexual predator label. She taught him to simply ask next time.

Unfortunately, that was a long time ago and Cancel has now all but destroyed Grace’s social presence. People love Cancel. You see, he knows that it is impossible to make absolutely every person happy, dumb mistakes are part of humanity, and humans are predictably power hungry. Cancel wants to obliterate, and that is a lot easier than Grace’s demand of forgiveness.

I am thankful Grace was with me throughout the majority of my life. She knows I’ve done some ridiculous things. She helped me teach my kiddos to be better people. My daughter would never order her younger brother to spit red Tic-Tacs onto the white dresses of the neighborhood mean girls. Yeah. I did it, and thankfully no one was recording during the 80s. My kids know that running with Grace isn’t about retaliation. She is about forgiveness, inclusion, education, and humor. Unlike Cancel, Grace wants us to evolve.

I wish Grace was still popular. She has guided me through most of my life, and I wouldn’t be who I am without her. Even now, when I am tempted to scrape the stick figure parent off the back of someone’s windshield, she pops in to remind me that we don’t symbolically assassinate bad drivers/parkers.

Grace. I really freaking miss her. If more people gave her a chance, she might be able to gather enough influence to run that halfwit Cancel out of town. We should consider canceling Cancel, and quit joining his circle because it makes me struggle with Grace over the morality of removing your stick figure decal from your car.