My Goodness

Nearly daily I run across something that makes me correct my age-old statement, “I’ve seen everything.”

That is called a gratuitous assertion.  Of course, I haven’t seen everything inasmuch as I have never been to Thailand. 

The point is that I should say “Nothing surprises me.”  Then again, something always does.

While recently reading a Florida newspaper article, I came across a name – Daniell Rider.  Daniell is a female shopper at Hobby Lobby in Florida.

Hobby Lobby is a well known religious-oriented craft store that showcases crosses, God-related plaques, fake flowers, picture frames, and is always closed on the Sabbath.  The “Sabbath,” for all you atheists, is the Christian Sunday.

It seems as though Ms. Rider is additionally overly-sensitive to her surroundings.

You see, Ms. Rider, while visiting her local Hobby Lobby, noticed a fake cotton sprig hanging on the wall, as a display.  This tragic commentary on the state of slaves sent Ms. Rider into a tizzy.

She felt compelled to publicly shame and chastise Hobby Lobby for pandering to all the Confederate soldiers and plantation owners by using cotton, a symbol of racism, as a decoration.

I completely agree with her in her premise about cotton being “sensitive and unnecessary” to be utilized as a decoration.

This is where I stand corrected.  I never thought I would view my denim jeans and my cotton t-shirts as tools of the Confederacy that are holding blacks in bondage just to pick this racist commodity.  Yes, I was wrong.

Out went my tablecloth, kitchen curtains, flannel sheets, and everything else I could imagine was fabricated from that prejudiced plant.

Ms. Rider has a good point.  Hobby Lobby’s offensive display of bigoted tokens, such as plastic cotton plant branches, clearly demonstrates their thick-skinned approach to the Civil War.

So it is with Ms. Rider that I stand proudly to try to get in my fifteen-minutes of fame by poking my crooked little finger in the chest of a proverbial Goliath so that my fellow travelers – also easily offended types – can cheer our hollow victory, together.

Thank you, Ms. Rider.  You have achieved a once-in-a-lifetime accomplishment of nearly curing cancer, or finding world peace, in the form of a shallow internet posting about a plastic plant.

You go, girl!