Okay, kiddies, listen up. It’s time to stop all this playground foolishness. Mean things were said, feelings were hurt, gauntlets were thrown and sides were chosen. And then, charges were leveled, apologies were made and the olive branch was snapped in two.

Now most of us who have been here on OS for any appreciable amount of time have participated in our own share of dust-ups, flare wars and hurt feelings. We’ve slung hateful (albeit exceedingly clever) words in another’s direction and we’ve been the recipient of the same on more than one occasion. If you have not participated in any of the above-listed behavior, well, welcome to OS. You must be new.

I myself have done the righteous indignation, mortally-wounded, I’m so outta here flounce on a couple of occasions, but I could never stay away, so I finally reigned myself in and stopped faux-flouncing. If there’s one thing I can do oh-so-well, it’s to get my feelings hurt. I can swoon and fester with the best of them. On OS and in real life, both.

I’ve also played the role of raging asshole. I have a tongue that can shred a person with the merest provocation and the vocabulary to make one wonder if I really meant what it sounded like. (Yes, I did.) I’ve poked out virtual eyes, ripped cyber arms off and flung them to the ground, and pulled virtual heads off and hollered down the virtual hole.

In short, I’ve been the bully and the victim, depending on what day it is. Some months, I just get up on the wrong side of the bed. I am not now, nor have I ever been, terminally cheery. I have my good days, too, but the word ‘bitch’ has been leveled at me with just provocation more than once.

When I sit down and really give it some thought, I realize that I am actually capable of being both a bitch and a victim at the same damn time. Now that is a feat worth writing home about. Not really, it’s not that hard – any woman worth her salt can pull that off.

So, let’s be real here, okay? No one is all good, and no one is all bad. Things just aren’t that black and white – never have been and never will be. Trust me when I tell you that I’ve done things that would curl your hair were I to ever fess up to them (I never will), and I’ve also been downright angelic at times, in word and in deed.

You know what that’s called? It’s called being human. Yep. It’s all part of the human condition. Sometimes we succeed, sometimes we fail. We’re good, we’re bad. We rant, we rave, we console and we congratulate. There’s a little bit of good in all of us and there is, believe it or not, a little bit of that ole ‘debil’ in all of us, too.

We don’t like it that way. We want absolutes. Absolutes like, all Republicans are assholes or all Democrats are raging liberals. Clean hearts or hearts as black as coal. Warm and fuzzy or rotten to the core. Somehow, we just find it hard to grasp the concept of good and evil co-existing in the same heart. Yeah, whatever, would that it were that easy, folks. It just isn’t.

Right about here is where I play the conciliatory but bitchy ace-in-the hole. Here it is: knock it off, folks. I won’t name names. I don’t have to; everyone knows what and who this post is about. But, just stop already with the protestations and the apologies and the jabs and the counter jabs. Enough.

Think about this: in the grand scheme of things, is either of you (or your opinions or your feelings) important enough that this little episode will even be a blip on the radar a few months from now? I think not. Let’s stop taking ourselves so damn seriously around here. It’s Open Salon for Pete’s sake, not the Nobel Peace Prize. If one of you wants to be all touchy-feely and run around making people feel good, so be it. There’s not enough of that in the world, anyway. And if the other of you wants to be a bully who shoots his mouth off and then pulls the “I was just being honest” card, so be it. Big deal. There are plenty of assholes around. No big surprise there and no monopoly on that one either.

Get over your damn selves. Compromise is good for the soul. For both of you.

There. First post on OS under my real name. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.