Either way, I went into a full-tilt hissy fit Sunday afternoon as I left to go meet a friend about a space for one of our homeschool clubs. My oldest child was outside on our patio as incredibly loud metal music blared across the fence we share with our neighbors.
The volume was bad enough.
But the lyrics sent me over the edge.
"Crazy b**ch, she's a crazy b**ch. Crazy b**ch, crazy b**ch," and on and on and ON it went.
Repetitive, incessantly foul.
Fortunately it was just distorted enough that my nine-year-old didn't pick up any new vocabulary.
As I headed towards the car, I hollered at her to go back inside. Just as she turned to go in, her younger two siblings came tumbling out the back door. Then I really hollered, in part to be heard over the din of profanity pouring out of my neighbor's yard and partly because now I was on the other side of a gate I'd just locked and I was in a huge hurry. "Go inside! Go inside, now!" My six-year-old looked confused. "Just go!" I said, as the blue language swirled around me. "Crazy b**ch," over and over and over.
About that time my husband also came out and looked puzzled as I repeatedly yelled at him to "take the kids back inside! NOW! Take them inside NOW! I don't want them to hear that trash!"
He did, and it wasn't until I got home that I was able to explain my command.
Interestingly enough, he said, it wasn't but about 10 minutes after I pulled out of the driveway that the music stopped altogether. Maybe my neighbor's teenage son heard my remarks about his taste in music. My voice does carry far and away.
Or maybe his mother decided she didn't want his little five-year-old sister to hear the lyrics, either.
As an aside, I heard on the news today that fewer Americans ascribe to a religion, down so many tenths of a percent from several years ago.
When I think about the music next door, the millions of dollars the media says our society spends on pornography, the flirtation with socialism that seems to be growing into a full-fledged love affair, the ease with which the Madoffs and Stanfords and Lays of the world cheat their fellow men, I guess I'm not surprised that religion -- moral and ethical accountability to a higher power -- is falling by the wayside.
St. Paul said it, folks. To be carnally minded is death. When we love the things of the world more than we love God and our families and neighbors, it's a short slide downhill all the way to the bottom.
And that's not crazy.
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