“Saddest part is that no one is shocked.”
This was in a tweet about possible election fraud, but it’s not the first time I’ve seen it lately.

I just want to say that I’m probably shocked. In fact, I’m shocked fairly often. I don’t think that people are entirely hopeless, not all of us anyway. But in that stupidest-and-yet-truest of phrases, “we don’t know what we don’t know.” We’ve trusted the wrong people to parent us into adulthood – the news, McDonald’s, American Idol, the NFL… But it turns out that you can find things out from all kinds of places – family, other people, Twitter, the Internet, local stuff… And the more I learn, the more shocked I am on a regular basis. Try it at home.

My ex-husband used to call me naive a lot. I always thought it was a way of talking me out of things, but who knows, maybe he was right. I mean, I do want to believe the best of people. I’m often shocked by the stuff people get into when the teacher isn’t looking. You slept with who? You lied about what? But I’m actually a keeper of some horrible secrets for other people (because I don’t tell, duh)… And no, I don’t want to buy that swampland you’re selling, and I know politicians and humans lie. A lot.

I know you have ulterior motives, and I ignore them because I have work to do, things to say, and I can’t help whatever your issues are. “If you only knew what those men were thinking…”  Well, I do know. And so what? Thinking is still free, and honestly, if you only knew what *I* was thinking…!

So if I lose my ability to be shocked, I may as well just start taking a double dose of Soma, or Xanax, or meth, or television reality shows, and be done living any actual life on this planet.

P.S.
And I don’t mean crap like Jersey Shore, that is shocking to me mainly because people watch it at all. I mean like facts and stuff. The stuff behind the curtain – I never could resist peeking.