Man Down! Man Down!

Slamming doors, stomping feet, brow-furrowed faces and angry retreats. Harsh words, condemning voices, and flailing arms full of arguing dialect. These are just a few of the things that have been going on in my house of late; my nerves are shot and my left eye has a permanent twitch.

My oldest son has a MFA degree, more specifically, Creative Writing.  He has a book about to be published, and his tour is coming up soon as well. He’s a kind soul, with deeply penetrating thought processes, passionate about helping others, sees no color, and believes in safe places for all.

My youngest son is attending his second year of college and his degree will be in Business. He owns a Lawn Care service with a partner and they have been in business since he himself was 15 years old; he is now 19 years old. His thought processes are unbelievably keen and sharp for a young man his age; he’s incredibly informed and he too believes in helping others, but insists they must also be willing to help themselves.

By now you have probably deduced that I’ve had a Crazy Conservative and a Raging Liberal in my home for the past few weeks; those titles are self-pro-claimed, and I’m not saying who calls who, what name. My oldest son has been home trying to figure out his next direction in life and the differences between my two sons has never been more glaringly obvious. This is what happens when you raise young people to be independent, strong-minded, and resilient in their beliefs. My home has become a battlefield; it’s worse than any campaign candidacy where mud-slinging exists, that you could ever imagine.

On prior visits I have made the simple rule that discussions about politics, religion, or any other adversarial subjects must remain closed. Well, that works for a short period of time; the food is plentiful and mouth’s stay stuffed, and with a house full of visiting family, they are both easily distracted enough not stray from my requests.

Unfortunately, when you pack four weeks into one visit, it is inevitably going to happen; somehow, some way, somebody says something and it jumps off from there.  It begins fairly calm, and then slowly but surely, the passion crawls onto their faces, the hand gesturing begins, and before you know it, there’s a high-alert range of voices busting the roof off of my house, they are practically standing toe to toe and in each other’s faces, and war is now imminent.

Last week I took control of my domain, I stood up in the middle of my living room and told them I would no longer be their referee, or putting a switch on their grown-man legs, they could take that mess outside and duke it out.  They looked at me like I had grown another head; and silence was born.  They were both raised in the same house, so my main question is; how the heck did this happen and who are these people?