Mind Your Business

Sorry that this post is coming late this week. I was stage crew for "The Face of Emmett Till," and it's been a long and very emotional week. My girlfriend was rolling with me all Saturday and she went with me to the play. She had no idea of the importance of Emmett Till's death so her attendance was educational as well as entertaining. (For information on the death of Emmett Till, go to www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/till/).

But anyway, during this long and emotional week, I get a call from my meddling cousin who had picked up my grandmother along with his grandmother (my great aunt) to take to the grocery store. He calls me demanding to know what I was doing, when I was going to work and even where I worked - he would've known had he used my number for good. After rolling my eyes for a second (I am 24 after all), this man tells me that I'm wrong for not taking my grandmother to the grocery and that sometimes we have to take off from work to take care of our grandparents. He went on to say before I hung up on him that if it were him, he would have taken the keys away from the car that his uncle (my grandfather) left me.

All that's good and well and if I was the trifling granddaughter he made me sound like, he would've been correct in telling me what he did. But here's the immediate problem, I go to work almost everyday and my grandmother didn't even say anything to me about her needing to go to the grocery store. She just wanted to get out of the house and was presented with the perfect opportunity when she talked to her sister. If he had even bothered to ask, I took off from work two days before so that Granny and I could get our hair done and I paid for both. If he had bothered to ask, she had been to the grocery store earlier that week. But he didn't ask. He assumed and we all know what assuming does.

And I'm not going to put all his business on blast, but let's just say that he had no business telling me how and when to take care of my grandmother. He doesn't live in this house, he doesn't pay any of our bills and he needs to be taking care of his own business. Now, I say all of this (I'm off my soapbox): Don't look for the speck in my eye before you remove the beam from your own eye. That's just fancy talk for - Mind your business. If you meddle in other folks' business without getting the full story, you'll end up looking like a fool.

However, my cousin wasn't the only one wrong. I called my daddy full of fire about what my cousin said to me. Then, my daddy was full of fire because he doesn't like when his baby girl is upset (yeah, I'm spoiled rotten. Sue me). He asked for my cousin's number because he was going to take care of it. And I obliged because my daddy can spit hotter fire than I could and say it all in good Christian love. But as the day wore on, I realized that I wasn't minding my business - I was allowing someone else to mind my business. I called my daddy back to tell him not to call my cousin. I was a grown woman and I would handle my own business.

So this long diatribe is to say just handle your own business so you don't end up looking like a fool. It's best for everyone involved and your own business is enough for you to handle. Welcome to my reality show. :)