If you happened to catch me in one of my rare moments of honest introspection, I reckon I’d have to admit that we’ve been spoiled a bit lately. Unseasonably warm weather in the last week of autumn will do that. When you can go out in your shirt sleeves and comfortably mosey down to the horse barn, lollygag around with the feeding and stop to pet the cat on your way back to the house, you have to admit: yeah, we’re getting spoiled.

Now some folks appear to have a moral censure sort of response to spoiling, well at least when it’s someone else’s spoiling, they do. They see it happen with a toddler at the mall and they tsk, tsk, cluck their tongues, shake their heads sadly and are absolutely convinced they are witnessing the decline of the world’s current version of the Holy Roman Empire. They see some little brat throwing her bat or glove during a ball game and it’s the same thing; “Now that right there is what’s wrong with this country. Somebody needs to take that little missy out to the woodshed and teach her some manners.” Just for emphasis, they might feel the need to spit a clutch of tobacco juice on the ground right where you’re standing.

I do have to admit that the sight of someone else spoiling their kids, their grandkids, or adult children is just absolutely sickening. It is thoroughly disgusting to see someone else getting undeserved favors for which we’d happily trade our neighbor’s eye teeth or other treasured parts.

Now just in case we folks here in the midst of the mildest bit of December you could ever hope for might be starting to arouse some of that ill will that is usually reserved for folks in southern Florida during January, I just want to let you know that you can relax a bit. You can re-direct that resentment toward some vastly overpaid CEO, professional athlete or other entertainer.

With the wind howling out of the northwest and our morning temperature at approximately one-third of what it was yesterday, I can assure you there was absolutely no lollygagging during the morning feeding today! But we might want to ask ourselves, is it really godly to resent someone else’s good fortune and feel a wee bit of secret pleasure when some sort of ill comes their way?

H. Arnett
12/16/14