In the last issue, I wrote a satirical piece that didn’t sit well with some readers. As brilliant and handsome as I am, neither of those things makes me perfect.  The article I wrote was called “Couple Celebrating 50 Year Anniversary is Disgusting.”

I have to remember that things don’t always read on paper as well as in my head.  What I thought was clever just came off as mean.  Anyone who read the article probably thought I was saying that old people are disgusting, and that being married for so long is something to scoff at.

Yikes!  I’m surprised there isn’t a mob outside my door to defend the honor of the fictional couple Murray and Blanche Christianson in the stock photo.  And I would gladly offer myself up to that mob.

However, that wasn’t my intention in writing it.  I don’t write satire to be nasty.  I’m not saying that old people are disgusting, but that sometimes love can be so over-the-top cute that it can be a bit off-putting.   I chose an old couple precisely because they were the cutest damn thing I could think of.  Just makes my heart melt, you know?  And some people find that much sweetness, well, disgusting.

Hell, I can’t imagine a better future for myself than a relationship like that.  It’s no easy task.  But it sometimes seems that way to us from the outside.  We sneer at those cutesy couples and scoff at their accomplishments precisely because we don’t understand, and because some deep part of our lizard brain doesn’t like to see other people have something that we lack.  That is what I was trying to satirize.

Unfortunately, my brilliance and handsomeness may have been what blinded me to the fact that not everyone has all that information, that I need to think about how people might receive my work.  It’s not so important how you intend something as how people interpret it.