Dear Dealing With The Douchebags;

This is exactly why I don’t have parties in my place. There’s always some douchebag. Usually somebody you thought was your friend. That’s how they got to your party in the first place. It’s like before the interwebz came along when you assumed that your friends were smart enough to know the difference between their, they’re, and there. Now thanks to an excessive amount of time on Facebook you know that they don’t.

Yes, your friends would do something like that. I know they would do something like that for a fact because your friends did do something like that. Something exactly like that. But even without the harsh reality of the point being driven home by their actions we can arrive at this conclusion theoretically.

I’m sure most people reading this (and those not reading this as well – but everyone should be reading Ask Us Fort Collins) think their friends would never do things like steal, rape, murder or molest children. Yet all of the people who do those things have friends. Logic tells you that your friends are not the virginal and pure snowflakes you suspected them to be. BTW, neither are you.  You may fool others, you don’t fool me.  Your initial reaction that your friends would never do something like steal from your neighbours was a bit naïve. Reality has now rendered its lesson. It’s up to you to learn from it.

Not stealing things from other people is one of the basic concepts of life that you would think people would be familiar with. Religion. Public school. Parenting. Philosophy and logic. A less cynical person than I would think those institutions would impart the concept of property rights. A less cynical person would be wrong. A vast number of people manage to make it through life being completely oblivious to the fact that other people’s stuff does not belong to them. We call these people politicians. And you keep voting for them and obeying them.  But that’s another topic.

Being friends with politicians is a really bad idea. Letting them into your home is an even worse idea.

But you know what the good thing about being friends with politicians is? It provides you with the opportunity to stop being friends with politicians. The first thing you need to do is make it clear to these people they are not your friends any more. You may have to continue to associate with them occasionally at social functions but make it clear to them that they will not be coming back to your home ever again.

It’s also possible you work with one or more of these friends. Thus you’re going to have to interact with somebody at work whom you know is incapable of distinguishing between his property and other people’s property. You will have to be nice to this person at work but you should not trust this person.

As far as your neighbours go what do you do about it?

You tell them the truth. Knock on their door and when they open it you say:

“Hello. Remember when I told you that none of my friends would’ve stolen your wreaths? Well I was full of shift. Turns out that some of my friends did steal your property. In the past I had really poor judgement regarding who I selected as friends. That’s because I didn’t listen to Skippy at Ask Us Fort Collins dot com.  He has written numerous times about how people should be selective regarding who they are friends with. I chose not to listen to him because I think I know more than he does. I am now embarking on a journey of self-discovery where I am learning and improving my life by removing people I shouldn’t be wasting my time with.

Anyway my former friends who are douchebags stole your property and they’re not my friends any more. I am going to tell them to return your property to you in person and apologize to you. If they don’t do that I’m going to give you their names and addresses and phone numbers and email addresses and allow you to deal with this as you see fit.”

And that takes care of that. In the year 2014 when people can’t shut up about being honest and genuine and compassionate you need to be honest with your neighbours about your ex-friends dishonesty. You need to genuinely give your ex-friends the opportunity to genuinely make amends to your neighbours. You need to be compassionate to yourself and remove these idiots from your life because they don’t deserve your compassion.

Ultimately what your ex-friends should do in order to make this up to your neighbours should be left up to your neighbours. Throw you ex-friends to the wolves and let the feast begin. Some people have to learn the hard way and your ex-friends are asking for an education.