I've always been told I was naive, too trusting, that given the opportunity, people will sell you out, not give you a chance. I've had female friends who have sometimes thought that because I choose to be loving and kind, I don't know squat about how nasty people can be. But it's the men in my life who have said this directly, the husbands, boyfriends, friends, as in, "Vi, everyone in the world isn't nice." Duh.

I started out shy. Shyness means that I don't trust you, and I don't trust me. Once you're shy, you never get over it entirely, although you can come to a place where you function with confidence most of the time. However, there are times of illness, PMS and menopausal moments, lack of sleep moments where it rears up again. During those times when I'm functioning at less than capacity, sometimes I make mistakes, saying or doing something that others take wrong, a time when misunderstanding is born. Sometimes I never realize that a misunderstanding has occurred. Nothing happens everything is fine. Sometimes when I'm functioning with my lame brain, misunderstanding occurs, and things aren't fine, no one tells me, and I am judged. Sometimes when I do something ignorant while in ditz mode, I become aware of it, apologize but am not forgiven. People back away and don't give me a chance. And sometimes I do this, apologize, and everything is fine.

It really comes down to how mature everyone is, how easily they can just let things slide off, and where they are at any given moment in their own ditz modes.

One of the problems with friends we make online, ones that we never meet physically, is that we don't have a chance to look the other person in the eye and know they are good people or not. So when something seems to go wrong misunderstanding can abound.

Recently my husband changed email handlers for our Internet computer. The buttons were in different places, and I wasn't familiar with the workings of the program yet. He gave me an off color joke. I then sent it on to my buddies, some of whom I had met online. Problems was, I was in my menopausal not sleeping mode and some the synapses were not firing. So I put in the addresses of the people I wanted to send it too, and sent it out. I didn't realize until the next night, when he found this message in his email sent file that I had forgotten to change his email address to mine. Now all these ladies thought he had sent them this joke, now they could think my lovely husband, who respects women a lot, has ulterior motives. Good grief. So I send out apologies and a bit of an explanation, hoping that was enough.

Misunderstanding is such a strange thing, don't you think? We can assign people all kinds of motives they don't have, based on how we are feeling at the time. One of the definition of understanding listed by the American Heritage Dictionary is: To know and be tolerant or sympathetic toward. Misunderstanding would be the opposite.

One of my goals is to become more understanding of all points of view, even those who do horrible things. But understanding should not be confused with naivete. I don't plan to leave myself vulnerable. I just hope to learn to stop judging and grow up a lot.