What a nice backhanded compliment!

I was really tempted to write back again, but this time, I was gonna be mean. My first thought was to introduce Jim to the concept called a “flame war.” I’ve been involved in a few and I’m pretty sure he hasn’t, so it would have been unpleasant. My second thought was to make them more like messages I sent back and forth with the professor who ran the soccer club at Normandale. I was on the team and played for a month or two before slightly dislocating my kneecap—it popped right back into place, but I had swollen cartilage in my knee for a few months and couldn’t play.

Consequently, I wanted to give my spot on the team to someone else. He wrote to tell me I couldn’t do that, I replied that someone said I could, so he let me know that that person had no idea what he was talking about. In other words, the prof unwittingly threw the captain of the team under the bus. My respect for him pretty much disappeared at that point.

Thus, after I got my degree, left school and kept receiving messages about the soccer team, I became less and less pleasant. I don’t remember if I reached the point of “You’re a college professor, you should be capable of using a computer to delete my name off a mailing list,” but I thought about it.

In Jim’s case, though, I’d lean more towards statements like “Do you have such disregard for other members of the board that you can’t abide by their decision made formally according to Robert’s Rules of Order?” No “Yo mama” jokes for that guy—I’d go after his honor and self-respect. That’s how mean I was gonna be.

I decided against it because it seemed like if I let things stand, there wouldn’t be any more emails. Thankfully, I was right this time, so instead of sending another message, I mailed out my first issue of the NGT on March 23rd, three days after he notified my family members that he declined the grant money.

I know, you’ve probably finished your first bowl of popcorn, started a second and all I’ve been talking about is the National Good Templar. Here’s where Part 2 comes in: the backhanded compliment. The President got her copy of the NGT in the mail and she was gushing over it. Good content, she liked the envelopes, etc. I’ve received a handful of compliments about it, which gives me a nice warm fuzzy feeling inside. I’ve also received some requests to receive the NGT via email, which will save printing and mailing costs for the remaining five issues this year and however many years in the future. Yay for saving money!

Jim had something nice to say, too. Sorta. It didn’t give me quite the same nice warm fuzzy feeling. His email said that it’s a good value for the money, which could mean “If you’d let me accept the $1000 grant and this was the result, it’d give me nightmares and I’d wake up in a cold sweat, needing something to drink because I threw up a little in my mouth.” But, you know, it’s good for the money we are spending.