Snarky in the Suburbs: Don’t mess with KC, Texas mom

Grab a Bible and settle in because I’m about to get religious on you. Yeah, seriously, I am. I’ve been resisting the urge with everything I’ve got, but I’m weak and I can no longer shut my pie hole about matters my husband has told me — well, really begged me — not to write about.

The whole resisting thing started a month ago. There I was sitting at my desk postponing accomplishing anything worthwhile by scrolling through my various social media accounts when, BAM, I was hit with some ecclesiastical buffoonery so egregious that I felt compelled to make a comment.

(Pausing briefly for the slightest of detours. That sentence I just wrote has three words in it from my 10th-grade vocabulary final. I don’t know why I wanted to tell you that, but I just felt like it was a piece of trivia that needed to be share.)

OK, back on topic — before I could write something to comment on the buffoonery, my husband walked into my office and asked what was wrong. Unbeknownst to me I had screamed after seeing the aforementioned Facebook post. I gave him a look that said, “You are not going to believe this,” and the read verbatim what a “friend” had put on her newsfeed. He listened, sighed, and said, “Please do not, I repeat, do not, respond.”

I looked at his slumped shoulders and knew what was coming my way — the talk. Ugh. I did a pre-emptive strike and quickly blurted out, “Yes, yes, I know. I don’t need to stir things up and sometimes it’s better to say nothing.”

He shook his head and said, “Yeah, all that. Let it go. It’s not worth your time.”

“Why don’t you just play the ‘my wife is crazy card?’” I asked him. “Then I could go free range. I’m serious about this. Imagine all the sympathy you could get for having a crazy wife. People would think you were a saint.”

He smirked at me and said, “You don’t think I’ve played the crazy card? Trust me, that card is worn out.”

Well, that kind of hurt my feelings and hit home so I let it go for five whole weeks. Then something happened. I just broke. I couldn’t resist the call to comment.

So, here’s what went down. Last month, I had a “friend” from Texas share on Facebook that her child was going to Kansas City on a mission trip “to work with God to save this awful city.” And then there was a Bible verse about Sodom and Gomorrah or something and asking for prayers for her kid’s soul.

Um, excuse me? Has she looked around Texas? Doesn’t charity start at home? Not that Kansas City doesn’t have it’s problems, but to have the hubris to think you need to travel 600 plus miles north to do some good because you imagine that Texas has achieved Garden of Eden or heaven-adjacent status. Now there’s some crazy for you.

What’s up with these mission trips, anyway? A couple of years ago there was a church whose youth group took a mission trip to Paris (that’s France, not Texas). Wouldn’t all the fundraising that went into paying for the Paris trip be better spent on, I don’t know, an actual charity?

What really got me steamed was when this mom started posting pictures of her child on the mean streets of Mission Hills and enjoying our fabulous Royals at Kauffman Stadium. Sodom and Gomorrah, indeed.

I asked a neighbor, who seems to be very in touch with the Lord, about mission trips in general. She tried to talk me down by explaining that a mission trip, especially for younger teens, can be more about fellowship and experiencing new surroundings than, you know, stopping gang violence in the urban core. I get that, but still I’m peeved. I don’t like anybody bad-mouthing my city.

Then this happened. Last week the “friend” posted an update on her child’s trip to Kansas City and let’s just say some adjectives were used that I didn’t appreciate when she was describing the most awesome KC. This meant one thing: Game on.

So, I began to write something on her FB page in defense of my city and then I stopped. Maybe it’s better to say nothing. I call it a jerk filter. By this I mean letting all the goobers out there think KC is ho hum. This way it keeps them away.

We’re not Texans (says a former Texan who is now a Kansas Citian) who over-share and exaggerate every detail of our state. We’re Kansas City folk. We’re chill. We’re humble. We don’t need big talkers, because we’re doers.

I don’t know about you, but I’m mighty fine with keeping it that way. In fact, I think the new Chamber of Commerce slogan should be “K.C.: Awesome and Almost Jerk-Free” and then in much smaller letters, “especially when compared to Texas.”

This story was originally published August 18, 2015 at 9:58 PM with the headline "Snarky in the Suburbs: Don’t mess with KC, Texas mom."