In my eight years of writing on the Internet, I have been lucky to have very few encounters with mean people or mean comments. My personal site is basically an online journal about my family and myself, and I don’t really talk about controversial subjects that would cause people to cross from ‘respectfully disagreeing’ to ‘being a douche canoe.’

The same goes for this column here and other sites I do freelance writing for. I mean, such sites love it if you push the envelope a bit, because it gets people talking and that’s the name of the game. Even then, I’m considered to be pretty mild in the world of bloggers.

That said, there have been a few people over the years who have gone on the attack in the comment section and while it stings initially (especially one where someone said that my daughter was ugly)(She is STUNNING, for the record), I have come to learn that those comments really have nothing to do with me, but have everything to go with the people writing them. They are unhappy, hurtful people, and are projecting their misery onto me and want me to feel as low as they do. It’s sad, really.

Yesterday afternoon, I stopped at the mailboxes on the way to pick up my kids from school. There was a letter addressed to me, which had no return address. I opened it up and after starting with “With all due respect and no harm intended.” (Aside: That is not a complete sentence), the writer had proceeded to type two full pages of harmful and disrespectful words.

She (He?)(We’ll never know, because they’re ANONYMOUS) referred to a post that I had written here in November titled “5 ways to survive the holidays with your in-laws“.

Before I write anything else, there are a few things that those of you who don’t know me in real life need to know:

1. Both my family and my husband’s family read what I post on my personal site, and here. We are all connected on Facebook, I link to everything, and I’m not an anonymous blogger. My Dad will even call me after he’s read a post that he likes. So OBVIOUSLY, I would never write a post about anyone I’m related to.

2. We don’t have a “drunk Uncle Ted”, or any drunken family members who come to dinner. That’s an Internet joke.

3. We spend almost every holiday dinner with my in-laws (Parents and siblings and cousins) because they live close by, whereas my extended family is far-flung. We eat, we drink wine, we laugh, we have a great time. I am the one hosting, usually, because I LOVE cooking and hosting parties.

4. I’ve never set off the fire alarm (intentionally).

When the holidays were upon us and I needed a topic to do with relationships, I thought I’d write a funny post about surviving it with the in-laws because I saw so many statuses from people bemoaning the fact that they had to spend time with their extended family. I couldn’t relate, but I could give some tongue-in-cheek “advice” in a post.

As for Anonymous, I could post the entire letter, but it’s not worth my time to spend time typing out two pages of nonsense. There are a few golden nuggets, though.

I could have posted this on the Internet for the entire world to read but I chose to be discreet and send it anonymously.

Fact: Sending anonymous letters or writing anonymous comments only show that the person writing them coward. That’s common knowledge. If someone really cared, they would identify themselves.

There is something very wrong with this generation if we have the time to be on the Internet all day long putting housework, laundry, child care, cooking, etc aside and blogging unimportant, trivial, and personal matters on the World Wide Web.

Oh, ho ho. This post, and the one Anonymous linked to, as well as every other post I write here (or anywhere else I freelance)? It’s my job. I get paid to write them. When I’m not working, I’m shuttling my kids to and from school, meal planning and grocery shopping, cooking dinner and packing lunches, cleaning and sorting laundry, volunteering at the food bank/my church/my kids’ school. Being “on the Internet all day long”? Oh, man. That one made me laugh out loud. Most days I do my writing, be it work or personal, after the kids are in bed.

The concluding sentence:

Some people come into your life as blessings; others come into your life as lessons.

Anonymous has made it clear that she (he?) is definitely not a blessing, but that they are teaching me a lesson. They did. People who know nothing about you are so off-base in their ramblings only look like a complete and utter fool. After the initial shock that someone was creepy enough to send me a typed letter in the mail, I found the humor in it all. And hey, they gave me something to write about. Thanks for the inspiration, Anonymous.

Have you ever received hate mail/comments, etc.?

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