Dazed and STILL Confused

So an interesting thing happened to me two days ago. Normally I wouldn't write about something like this, but I think I need to write it down to make sense of it.

My son attends Mother's Day Out, a kind of church daycare, during most mornings. He has several friends, and I've since made friends with his friends' parents. One particular friend is very outspoken, funny, and staunchly Roman Catholic. Now I was raised RC, but I'm not strict about my beliefs. I have a lot of issues with church policies, but that's for another discussion.

My good friend and I talk about matters. She knows I'm a lax Catholic and that I write erotic romance. I thought that would throw her when we first became friends, but she often tells others I'm an author and makes a big--nice--deal about it. She's even read a few of my free reads, even the R-rated ones when I warned he to read the PG story. She also talks about sex more than I do, joking and teasing, so that I felt comfortable being myself around her. Mistake.

The other day my friend started calling my work "porn." She'd been to Barnes & Noble and had picked up a copy of Feral Attraction. She skimmed through it and read three passages full of sex. Hello? It's erotic romance. But she kept calling it porn, joking yet not. Then she went so far as to say she didn't respect my writing. Now I'm all for agreeing to disagree. I don't believe gay people to go hell for being gay, that abortion should be a choice for anyone but the woman involved, or that women should not be priests. But I don't mind that my friend disagrees with me, because I respect her right to think what she likes (even if she's wrong...wink.)

But after the porn discussion (which I did my best to ignore two days in a row) and after several minutes of futile discussion about the differences between erotic romance and smut, we took our children out for a playdate. Later, and I'm not even sure how the topic came about, my friend started questioning me about my views on abortion, Obama, and a few other odds and ends that slip my mind. I was startled to talk about such serious matters outside our kids and families in a McDonalds, but I answered honestly. A few minutes later, she told me she thought we'd have to take a break. ??? She really likes me, but she doesn't want my son corrupting hers. My first real WTF moment with this woman.

I was shocked. I told her my 4 year old wasn't likely to discuss abortion or politics with her son. Both kids get along famously, and her little boy is both well-mannered and nice. But an innocent that would be tainted by my child?

I had to leave to run some errands, and we kind of left it at that. A suggestion that "maybe" we should take a break.

I admit I was a little hurt, a lot angry, and more, stunned. It came as a shock because I've never made it secret what I write or what I think when asked. Yet all of a sudden, I was labeled as having questionable morals and my son was tarred with "sins of the mother."

I tolerate others' viewpoints while not agreeing. I don't paint her child as a holier-than-thou type simply because the mother is rather forceful with her opinions. And I genuinely like this woman, who is a very positive, smiling person most of the time and is pleasant to everyone. So I'm just baffled as to what motivated this whole scenario. Why throw in my four year old as the guilty party if she's really upset with me?

There. I've typed it all out. And I still can't make sense of it. But I started feeling paranoid, like this whole flare up was another erotic romance writer attack, the kind most of us have suffered at the hands of so many "religious" people. Not a romance writer attack at all, I don't think. But I was feeling the burn.

Proof is in the pudding, I say, not in how many times you attend mass. Want to be a good Christian? Be nice, treat others the way you want to be treated, judge not (lest ye be judged) and believe in God.

I'm not perfect and never claimed to be (except to my husband.) *smile* Maybe the summer break will give me time enough to forgive this incident and maintaing a friendship, if a more distant one, with this person. But I'm Sicilian. So forgive and forget won't work. Sicilians, hell, Italians, never forget.

Hope your Friday is happier than mine. Now back to edits...