These are obviously Target stockings - they've snagged already.
A WISE woman who’d given up the grog and was a-brim with inner peace, once told me exactly what was wrong with me.*
“I think you’re a bit self-righteous,” she chuckled.
As I bustled my skirts about me and explained to her the difference between ‘right’ and ‘self-righteous’, I realised she might have a point. Didn’t tell her that, of course.
Ever since then, I’ve been trying to keep it in check. Hard, when you’re so fired up with sanctimony you can scarcely stop your horsemen from galloping forth, pennants snapping loudly in the wind.
Take today. I walk into Target in my hometown, loaded up with bags I’m taking to the charity shop. (I can hear my voice getting that wheedling, confirmation-seeking tone already, and I’m only typing.)
“Harry! Harry!” Some woman at the till calls out, the moment I enter. A bloke comes and positions himself at the end of the stockings aisle, folds his arms, and leans against the wall, staring at me. I’ve got your number, and all that. It’s blatant! I stare at him, he stares at me, and I go to the till.
“There some weird bloke hanging out in the stockings aisle,” I say, fastidiously counting out the notes for my fishnets.
Once outside, self-righteousness rears like a thrashed donkey as I fantasize about going back in and kicking over their knickers rack. Fuck it, I pacify myself, it’s a trifling matter – if it gives them something to do, let them have it.
I’m very pleased with my new-found maturity, but then as soon as I relax, something inside rahs me back up again, like a cheer squad, like a pipsqueak in the ear of a bully. You’re not really going to take that are you? What was it they did again?
It’s always doing that. I need to floor that inner pipsqueak like Casey the Punisher. I need to break its spindly little legs.
Ducking into the local new age store, I peruse the crystals and stones. I’m not into crystals and stones, but what I’m after here is a physical manifestation of my self-righteousness. Obsidian is moody volcanic glass, which allegedly works on karmic issues. “Leaving a chunk of obsidian by the door,” the little label says, “ensures visitors’ rubbish remains outside your abode.”
I buy a cool, smooth lump to keep it in my pocket. Now, whenever that old familiar feeling whips its own flank into action, I’ll transfer it to the stone of self-righteousness.
Keeper? Yes. It’s cradled in my fist right now.
* Don’t feel moved to do the same – I’m only taking that from someone once.
Hey man, now you're really living 
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