Miss Crankypants grew up with a martyr for a mother. And she’s not even Jewish! If there was only a dab of mashed potatoes left on the table, would Mom help herself? NO! She’d sit there with a scrawny serving of burned casserole before she’d “take the last one.” At our house, taking the LAST ONE was a gigantic no-no, right up there with using Dad’s razor to shave your legs or stashing leftover plates of pizza under your bed.
Miss CP and her younger sister were clever martyrs, though. They learned to go ahead and nab the last graham cracker, cookie or Ding Dong and then slyly put the empty box back into the cupboard. This worked until Dad went for a Ding Dong and, finding exactly nada, would yell, “Who took the LAST ONE?”
As you might expect, Miss Cranky preserved the MARTYR MOM complex, and can sigh with the best of them. The old joke about how a Jewish mother changes a light bulb? “I’ll just sit here in the dark.” Well. Miss CP will have you know that she once found a twenty-five year-old Twinkie (RIP) stuck in the back of a box that was buried in the pantry. Did she dare to eat it (it was still perfectly edible of course)? Of course not. That Twinkie is worth a lot of money!
But the best MARTYRS have to be Christian Authors. Just today, Miss Crankypants read a message digest where one really nice Christian writer announced that her book was up for a vote on some battle-of-the-book monthly contest. About eighty-five others on the list all promised to vote for said author’s book. That is, until a second author timidly brought up the fact that HER book was up on the same voting slate. First Author did what any self-respecting martyr would do: She posted a short message: “Or you could vote for Second Author’s book instead. I know I will.” Is that martyrdom at its finest or what? Burning at the stake pales in comparison.
Miss Crankypants has a little bit of martyrly advice for Christian Authors: If you get tired of sitting in the dark, she knows of a yummy Twinkie you could purchase, box and all. That is, if you’re brave enough to take the LAST ONE.