First, let me preface this blog with my personal experience of a police stop. Let’s take a journey back about 40 years ago when I’m driving my (kinda) new red Ford Pinto 4-door with hatchback wagon back to California from visiting my relatives in Milwaukee, St. Louis, and Tulsa, with my young son in the backseat. We get part way through Dammithehell, Texas and run into a road block after stopping to get gas and food, then getting back to the freeway. It’s 600 hellish degrees outside so my AC is blasting and my young son is dozing. When we get to the cop motioning people forward, he looks at me, I smile automatically, and tells me to pull over. Now, I’m usually a rule-follower so I did as I was told, but I was certainly puzzled.  Well we sat on the side of that road, had to be 2-3 hours and the only breeze was that of other cars speeding past the roadblock.

So much time passed that I had to turn off my engine so it wouldn’t overheat and let the windows down and pray for the breezes of the cars allowed to move. I watched car-after-car being waved past the cop directing traffic, but what I wouldn’t do was to get out of the car (don’t know why, something just told me not to—so I didn’t). Perhaps the fact that I was a single woman with an elementary school-aged kid had something to do with my instincts, but I knew I wasn’t going to tempt fate knowing no one knew where I was (no cell phones in those days), or where I’d been stopped, or even THAT I’d been stopped.

At some point the cop comes near enough to my car that I could shout to him asking him if I could leave, he said no dismissively and kept walking; more time passed. In those days I always dressed “cute” even when I traveled so that I would always be presentable, and my son looked as sharp as my Sears shopping budget would allow. My hair was neatly cropped, short, and curled, but definitely a Fro by the time we left. Smiling was ingrained into my psyche from an early age (generational memory), but subconsciously even in those days I knew it made white folks more comfortable when I did. Under no circumstances could I be mistaken for a man with curlers in a blue car.

Finally, the Texas cop comes over to my car and tells me I can go. I ask him why I was pulled over. He tells me “I fit the description” of someone who robbed a store. I asked what that description was, he told me it was a male, with curlers all over his head, driving a BLUE two-door. I looked at him to see if he was joking, and said something to the effect that I wasn’t male, nor did I have curlers, and was in a red car with California plates. He chuckled and said they were playing it safe and told me I could leave, so me and my equally sweaty, irritated son drove off and got back to California as soon as I could. Abuse of power galore, but I was powerless to do anything about it. True story.

Now, here’s what is really happening in current day America in the minds of a POC in these “ice cream cone” stops:

Those well-publicized “ice cream cone” stops police departments around the country have been posting seem more like subtle harassment to me. If it’s never happened to you, you can’t imagine being scared to death seeing flashing lights behind you. If you are white and have trouble understanding this situation, let me give you an example of what’s behind our fears. Lately these stops by police for things that don’t even warrant a ticket have been given the hashtag #FatalStops, or #TerminalStops because they’re many times fatal to the Black drivers. Let’s examine these seemingly innocuous incidents.

First, the shock of being pulled over makes anyone anxious, but it used to be more of an annoyance than a fear.  Imagine you’re sitting there waiting for a cop to approach your car, your mind would be racing trying to figure out what you did wrong, how could you fix it, how much would it cost out of your limited budget. Real fear.

Let’s look at it as if I’m in that situation. First, I’m waiting for an armed white man to approach my car. No one knows where I am or that I’ve been pulled off the road. Danger from the jump. My worry would turn to me mentally checking my behavior, questioning every singly move, trying to pinpoint what triggered the stop. I’m thinking, will I move too quickly, or look guilty? I still have hot flashes, so will my damp brow look like I’m sweating out of fear? All the while fighting the images of people killed during traffic stops swirling through my mind causing me more anxiety. Even though I know I’ve done nothing wrong, will he “think” I look guilty, or look like “the description of someone who robbed a store?” After all, even if I say I’ve done nothing wrong, this (sometimes inexperienced) cop holds the power of overruling my objections and I am defenseless to win that argument. #StreetJustice

Let’s say that the cop stopped me because I “fit the description” (IF it really existed) and the real culprit would turn out to be a 30-something MALE, with long dreads, in a blue 2016 car with Texas plates when, no matter how much you cross your eyes while using your peripheral vision, this close cropped, gray haired grandma in a 2012 orange SUV could not possibly match. But, if he’s wrong all the cop has to do is dismiss me, without apology or explanation, and send me on my way—hours later, because… power. That’s how it still happens today.

Maybe the situation causes a flashback to my own experience years ago, but I know I must remember to smile when he looks at me through my slightly lowered window so he won’t feel “uncomfortable.” When he demands that I lower my window even more, then hands me a frickin’ ice cream cone, my terror would overshadow any movement he makes towards me with my mind flashing mental pictures of other Black folk who did nothing wrong and still ended up dead because they blinked funny, looked nervous, sneezed, or the officer thought he smelled pot, or any combination of similar situations. Not only must I smile but I must thank him for being friendly, for his melting gift (of which many Black folks are lactose intolerant), or simply for not killing me or escalating the situation because of his own insecurities.

I would sit nervously in my fear and anxiety, understanding that I can’t show my annoyance when he assures me I did nothing wrong, just because he wants to give me an–(drum roll, please)–ICEfrickinCREAMdammitCONE? Knowing it would cause more harm than good to call the PD and complain about this intrusion in my life and normal routine. Knowing white folks all over the country will be thinking, why would she be afraid if she hasn’t done anything wrong? A frickin’ ice cream cone in my still shaking hand, because my heart has been beating out of my chest since I saw those flickering lights and the brief “whoop whoop” of the siren?

Nope, all I could do is smile, just like generations before me, like I did 40 years ago, and like Black folk do up to this day, to put the white man at ease by chuckling at my surprise and resulting forced, coerced pleasure. Knowing he expects me to be thankful for his generosity of presenting me with a 10 cent cone. Knowing he’s exacting 10-15 minutes on the tax dollar to act momentarily benevolent at his well-rehearsed and scripted performance BEFORE THE CAMERAS, as I’m more relieved than grateful to accept his magnanimous (soon to be YouTubed) gift, while I fight to keep from crying from the sheer helplessness of it all as he signals to his partner with the camera, hitches his gun belt and saunters back to his car.

Nope, don’t ever try to convince a Black person that it’s okay to be pulled over by the police “if you’ve never done anything wrong.” There’s documented history of that falsehood all across this country going back generations.

My mother used to ramble off topic when asked questions, beginning way back in her past and word-wandering back to connect to the future. When she lived with us I used to accompany her to her doctors’ appointments.

A doctor would ask her a question and I would brace for what her response would be. Let’s take the eye doctor who wanted a history of why she suffered blindness in one of her eyes due to a sudden rupture. On our first visit to this new doctor, he asked her when she started having problems with her eyes.

Mother started off with a story of what was happening somewhere around 40 years before that. As I rolled my eyes (hopefully sitting on the blind side), I knew this was her way to start her story of when she began noticing something was wrong. But I also knew the doctor didn’t want to listen to 40 years of her life to get to the point. So I’d cut her off and patiently asked her if she could tell him when her eye ruptured and move forward from that, basically eliminating 35 or more years. All my mother’s doctors’ appointments were like that and I went along more as a translator (or hurry upper) than transporter.

So how does this affect this particular blog? One recent morning when we were getting ready to go to a funeral I asked my husband, “What time do you want to leave?”.

Husband, “Well, Mass is at 10:00 o’clock.”

Me [pause], “What time do you want to leave?”

Husband, “It takes about 20 minutes to get there.”

Me [pause], “What time do you want to leave?”

Add to that there’s this conversation that happened today: “Are you working Sunday?”

Husband, “No, I work SUNDAY [his emphasis]!

Me [sigh, pause], “Are you working Sunday?”

Moral symbolic of many conversations, I think I married my mother!

If you meet someone who has a grill, a wide array of chains around his neck, rings on his fingers or a fancy cane.

If your guy is over 21, still sagging and only dresses like entertainers.

If he puts the majority of his money (or yours) on his car, you will always be a sloppy second.

If he introduces himself as Big Daddy, Ice, or Dr Something, walk away.

If he tells you he has six kids with five different women and loves making babies.

If a big part of his day is standing by his car “people watching,” that’s code for jobless.

If he carries a large wad of bills and always flashes it, it’s probably more singles than big bills.

If he stares at you across a crowded room and licks his lips continually as he undresses you with his eyes, he’s not looking for a wife, just a play date.

If your first thought when you see him is “he’ll make pretty babies,” you ain’t ready.

If he introduces himself as “Uncle ” somebody to your children; it won’t end well,

If he demands more attention, the most attention, or to be taken care of BEFORE you tend to your kids, you’ll always shortchange your kids—who came before him.

If he dresses like an older version of your kids he’s not a man mentally, keep dreaming as you walk away.

If you take him home and the hair on your dog (hackles) raises, leave him at the DOO’.

If you’re religious and he’s not, you may be able to balance that. If you’re religious and he mocks your religious views, he’s testing to see if you’ll worship him first. Step away.

If he’s a laborer and is an honest man, he’s a catch even though you’re an executive somewhere. Don’t underestimate his worth or value.

If he has no ambition to be more than he is and a good life is hanging with his buds, beer, tinkering with his car, and fantasy football there’s no room for you.

If he only introduces himself by his “street name,” and you’re looking for love, you might want to reassess your relationship requirements.

If you ask him where does he see himself in five years and doesn’t mention you, you’re not in his plans for a future; leave… now.

If he always has to be somewhere else during the holidays and doesn’t include you, his real Boo ain’t you.

If he walks through a door first, he thinks of himself first even though he may hold it open to let you enter behind him.

If he admits his job is his first priority and works more hours than he relaxes, you won’t change that. If you need more–let it go.

If he disrespects you in front of his friends, or yours, and pretends he’s joking, he’s not. He’s showing you who he really is and you don’t matter. Believe him.

If you’re new in a relationship with him but he shows jealousy of your relationship with your kids, walk. Fast.

If he is always looking at his watch, texting, or answering his phone (but he’s not on-call medical staff) and he just met you, you will not change him just because you came into his life.

If you walk into a bar, club, or bar/club combo and all the wait staff know him by name it’s his lair and you’re just the newest catch.

If you talked for “hours” at your first meeting or on your first date and he makes a mistake on your name, he’s got too many in his mind to keep track of correctly, you’re not that important.

If all he talks about is his ex, he’s not ready for you. Don’t force him. When he’s ready and he wants you, he’ll find you.

If education is important to you and he talks in a way that keeps you correcting him, you’re emasculating him and he won’t take much of it. If it’s that important to you, YOU change your hunting grounds by going to places where educated men hang out.

If you’re half-stepping but require a man who’s more advanced, you’re overreaching. YOU grow before expecting someone else to “complete” you.

Taking men home for a one nighter, or hoping it will turn into more when you have kids (especially boys) will destroy your kids over time.

Love at first sight is a Hollywood myth created for mental romance. Attraction is what draws you to another person, love is a CHOICE that follows.

 

9/25/15

Recently, a video popped up on my FaceBook timeline called, Girls of Leesburg Stockade. It was about 33 girls who were ages 9-14 years old, when they were kidnapped by white police in 1963 for attending a “mass meeting” (civil rights) and trying to integrate the local theatre. They were herded into a large windowless truck with no seats (they got a rough ride like Freddie Grey), and transported to a building where they had no idea where they were, then moved from place-to-place where their families couldn’t locate them. The video, and how whites could snatch any Black person up and do what they wanted when they wanted, reminded me of an event in my Dad’s life that I wanted to share.

A few years back, we’re sitting at my kitchen table in Memphis, TN. My sister, Hattie and her husband, Pete, had brought Daddy down from Milwaukee, WI to visit because we never knew when it would be his last trip; he was about 101 years old then. Memphis was where he was born, but he spent more time in his early life in Mississippi, although I don’t remember him saying how (or why) he went there in the first place.

I’m questioning him about his life because he loved genealogy and talking about how life used to be. He was a font of knowledge about relatives on his side and my mother’s (even though they were divorced for 60-70 years by then), relatives he remained close to long after they divorced. He started talking about his early life when he was married to my mother, and eventually reflected back to retelling a story he’d told me some years before that, but I didn’t remember much of it so this time I paid closer attention.

It was 1932-33 and Daddy was a young man (born in 1907) in his late 20s (so maybe he was 28 years or so). He was a mechanic and nothing thrilled him more in life than driving and tinkering with a car engine. So, he’s driving his car (that he took excellent care of) and enjoying the journey (he LOVED to drive and wanted his ashes scattered along Route 66). He’s driving down one of the many unpaved roads to get into town in Tupelo, MS to run errands for my mother.

At some point he comes up behind a white woman who’s tooling along at a much slower speed than he wanted to go, so he’s behind her until he can comfortably pass (he was ALWAYS a safe driver) and he speeds past, which throws dust swirling in the air and upsets the woman driving (driving was still kinda new to people in those days, especially women) and he laughs even at his memory of laughing while taking a pertinacious pleasure at his expert driving skills compared to hers. He watches her in his rearview mirror weaving across the road because she’s so upset from the dust and being passed at a higher speed than she thought was necessary, talking to himself about she needed to learn how to drive before taking up the road. Now this is a man who used to yell out the car at white hitchhikers, “you were free before me, you shoulda been there by now!” and laugh hardily even though he knew they couldn’t hear him (more to entertain us kids).

Daddy gets into town and is trying to get to the store to pick up something my mother wanted and before he’s done he’s approached by the sheriff who calls him “boy,” and makes him come into his office. Daddy was nervous because he knew nothing good ever happened when a white sheriff takes a Black man into his “office,” but he complied. The sheriff asked him if he’s the one who nearly “run” a white lady off the road, but Daddy only admits to passing her. I can’t remember if the woman was present (I don’t recall him saying she was there), but she insisted that “that n*gger” be put in jail for her pain and suffering, so the sheriff told him he would have to jail him until “things could be sorted out.”

Daddy was furious, but there were no lawyers to represent Black folks, you couldn’t argue a white sheriff into letting you go on baseless charges, and most people didn’t have phones so he couldn’t even call home to tell my mother where he was in case he disappeared, which was not unusual in those days.

While he was jailed he said his thoughts vacillated between anger at being jailed upon the whims of a white woman that he had not harmed, and worry that my mother was alone with their little baby (my sister, Annie Doris) and didn’t know where he was. After being locked up overnight not being able to confront the woman who wanted him charged, or fight back legally, the sheriff released him with a warning about upsetting the gentry. No charges made, no explanation of why it was legal to keep him there or even to release him for that matter, and no apology for arresting him in the first place. Listening to this man some 80 years after the fact, and watching his body language, anyone would think this happened yesterday, or the year before. The anger he felt for having that done to him, a man who was always an honest and cordial man, proud and knowledgeable about everything in the news, was fresh and almost palpable. To his way of thinking, he wasn’t treated like a man, but an animal.

“You all just don’t know how it was back then, you just don’t know,” he repeats several times, more to himself than to us. I ask him to tell us exactly how it was, and he grips the top of his cane so tight you can see the veins on the back of his hands look as if they’re ready to burst. His brow is deeply furrowed and his head is bent as if he didn’t want anyone to see his eyes at that point. “You just don’t know,” was what we were left with from his inability to describe his pain.

When I watched the clip of the documentary, “Girls of Leesburg Stockade” and other data about that event, I thought of Daddy’s plight and how white folks had total disregard of the families of their victims when they violated not just their civil rights, but their basic rights as human beings.

In the video documentary the young girls were held in a one-room stockade, some for 3-and others up to-45 days, without their parents or anyone else knowing where they were for several days. The stockade building itself was out in the middle of nowhere and had been abandoned for years with no useable facilities like restrooms, toilets, running water, not even beds—they slept on the concrete floors (mostly without blankets). The only source of water was a “dripping shower head,” according to one report. I don’t want to imagine how they handled their menstrual cycles or dirty clothes. They had no toiletries or changes of clothes, and the dogcatcher was the one who brought them food (and eventually got messages out to their parents of where they were), which mainly consisted of “undercooked” hamburgers [I’m blanching at the thought of salmonella]! When they were released, they weren’t charged with a crime, but each family had to pay $2 for each of them to be released “for boarding” them that whole time; the price of food scraps, mistreatment, and no accommodations.

Looking at these two events, my Dad’s and the 33 children, happening 30 years apart, in the south, and comparing them to what’s still happening today, I find history still repeating itself; maybe because we haven’t learned how to love each other as the Bible teaches. Being honorable means nothing when you’re Black even today. The girls were honorable, too young to even know the scope of what they were doing beyond being civilly disobedient. Daddy followed the rules, and being was too proud to borrow money, or ask for welfare, he worked his ass off to provide for his family every day, even years after he divorced my mother (he never remarried) until forced to retire because of his age, but always proud and honorable.

Many men are honorable. They were veterans like Daddy was (he was never granted VA benefits, though), but that doesn’t inoculate them from the racism they must face even in 2016. Proud men shamed by the sheer powerlessness of the situation, because our society tells us that we are weak when we don’t fight back. From what I see through my research, when you take away the manhood from an honorable man, all that’s left is anger.

An officer who shoots a man in his car after stopping him for having a broken taillight doesn’t know before that fatal bullet leaves his gun that the victim it will claim served his country, never had a ticket, worked hard, provided for his family, honored his religion (usually Christianity), and was always available to help someone in need. All he knows in those few seconds before he makes a fatal decision is what’s been honed into his mind since childhood, “I feared for my life,” or “Black people are to be feared,” or worse, “shoot first, ask questions later.”

Following that decision to shoot a human being begins the gathering by those sympathizing with the horror that’s become the norm on the evening news, of all the “after facts” mainly meant to humanize a person who did nothing to warrant public execution on his or her way home. But that’s not always the case when the deceased is African American. Always accused of “resisting,” videos show that they were merely trying to ward off blows by fists, night sticks, or boots. It’s a natural human reaction to protect the area of your body where it’s being attacked, but it’s unlawful for Black men to do so, cause–resisting.

For African Americans, we see time-after-time that those “after facts” are tempered by more negative “after facts” gathered by white-led media that attempt to demonize the person killed as if something they did twenty years before had a bearing on them becoming a hashtag representing uncalled for violence. As if not paying child support was worth being killed. As if going to jail for smoking pot was punishable by death.

I am now seeing the rationale for incarcerating Black males for the slightest offense, because no matter what they are shot for in later years, they will always look to white people as if they brought their deaths upon themselves because they had a prison record, no matter how insignificant or unrelated.

I can just imagine that if Daddy had been shot in his 80s or 90s, media would have learned he was jailed overnight—with no charges, but that would be carefully excluded—and he’d be portrayed as a felon, which he was not, but that wouldn’t be as newsworthy. And the trivia that he was jailed because he annoyed some overanxious white woman would also be excluded because that would not be the aim of an “after fact” for the victim of a public execution.

Those 33 girls were secreted away in 1963, just like Daddy was (about)1933, with no one knowing where they were initially, at the whim of white men who didn’t think they were owed an explanation or apology, or even fair treatment, because—they could. And, the girls had no protection from any proclivities those men may have had for little children. The youngest girl, nine years old, was regularly let out to “eat with the guard,” but none of the women expounded upon that one detail. Even though the parents tried to unite to get the kids back, the girls were moved from place-to-place to (initially) prevent being found, which I compare to being an earlier version of the Nigerian Boko Haram (maybe that’s where the Nigerians learned this tactic when they kidnapped all those female children).

With few exceptions Black men assassinated on public streets are not given aid even though law enforcement is required by law to be trained in life saving techniques. We watch countless videos of officers of the law standing around watching a human being die and they do nothing, even when dozens of cell phone cameras are recording their actions because—they can. More and more we’re seeing (or hearing on video) them congratulate each other on the kill in their adrenaline stoked excitement.

The final insult of being handcuffed AFTER being shot or pronounced dead, signifies that white men still consider them dangerous when their bodies are lifeless, unable to more, and left to rot in the sun, uncovered and unaided. But the final indignity for that body lying in the streets is for the cameras to show them as being made powerless by the white man, arms twisted behind their lifeless backs–in handcuffs–in perpetuity; white triumph. Any financial burden resulting from that event shouldn’t be on the taxpayers to resolve, but always is as if we are all complicit in their crimes. The victimizer gets paid leave, benefits, a continuing paycheck, and finally–retirement.

So, as we sat there in my kitchen in (c)2008, in Memphis, TN, watching Daddy still in discomfort, wiping his eyes from time-to-time, from being jailed some 80 years before, I understand better than most the lasting effects of such humiliations; they are not minor. They do not go away over time. They stain the soul. They leave an indelible hole in the psyche that acts like an anchor—snatching their minds back to that time when they had no power and conditions made it illegal to fight for survival. That does not go away unaided by therapy. It often gets anesthetized by drugs or alcohol, or shorten tempers that flare with little provocation because the mind is broken from gross indignities. That life-altering event is left to fester and rot the mind like decaying bodies left unaided in the sun.

My last question before we ended the conversation about Daddy’s jail time, the last one we ever had on this subject, was what happened to the sheriff? He lifts his cane up and down a couple of times and bounces the rubber end off of the floor quietly, head still bent, brows still furrowed, shoulders slumped, and after what seems like minutes, he says quietly, “don’t know, he disappeared.”

Girls of Leesburg Stockade, Americus, GA 1963
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaKBKkUzZ0M

Leesburg trailer

NPR report of this event
http://gpbnews.org/post/girls-leesburg-stockade

http://www.crmvet.org/images/imgga.htm
Georgia on My Mind

Americus Movement

Americus Movement

There comes a time in our lives as adults when we have to understand that our parents can NEVER make up for some slight or misunderstanding we had with them when we were 5-7-9, or even 15. At some point in adulthood we have to take responsibility for the choice we make to be happy or unhappy.
And, unless said parent physically harmed you, they did the best they could with what they knew and we have to let it go. I am so sick of hearing people whine about not having “stuff” as a kid, or parents being too strict; it’s all relative. Adults who can now verbalize how they don’t trust their parent because that parent didn’t explain why he/she made the choices they made, which made the kid feel robbed of something, need to get over it and move on.
Our parents made mistakes just like we do. How can we think to not look at our lives as a parent and think our kids will not eventually bemoan some slight we made when they were young? Do we really believe that we’re now the perfect parent and can do nothing wrong? We aren’t; we do. Just because we let our kids run wild because our parents were too strict on us, does not make us a better parent. In fact, research shows that those same children malign parents who give their children no boundaries when they get to be adults because they provided no feeling of safety for the child.
Kids will like it in the moment, but they will hate you as an adult if you let them drink, or have sex (as long as you’re going to do it) at home. Kids won’t love you more because you bought every toy you could find for them, either. A few toys that are special to them are much more desirable to a child, and much less overwhelming. (But, personally, there is no drum set that equals to the sound of a wooden spoon on a metal pan.)
When you speak your mind regardless of how it harms another person, it is just as bad to your child as it was when you were young and your mother/father never spoke up to defend you when you felt someone was damaging you in some way. Extremes in one behavior is not an improvement on other behaviors.
And stop patting yourself on the back exclaiming that you are a much better parent than your parents were to you. Repeat after me, it is ALL relative. The phrase “my kids can come to me about anything” only works if that kid has had the exact same thinking process and experiences as you did, and that’s impossible.
As much as you protest, it is highly likely that your kids will never tell you some of the things they have heard or are experiencing as a kid (including rape, drugs and alcohol, abuse, bullying, or violence), no matter how you brag that they tell you everything. No matter how open you think you are as an adult some kids are just not going to tell you that someone groped them inappropriately because of the shame they feel, or the internal guilt that they brought it on themselves. They are just not programmed to do that. In your adult mind, you cannot determine how a child will interpret something they hear, feel, or experience.

A parent experiencing deep depression can’t possibly be mentally available to their children, so being angry if your parent was one suffering from depression and wasn’t available to you is the same as being angry because they had cancer or leprosy. Nothing short of medication (usually) can bring someone out of some depressions and all the wishful thinking won’t make it so. This is one of those times “just do it” can’t happen naturally; you can’t just push through depression.
Saying, “get over it” is too simplistic, but adults need to let that internal kid out, slap it on the back, and repeat, “from now on I am going to be the adult I dreamed I would be.” Then, become that adult.

Over the years I’ve been to many funerals, and bedsides of the dying, and gravesites. Watching the survivors has been interesting. There is a distinct difference between the people who can handle the death of their loved ones and those who cannot.

You can tell almost immediately when the survivor(s) has had a chance to say goodbye, make amends, and/or heal faulty relationships before their loved one dies. Even when death is more sudden than they expected, those are the people who can smile during the funeral ceremony, even through the tears. They are the ones who greet all their guests at the repast and chat with them. This may be because there is healing in death.

When you see someone throwing themselves over the casket, or screaming and have to be restrained, or fainting, or just adding more drama than necessary, they are the ones who have left things unsaid, held onto grudges that they can’t even remember why they started, or haven’t healed the brokenness in their relationships. They are the ones who can’t be consoled no matter who tries to help them. They take the focus off the deceased and turn it onto themselves.

When we pray for God to heal our loved ones, we have to understand that God’s way of healing may be to remove them from our presence. It’s not always giving them back their health, or restoring them to their healthy selves, it might be death because there is death in healing. Sometimes, the only way a person can be healed is through death, which is the end of their pain, the end of suffering. That is when death is manageable. You’re not happy, but you know they are no longer suffering.

I’ve regretted that I lived 3,000 miles away from my mother when she died and I couldn’t tell her goodbye, but there really wasn’t anything left unsaid. Since she died I have lost my oldest sister, Annie Doris, my youngest brother, Edward (he renamed himself Jahn), and Daddy, who made it to 106 years and his body just literally gave up and out. We expected my sister to die because of her heart health. Thank goodness for her daughter-in-law, my niece, for alerting us to the urgency of a visit and we went right then. I am forever thankful that we got to visit with her and laugh as much as we did.

It was my youngest brother’s death that took me by surprise; none of us was expecting the suddenness of it. He was subject to seizures and it appears he had one that he didn’t recover from. The pain I felt was because he died alone and lay there for two days before my second youngest brother could get into the apartment, as well as to identify his body.

But even with the loss of my family members, if their healing came with death, I can be okay with that. My mother and sister were very sick for a long time. My mother mentally left this earth years before her body followed, so I felt that she was in a better place than being in a facility with every-changing faces, and health providers who didn’t speak English around her, and male nurses trusted to bathe her in private (chilled me to my soul). But my living so far away (at that time) and my sister’s (another sister) health preventing her from visiting as often as she’d like, my mother was drugged to keep her quiet, which is the way most agencies operate when there is no family visiting regularly (even though they’ll swear to you that it doesn’t happen. See this video: http://awm.com/he-didnt-trust-his-moms-nursing-home-so-he-sets-up-a-hidden-camera-what-he-captures-sickening/?utm_medium=facebook&utm_source=awm).

So, I was more relieved when she died, because I KNEW damn well she didn’t like where she was (which is why her mind left first). She was tired of the pushing and prodding from countless unknown faces with cold gloved hands. And the worst of her indignities was when they put a diaper on her rather than help her to the bathroom; I was there to see that a part of her leave when the laughing nurse told her, “it’s all right, Ruby, you’ve got on a diaper, you don’t have to wait for us.”

Death is not always the worst thing that could happen to us. Sometimes it’s living with the little indignities we have to face in life that tops it.

I couldn’t figure out what kind of desert I wanted to make after devouring that last delicious piece of bread pudding, so I decided to bake a cake and remembered that my mother used to bake great cakes. Too, my friend, Linda Carter (now in Gulfport, MS), still bakes an excellent pound cake every week for her husband, William, even though he’s now retired but that cake sounded like a good choice. So, I’m looking through my recipes and found the bunch of different pound cake recipes that my mother collected. It touched me that most were in her beautiful but careful handwriting and some were typed out on a typewriter that she learned to use to write letters when her handwriting became shaky.

When my mother died on December 5, 2007 I had already experienced her loss for several years prior to that as she declined into senility and memory loss (not Alzheimer’s). There have been many times even while she was alive that I’d think of phoning her about a recipe, or asking a question about the best thing to look for when picking melons, or how to get rid of those pesky gnats that seem to appear out of nowhere and resist bug spray because you cannot see them. She may not have had the answer, but the connection in just the conversation would still be there; a conversation centered around mutual interests. But in those last several years her hearing (another long topic) wasn’t good enough to handle the phone, or she would forget what she was saying and get so frustrated she gradually refused to talk on it.

Back to the cakes: Cakes can be tricky, you can mess them up by cooking them too long, not mixing them correctly (some cakes call for specificity), overbeating the batter, or something as simple as dropping that little tidbit of eggshell into the mix. Like parenting, baking cakes requires a balance of ingredients. You can butter them up, sweeten them richly, or add flavoring that makes the tasting remind eaters of just how good you are.

Most things in life are like that, including raising (rearing) children. Just like with cakes, you can mess your kids up, too, by over-parenting, or not changing your parenting skills to handle their ever-increasing ages, or not understanding which method would work best to discipline each child (they all respond to different things differently), or other things that lead this reminiscing into other directions I’ll take on later.

My mother was a mass of contradictions and imperfections (aren’t we all?), but she did the best she could with what she knew at the time (even though sometimes overriding her common sense about what would be the best for that particular child). With each generation we vow before having our children that we will be better parents than our parents were to us; we just know we will never make the same mistakes. Like our mothers before us, we tell our kids “no” when we just needed to take a minute to weigh whether “yes” would have been okay. We snap at them when we’re under stress and end up venting our frustrations on someone not the source of them. We are too lenient or too strict in administering punishments.

We may even treat all our children the same even while complaining how different they are (mass contradiction). Some of us punish the kids simply because they look like the other parent who has lost favor in our eyes. We may give them too many “things” overcompensating for the divorce, death, lost of income, whatever the primary source. Or, we may overcompensate because we wish we hadn’t had them before doing something else in life we had a passion for, or our parenting could be just the result of our misguided attempt to be loved. We give the kids too much love and smother them, or give them no love at all and rue the day they came into this world. We feed them too many of the wrong things trying to keep them happy when our focus should be trying to keep them healthy. Perhaps we love them, but don’t like them. Or, maybe the reason we don’t like them as teens and adults is because we see how flawed our parenting was and their behavior is a direct result; or we treat their behavior like we wish we had been treated and that treatment doesn’t fit the situation or the child. Maybe we love them too much, or too little, or not at all. Sometimes we get it right, sometimes we just repeat our parents’ mistakes and fail miserably. But, we keep trying if we are constantly evolving.

Only time will tell if we get it right or we miss the mark entirely in helping our children grow into adulthood and they turn out to be someone hated or someone admired, the mass shooter in a mall, or a pioneer in discovering some treatment for a decades-old illness.

We have to learn that our children aren’t ourselves reincarnated, or that they’re far from perfection, or even entertain the thought that they may not like any of the things that thrill us and that’s okay. The Lakota Indians have a saying that what we call maturation is just us learning to be human. We have to learn to forgive ourselves for not doing it all the right way all the time and accept our humanness.

So in this next cake, as I fold in the eggs and flour, I will think of my children while I fold in a little of my memory of my mother and know that the cake will come out light, but with some flaw like being uneven, or cooked too long, or mixed too much, or just might have that occasional tiny eggshell piece that ends up in the final product that keeps it from being perfect.

July 9, 2010

Being poor is worse than having a disease. When you have a disease, you have the hope that someone will figure out what it is and it can be cured or you learn to manage it. Being poor leaves you with no hope of rescue. It’s a lot more than the difference between to have or have not.

Being poor is government issued tube sliced baloney sandwiches and thick unmeltable cheese on white Wonder bread. It’s canned fruit cocktail in lieu of fresh fruit.

It’s politicians determining what you have, when you have it, when you have reached your limit, and creating more laws to keep you trapped. It’s standing in long lines for handouts you wouldn’t take if you had money. It’s falling to the trap of finding free events created by whites for inner-city youth, then listening to them complain that you’re there. It’s being subjected to other people’s disdain because of those handouts, or because–poor.

It’s being on the short stick of the arrogance of someone else’s nose in the air. It’s spit where polish would go. It’s paper in the bottom of shoes that long ago lost their usefulness leftover from a style and era before you were born. It’s hand-me-down books in school when you can’t afford to buy your own; books 20-years out of date, earmarked, highlighted, with edge notes and unrecognizable stains on the pages.

It is wearing someone else’s not your size, hand me downs, or homemade clothes. It’s not being able to shop in the store your mother works cleaning fingerprints off glass counters and doors. It’s watching store clerks almost stroke out seeing you in the hat second fearing you’ll want to try one on that’s only mean for white heads.

Being poor is having a special card at the grocery store where uneducated clerks become managers of what you want to charge, who feel free to give you their unwarranted opinion of what the card will cover. It’s overweight store clerks telling you what you should be eating or buying. It’s buying cheap where buying bulk would be more advantageous and thrifty. It’s the difference between counting the right calories to eat, but affording only the wrong. It’s the difference between cable and local channels.

Being poor is having to sit with the unwashed masses on busses and subway cars and being felt up when you pass by regardless of your age or respectability. It’s inserting boundaries on your travels that stretch beyond the bus/subway route for a change in your oppressive scenery. It’s having your travels restricted from anything adventurous outside that boundary.

It’s brown-bagging greasy sandwiches or leftover fried chicken in the corporate lunchrooms where your bag sits among your coworker’s cottage cheese, yogurt, yesterday’s take-outs, and sparkling waters. It’s knowing you’re not invited to after-hour events because you’re, well, poor.

Being poor is where you’re considered uneducated, stupid, and even ill-equipped to vote. It’s government workers prying into every measurable unit of your life and trying to control your every move. It’s untrained workers who envy anything good you’ve acquired, whether earned or inherited, and want it gone so they can take more joy in your misery.

Being poor controls where your kids go to school, where you live, where you shop. It’s government workers who say they want you to do better, but need to control how fast that “doing better” is. It’s having to sell your hard-earned property in order to qualify for medical care for serious illnesses. It’s being punished for trying to save. It’s having your money docked if you get a raise so that saving and doing better continues to be that carrot mocking your horse-drawn life.

Being poor is the difference between borrowing and owning. Even if it doesn’t take away your dreams, it impacts the grandiosity of how you dream. It’s being limited whereby paying cheap is short-lived and a dollar more would make a quality buy last longer; quantity versus quality.

Being poor impacts the dreams of your children, some more than others. It controls with whom your children play, what sports they can play, what toys they can own. It’s having their names on a list so their teacher can have them get their subsidized food when their friends have lunch boxes complete with Tupperware containers so all items remain separate and small freezer packs inserted in a corner of the box to keep it fresh. It’s having teachers who “know” your story and know they see you differently—with a tainted view of your physical person, not of your capacity to–BE. It’s giving other kids something to laugh at when you have to write that first composition every year in English class about what you did or where you went over the summer.

It’s lowering the odds of your child going to a school that focuses on their major instead of a community college of general studies. It’s watching your child dumb-down to keep from standing out and becoming a target. It’s learning early to not be boastful or proud of your intelligence because it angers your teachers and intimidates the white kids, thus making you a target of focused racism where grading will impact your future life. So you learn to dumb-down, but it leads to patterned-learned behavior because no one tells you when it’s okay to stop doing that and show how smart you are. You wear that dumbing like a straightjacket which binds you tightly and is controlled by someone other than yourself.

Being poor makes a preteen a babysitter before they know how to take of themselves. It’s knowing that your child can’t study because they’re scared of gunfire, or the noise in the building is distracting. It’s dealing with the constantly overwhelming smells of others’ food filling the hallway air where no fresh breeze is allowed. It’s the knowledge that your child can only choose between a recreational center for sports, and a gang for survival.

The difference between joining a gym and cleaning one. It’s seeing your prepubescent girls being taunted and sexualized by the predators in the neighborhood, but your bus ride prevents you from walking them safely through such a maze. It’s settling for childcare with unlicensed neighbors with a house full of kids so you can go to your minimum wage job where the boss’s son is half your age and lords his power over all his workers like a knife-wielding madman.

It’s those rare parents who insist on teaching their kid to say “please” and “thank you” in a no-pleasing, thankless world. It’s rearing kids in dank, dark buildings with dank, dark hallways and in bedrooms with little chance of fresh air or room to run. It’s being financially segregated, of which racial segregation is a byproduct. At its worst it is being an individual family unit where fear called “no see-no tell” is the dividing factor.

It’s sleeping six to a room built for two, in a bed built for three—maximum. It’s a clothesline where a jump rope would be. It’s lowering the odds of your child being discovered for their talent and intelligence. It’s your child settling for a stray cat or pit bull when a Cocker Spaniel is more compatible with their nature. It’s only having leftovers to feed the dog that’s not on your budget, but gives your children some measure of happiness.

Being poor is the difference between having your mother with limited experience fry your hair in the kitchen because you can’t go to the local hair stylist. It’s using cheap relaxers that damage your hair, because the creams for natural hair is expensive, and you do major damage before you learn you can make your own hair care products inexpensively.

It’s not being boastful or proud of your intelligence because it angers your teachers and intimidates the white kids, thus making you a target of focused racism. So you learn to dumb-down, but then that leads to patterned-learned behavior because no one tells you when it’s okay to show how smart you are. You spend the major part of your life trying to not outshine coworkers and bosses who work because they know they will become your boss with little-to no knowledge, but you work because you want to do better. It’s working for bosses you make look so good they won’t promote you because there’s no one to replace you. Or, watching 2-or-3 new white hires try to replace what you did for less money by yourself.

It allows random people the freedom to discuss your finances aloud so no one can tell THEY are doing worse with their own personal accounts. It’s having to choose which bill to pay, which to defer, and dealing with the constant wrath of whoever is not paid.

Being poor even impacts your religious choices to either what is within walking distance or trolley line even though your beliefs lie elsewhere. It injects preachers or their First Lady into your life so they can feel important, benevolent because you need a loan from them so your child can participate in something. It’s being forced to take baskets of food items that someone doesn’t want in their cupboards and you are expected to be appreciative with no hint of dislike or resentment to accept things you don’t even eat. It’s another way to make others feel benevolent and hold you accountable to acknowledge their goodness and mercy for all the rest of your days.

Being poor is the difference between eating healthy and fast food. It’s being limited to a bus route. It’s going to universities where dentists-in-training do your dental work and you take what you get. It’s using mental health clinics where the staff operates by number rather than by individual. It’s hoping your kids didn’t see the commercials of some new toy near the holidays. It’s saying you can’t afford something when you want to do more–better. It’s hearing your mother crying into her pillow at night from the overwhelming frustration of it all. It’s staying in on the weekends because you don’t trust your neighbors to watch your children because you see theirs standing on street corners past even your own bedtime.

As a child your view of being poor creates anger without understanding why you feel that way. It’s watching your parents fight about what’s important for bills, your education, their jobs, or just out of the frustration of not being allowed to choose. It’s seeing your father emasculated according to the whims of social services. It’s seeing your mother’s pain at having to leave you home when you’re sick because she can’t afford to stay home and take care of you. It’s family members constantly switching monies from their pocket to another’s depending on who gets their money on time. It’s knowing the place you work at deliberately withholds paying on time, or docking your money because—they can, which begins the money shuffle.

It’s being angry at the invisible state of hopelessness and taking it out on whomever is closest or convenient. It damages who or how you love, and sometimes how long your relationships will be. It’s a snapshot (hopefully) of your life that is branded in your mind and plays a role in your future choices.

Being poor makes adults turn to liquor and drugs to have some type of control in their lives. It starts off just to get you through the day, then this pay period, then this month, then you lose control and it takes over your life. It’s seeing misery in being controlled by a substance or controlled by an agency standing by to take your family apart.

It’s the despair in living in subsidized houses/apartments that no one would voluntarily choose to live in and pay rent for; located in neighborhoods that are dangerous to your well-being. And, as a result of that subsidy, it’s your children knowing way too early in life what crime and violence is. Those kinds of places where people robbed of their hope for a better life are shuffled into blank spaces hollowed out from frustrations and pain with no place else to go.

It’s living in substandard housing with coal-fueled heat and claw-footed bathtubs when most (white) homes (the privileged) have had showers, gas and electric heating for years. Those places where laws had to be made to force white-flight owners to repair because they know their tenants have no place else to go so they will get their rent regardless. It’s systemic control where humanity and empathy have lost their way.

It’s not being able to pay the utilities so you fill a tub with cold water, to which you add pots of water heated on the stove for a lukewarm bath. It’s going to school/work today smelling like yesterday.

Being poor is the difference between generic store brands versus USDA approved. Or the difference between taking a two-week vacation, and not having to go to work for two weeks.

It can be the difference between going without the necessities to survive, and taking what’s not yours. Between hearing and listening. It’s hearing the public laugh and mock your child’s name that you took your time to research from the book of names of the elders, when there are privileged white kids who carry names like Coco, Harley Quinn, Pilot Inspektor, Moon Unit, Jet, Apple, Diva Muffin, Daisy Boo, Atticus, Banjo, and Calico. Between having your child labeled a gang member no matter how untrue simply because of their creative name, socioeconomic status, and neighborhood. Between burying your children too soon, and having the county cremate them as indigent because you can’t afford to bury them properly.

Being Black and poor is a whole other level of bondage. Being poor messes in every way with your sense of hope. It’s growing innocently into adulthood and finding out that the system is so rigged that even the white poor have an advantage, inherent privilege. It is being thirsty and only seeing water as a mirage on the periphery of hope. It’s feeling despair where hope should be. It’s being angry at being beyond the grasp of hope. It puts an unwashed, blurred filter on your life’s lens that you use to see where hope lies. It’s feeling as if God has deserted you when He may not be saying yes or no, but simply–wait.

[Originally posted 7/9/14]

 

JUNE 13, 2014 LEAVE A COMMENT

It saddens me that religions all use words written by MEN that make choices FOR US about who to love, who to accept, and who/what is good for us. It would behoove us all to remember that the translations of the scrolls and other biblical documents were done by MEN and they decided unilaterally what (of those writings) was okay to be used and what to be kept hidden. All this was determined by what they wanted; their personal goals and ambitions. There are times when someone discovers that the words some translator of old thought meant a certain thing turned out in later translations to mean something else.

What we’re forgetting is that “religion”, all of them, are manmade. If a man (always a man) didn’t like what he was hearing, he formed his own religion so that he could set his own rules and dominate anyone he wanted any way he wanted, and people, especially women, followed without questioning his motives. They followed Jim Jones off the cliff of life because they stopped questioning what I’ll bet their instincts were telling them. People who weren’t born Jewish began to separate into various religious groups like Catholics, Baptist, Methodist, and much later Jehovah Witnesses and Mormons.

When my sister became a Jehovah’s Witness I was a teenager.  It wasn’t long into her conversion that she changed from a funny, fun-loving person to being more serious, challenging, aggressive. When I’ve tried to talk to her about religious beliefs she will get mean and raise her voice, and I back off because her personality changes. I can remember commenting about saying a prayer asking God for something and she became icy, snapping at me about how God didn’t have time for us piddly individuals because He had the world to attend to. It was so noticeable that her husband interrupted and, in his soft, pleasing manner, explained what she was trying to say. Whatever she was trying to say I never heard because she mentally scarred me with her tone. When she first became a Witness she would not even associate with our family because (I understood at that time) we were not Witnesses; it was like a cult to me. Manmade rules. We’re good now, but I don’t discuss religion with her—ever.

Mormons don’t allow people outside their religion to walk into their church. When the last huge tabernacle was built here in San Diego the whole country was invited to visit for a period of time. When that period was over, the church was cleaned from top to bottom and all the carpeting was replaced so that no trace of anyone outside that group was evident. And, for a long time Blacks were not welcome into their church and could not enter into heaven when they died. Manmade rules.

Even the pronouns “man” and “woman” were not as distinguished in the original writings (learned that from a Homily and a science channel). And I’m particularly fascinated with how someone who has what’s called “second sight” can be demonized by religions because the leadership can’t control the visions or the people having them. How is it wrong or evil when a person today has a vision of something that will happen in the future when it’s clear that prophesies learned from biblical readings are just people who had visions, or second sight?

If all of us are made up of energy and that energy never dies, and we are prone to genetic memories handed down through generations, how can some of us not be visionaries? When someone can see how doing X will be beneficial and that person creates X and becomes a billionaire, we don’t hesitate to call him or her a visionary. How is that bad? How does that differ from someone seeing a house ablaze in a dream and warn the homeowner to fix the electric outlet? They are all visions made from the energy that surrounds us and we intuit them in different ways.

When we look at the Catholic Church where laws were written to keep women from owning property (following generations of priests marrying and having children), papal decrees started prohibiting priests to marry because the CHURCH could lose the property; another example of manmade laws twisted into religious “beliefs.” After all, that law wasn’t always in place; greed and jealousy from men over possessions changed that.

In many religions writings are used in church doctrine that were not from the original translations because they created their own holy book (usually to replace or augment the Bible). In those cases, some man (always a man) decided he didn’t like what was written as taught by the Bible, so he proclaimed himself as being some type of prophet and wrote his own rules and little by little, others began to follow him until he reached the multitudes. There was a time when some religions taught that being Black (tied to Cain and Able) was an abomination and all Black folk could only be slaves.

When my brothers and I became Catholics we were forbidden to read a Bible because they were considered too stupid to be able to interpret what was written, so only priests could tell us what we should know. You might imagine the conflict that gave me as a kid when my mother, who was a Baptist, would read the Bible, and good ol’ Fr. Buddy at St. Boniface Catholic School was telling us pimply-faced, pre-hormonal kids that that was a sin. I spent sleepless nights tussling in my undeveloped mind about how my mother was sinning because I couldn’t put together her NOT being Catholic with what Catholics are supposed to believe. I didn’t think it was right and that led to me questioning. My minor league kiddy questions to clear up my mental conflicts were answered by St. Marie Antoinette and Fr. Buddy (he led the catechism classes) with a saying I’ll never forget, “That is one of the great mysteries of God.”

Some religions have rules about with whom you can associate, or it’s against their laws to visit other churches (yet they can browbeat others about their church), or what you can (or can’t) wear, and of course, who you can or cannot marry. And, if you marry someone outside your religion, in some countries you can be killed. This is really happening at the time of this wring in India (Pakistan) where woman are particularly devalued.

I wonder, if I can visit your church without fearing I would lose my beliefs, what are you losing to visit my church if you are so solid in your beliefs? How can someone who knows NOTHING from experience of other teachings be so solidified in their beliefs? Do they fear their beliefs can be shaken? Or is it that their leaders know that too much questioning about the oddities of their religion may diminish their belief in it?

It all makes me so sad, particularly when it’s about disowning someone for being born a certain way. Remember that in the past, people with obvious disabilities were deemed witches and therefore it was okay to burn them. Or, they could be hidden in the attic so no one would know they existed. Or if they were severely disabled they could be killed because of their imperfections. How about that a woman could not own property. Or a barren woman? Or that if a woman’s husband died, she had to marry his brother. God said that?

I don’t think God makes such distinctions. One cannot possibly say that God is good, and then demean His creations. If God creates energy and some of us are more susceptible to levels of energy than others, how is that not God-given?

I’ve been a Catholic almost all my life, but there are some things that I instinctively knew even as a kid that it was not what God intended. For example, I was very conflicted as a child about having a Bible in my house that my mother read. I refer back to good ol’ Fr. Buddy at St. Boniface Catholic Church and School in Milwaukee, where I was taught she was a heathen, she was going against God’s will for being bold enough to read the Bible on her own, but I didn’t believe that. I did keep silent on the issue (because I was a kid), but I never believed that God would condemn someone for reading His word. And for some reason, my youngest brother, Edward, determined that the Bible was only meant to be read by men and he would literally walk out of a church if a woman was at the pulpit. That same argument hits me dead in my stomach with condemning people for being gay. How can God create us all yet we can call His creations bad if some man deems them so? That’s all sorts of arrogant and a misuse of biblical guidelines. You can’t say that that gays are an abomination in the same breath as “love your neighbor as I have loved you” without being a hypocrite. You are basically saying you are better than something else God created. Again, arrogant as hell.

We see almost on a weekly basis an insecure young white male shoot up some establishment, yet we know that it’s against God’s will to kill. Do we look at insecure young white males as an abomination? Nope, society makes excuses about that young man being an INDIVIDUAL, somehow mentally flawed, but definitely not a representative of a whole ethnic group. If an insecure young Black male shoots up the post office, more laws are written to control the comings and goings of Black folk in general, even though they weren’t the ones shooting up the post office. Is that one of God’s teachings? Where is it in the Bible that whites are better than any other ethnic group? How can some minor writings in the Bible (alluding to gays) be such a prominent part of religions while other parts (what can and cannot be worn or eaten) is ignored?

I really believe that religions were created to control women. Yes, that’s my take on it. Men don’t try to control other men, they want the women controlled so they can multiply and control the children. When religious groups like the Mormons can expel young males because they challenge their male hierarchy in authority, they fair much better in controlling the minds of the women in the group. Women having children increases the number of the group and anyone questioning their beliefs can be ousted and/or shunned.

From my perspective, no religion is perfect because it is dictated, translated, and taught by man, not God. The Bible is a guide for how to live our lives, but it’s used more to control our thoughts and hate others who are different than it is to love others as your neighbor. We, as a people, have got to stop these constant (mis)interpretations of what laws we follow, or don’t follow, because that indirectly influences the minds of the next generation.

We live life in the wrong order. We spend most of our youth in school, then working at some job or other that we really have no passion for just to pay off the debt of that schooling, and then retire when we are too old or too infirmed to have the kind of adventures we should have had, with little monies left to enjoy ourselves. It is what our parents did, and their parents before them, so we continue the process as if it’s programmed into our DNA. But it isn’t.

What should be happening is that when we leave school, we should get a government pension for ten years to be adventurous with a REQUIRMENT to travel to find what we love and/or have a passion for. Everyone should be issued a passport with their birth certificate, have it activated upon graduating from high school and must travel out of the country during their ten-year hiatus after high school.

Just think about it, if kids have a goal of going to Switzerland after graduation, for example, they are less likely to get pregnant because their minds are focused on a loftier goal. Gangs would be nonexistent because people’s worldview are more expanded, which is detrimental to gang affiliation and mentality.

I believe that when a person has a worldview of life, they become more compassionate and/or understanding about how others live and have less inclination to destroy that which they don’t understand. That will greatly enrich any college studies, because people have more of a sense about who they are and what they want out of life. And most of all, graduation rates would increase astronomically because only people who want to go to college will go to college. Businesses can only recruit from the population that’s been out of high school for ten years. Sports are the only exception because those years are when our bodies can take the beating that sports programs demand.

If this was the case, this country wouldn’t be owned by a handful of old white men because there would be much fewer mindless lemmings to follow someone spouting untruths. People would be more knowledgeable about money, spending, buying, and investments so the debts incurred would decrease significantly.

Just a thought.