society

In the religion (renamed the politically-correct Belief) section of the Houston Chronicle‘s Sunday, November thirteenth issue, there was an article entitled The Silent (Mis)Treatment: Show Hospitality to Everyone You Encounter by Ben Byrum. In it he talked about the experiment he conducted as a college freshman. New in town, new to the church and having difficulty making friends, he decided one Sunday that if after services had gotten underway no one had greeted him he would walk out. He waited for five minutes and nothing. Thirty seconds before the service, he began gathering his things.

I was planning to go back to my room and stay there for the rest of the day; after all, nobody seemed to pay attention to me. With fifteen seconds left, my math professor turned around in her chair, which was a couple of rows in front of me, and almost as if she had turned around just for me, she flashed a me a smile and said, “I’m glad you’re here, Ben.”

He stayed. He couldn’t tell you what the service was about, what songs were sung, but he remembers feeling noticed and how painful not being noticed was.

Further in the article, Byrum shares a tale from the seventies about a man in his thirties who wrote a letter, walked from his San Francisco apartment to the Golden Gate Bridge and jumped. Byrum said the man had left the letter in his dresser.

It was discovered by investigators when they searched his apartment. It was a suicide letter that read, “I’m going to walk to the bridge. If one person smiles at me on the way, I won’t jump.” 

I wept when my mother told me about this article, these stories of invisibility. The writer had gone to that church on several occasions. He’d chosen it because it was the most popular among the student body. That man… I can’t even begin to imagine how his despair must’ve grown with each step toward that bridge.

Christ, how difficult is it to smile at someone? Just smile? That simple act of kindness could’ve been the light for that man. Could’ve meant LIFE.

Today, I spent my afternoon at Pappadeaux’s. I went to Barnes and Nobles for a couple of books. I got gas for the journey home. When I pulled into the station, I noticed a girl huddled on the corner of the curb. I asked her if she needed a ride. She asked me if I was going to Tomball. I wasn’t. That’s twenty minutes southwest of where I was, and home is Ten minutes north, but I told her I could take her wherever she needed to go. In my mind I’m praying Please God, don’t be some psycho bent on wreaking havoc. I mucked out my car, gave her a bag of chips, which was the only food I had on me. She’d not eaten all day. She had no money. Her phone was dead. Her friends had left her there. She was a twenty-seven-year-old psychology student and a mother of two. She reminded me a little bit of my brother’s wife: petite, blonde with pigtails dyed blue, dressed in a sweatshirt, jeans and chucks. Her birthday was in three days. Her friends had left her there. I told her she needed to get some new friends.

She’d been waiting at that gas station since ten a.m. When I’d met it her, it was half-past eight.

Now sure, a whole lot of bad shit could’ve happened. I can imagine all kinds of scary, yall. I knew the risks. I just kept thinking if someone had left me there, and I had no way of getting home, I would’ve been praying hard for someone to show me some kindness. I asked her if anyone had offered to give her a ride, thinking that maybe they’d asked and refused because it was out of their way. She said no. I thought of the story in the paper, of the man, and asked if anyone had even smiled at her. She said no.

I’m a Christian woman, but I don’t go around bragging about it. That’s not how I define myself. Those commandments? I’m pretty sure I’ve broken at least half of’m, some of’m I break with phenomenal consistency. I say God a hell of a lot more than I should, which means I break that third commandment several times a day. My faith’s a crazy mix of Catholicism, astrology and Greek mythology, which means I’m breaking the second one with pretty much every breath. and I love my mama and daddy, but I do not live the way they want me to, so… there’s three of’m that I’ve all but obliterated. But that passage in Matthew… twenty-five: forty: Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me… I’m not always good about it, but I try to keep that one in mind.

So there’s that. But more… I’ve gone through too much of my life feeling as invisible as that author and the man who’d made that godawful trek to that bridge. Nobody should ever have to feel like they don’t matter.

Can you imagine how many had gawked at that girl today? How they’d thought so little of her?

Ain’t no way in hell I would’ve left her sitting there. Ain’t no way.

I’m not some social justice warrior. I don’t think I get up on my soap box too often. Not nearly as much as some of my friends do, anyway.

But good God, yall… we can do better. We can do so much better. It just takes one person… one kind word. One gesture. One smile. It just takes one.

Originally published November fourteenth, ‘sixteen.

Last night, I watched a video of a man intimidating a white woman into kneeling on a sidewalk and apologizing for her white privilege. That man has NO knowledge of her story. NONE. She is white, and therefore she is the cause of his sorrow. She is. This woman he does not know. This woman he’d not met until that day. This woman who has now been humiliated on national television to appease some need in that man for vengeance. I was mortified for them both, the man and the woman.

priv·i·lege

ˈpriv(ə)lij/

noun

1. 1.a special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group of people.”education is a right, not a privilege”synonyms:advantage, benefit; prerogative, entitlement, right; concession,freedom, liberty“senior students have certain privileges”

Let’s talk about privilege, yeah? I keep hearing people use that word, and the way it’s thrown around these days you’d think it’s as vile and offensive as a four-letter word that begins with c and rhymes with punt.

My ancestors are Welsh, Irish, Scot, English and Austrian. The Welsh culture and history was all but obliterated by the English. The Irish and the Scot have struggled to own their identities and be seen as separate from England for what seems like centuries. And when people think of Austria, that’s that country that essentially started World War One.

I am the middle child of an upper-middle class couple — high school sweethearts who attended the same university because my father couldn’t bear to be too far from my mother. My father likes to joke that he wasn’t the smartest one in his class but he was smart enough to marry the smartest one. He played football and was in band (and bands) and a fraternity. She was in band as well and a sorority. They became teachers. He became a school superintendent. They had my brother, who seemed to be pretty perfect. And then they had me. All that sounds SO rosy, doesn’t it? My mother had two miscarriages — one before my brother and one after. Her father and sister were alcoholics. His brother was. Their firstborn son was. And me? Oh I made things interesting.

Let’s talk about privilege. My face has been cut up three times. My stomach and left leg have been cut up once and my right leg twice. If it weren’t for my parents’ love, if they hadn’t wanted a daughter so badly, if my mother’s parents hadn’t been a doctor and a nurse, if she hadn’t helped in her father’s clinic, if my father hadn’t attained a master’s degree in special education… if my body had demanded more medical attention than it has, I could be rotting away in some institution the doctors suggested my parents place me.

Let’s talk about the patches I had to wear on my face or the metal braces that were on my legs for God knows how long during my infancy that my mother threw away the moment I didn’t need them anymore. The times I’ve had people ask me if I’m talking to them when I’m looking right at them only it doesn’t look like I am because one eye’s off in lala land.

My eyes? They used to look this lovely. I had surgery the summer I turned thirteen to make them prettier. I was so eager to see them look better that I forgot that it wasn’t going to be instantaneous. The moment those patches came off and the doctor cut the stitches thad had been keeping my eyes closed so they could do their thing… I was eager to see the results. I looked like Frankenstein. It took months to heal from that. And I couldn’t swim. Swimming was what saved me back then. Swimming brought me peace.

Let’s talk about the number of times people have asked if I’ve Asian heritage because my eyes look like they do now–small and somewhat slanted. The times I fell off curbs in my youth because I couldn’t see. The times I’d be walking… just walking and something in my leg would snap or slip just because, the way I’d crumple, clutching my knee and screaming obscenities because the pain was immense. The times I’ve had to glue myself against an aisle in a grocery store or the wall dividing the dining area from the ordering stations in Chic-fil-A because I’d lost all cognizance of space and my place in it and felt like I was spinning and about to tumble… and maybe break something else… because things in me break so easily.

Let’s talk about the times people stare at me like I’m a freak. The number of times they ask me What the hell is your problem? And driving at night on a freeway? That’s fun stuff. Really. I love it. I do it because I have to, because damned if I’m going to stay home when I want to be out. But it was a whole lot easier when my town had twenty-thousand in it instead of a hundred thousand. It was a whole lot easier when people could give each other some room. People don’t know the meaning of personal space. ANYWHERE. And I rely on that space something fierce.

Let’s talk about the times my teachers assumed that because my father was who he was I would be this exemplary student — well-behaved with strings of A-pluses in their grade books. I would make them look GOOD. I didn’t. And when I didn’t, their response was to recommend I be placed in special education or relegated from honors to level classes.

Sure, if I came home without my books on the weekends, my father would haul my butt to school after Sunday Mass, unlock the place and practically drag me to my locker. He would not be happy about it. Sure, my mom would bench my butt at the kitchen table to work on an assignment that was due the week before because she was so pissed at me for being so thoughtless and disrespectful… and lazy.

God knows if my father hadn’t been who he was, the peers who’d bullied me in my youth would’ve done a lot worse. With the exception of one altercation in fifth grade in which a boy jabbed my face with one of my perfectly sharpened pencils that left a permanent mark, they never touched me. I think they were too afraid to do so. But you can maim a person’s spirit with words, and those wounds never heal so well as the physical ones do. Hell, if it weren’t for my folks, I doubt I’d be here today, banging on these keys.

You think because my skin is white that I can’t know tragedy?

Let’s talk about the time I came home from school sobbing and telling my mother I wish I could tear my skin off. Or the time a teacher put my desk in a refrigerator box so she wouldn’t have to look at me because she couldn’t bear the sight, because she didn’t want me in her classroom but was forced to keep me because I was too smart to be in a different one.

I’ve buried a brother, a man I spent a decade hating. I carry that guilt with me, and it weighs on my heart something fierce. I have lived my life without ever hearing a man other than those in my family say he loves me and mean it. I battle some godawful mental demons on pretty much a daily basis.

Tragedy doesn’t play favorites. It cares not for race or creed or culture. It doesn’t give a damn about color or shape. It’ll screw with you regardless of whether you’re single or married, rich or poor, black or white, fat or thin, kind or callous. It. Does. Not. Care.

I don’t presume to think that my experiences are greater or lesser than yours. I know damned well they’re not. My parents made sure of that. They’ve spent years, YEARS telling me I wasn’t any different from anybody else. I’m not. I know the ways in which I have been blessed. I know the ways in which I have been burdened. My limitations may be different from yours, but the fact that I have them… we all do. Every one of us. I wish we could be more tolerant of each other. I wish we could be more considerate.

The day I originally published this I learned a couple flying from Sacramento to Philadelphia were booed by passengers in first class because the pilot had requested that couple be allowed to deplane first so as not to miss their connection. So as not to miss their flight to Dover where they were to claim their dead son, a soldier who’d been given a Gold Star for his service. The folks in first class booed them because of how inconvenienced they were at having to wait, that someone in coach should receive preferential treatment when they’d paid the exorbitant costs of flying first class so they could be more important.

The pilot gave that couple a privilege. Because if ever there’s a time one should be given it’s then.

This is America. Land of the free, home of the brave. We are for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness here. We are for life. We should be helping each other live and love. We should be helping each other. We should be building each other up, not forcing them to the ground and setting things on fire to assuage some need for repentance. I saw an article the other day about protestors setting a building on fire WITH PEOPLE INSIDE and then BLOCKING the firefighters sent to put out the flames. A child was in that building. A CHILD would have died were it not for those firefighters’ persistence to save those people within.

If you want racism to end, stop throwing it in people’s faces at every available opportunity. I don’t treat people differently because of the color of their skin. I know how much it sucks to be mistreated. I strive to be good to everyone. I’m not perfect. I make mistakes. Sometimes I really miss the mark. But I strive to be good, to put good in the world. It starts with ONE. And that one can have monumental ripple effects. Let them be good.

I’ve had the Youngbloods’ in my head so often lately. Come on people, now. Smile on your brother. Everybody get together. Try to love one another right now.

Originally published November twenty-first, ‘sixteen.