The Stupid, It Burns Us, It Does…

I’m on my day off in the middle of five days of opening (to bed before 8 pm, preferably before 7, but that never works, to arise at 3:15 am, then work at 5, tearing down and distributing three or more pallets of several hundred boxes of material, weighing from mere ounces to over forty pounds each.  Ugh), but my brain is wracked with the attacks of the stupids this morning.

Stupid The First is this aspiring asshole.  Should the link be expired or not working, let me, in the immortal words of Innigo Montoya, sum up:  Youngling Master controls a vehicle (not a pickup truck, regrettably), upon which he has mounted a flag pole.  Said flag pole is displaying Youngling Master’s true dipshittery by flying the confederate flag.  While Youngling Master is utterly and entirely within his rights to display and fly such a symbol (and I do support him in the right to display such dipshittery, mostly as it so happens to self-identify the fucknuts among us), Youngling Master is perhaps unaware (doubtful) that his rights to such dipshittery end at the border of the school yard.

Our dear Youngling Master (capably and ably raised, I am sure, by his mother and father) is, at least this week, a high school senior.  A strange and odd conglomeration of adult, petulant two year old, and terrifyingly unknown potential to wreck havoc upon society, or (at least, in this particular case, the more likely outcome) attain and acquire such skills so as to make our Youngling Master the pre-eminent kitchen sanitation engineer and lawn maintenance supervisor (that’s dishwasher and lawn mower, to those of you yet un-matriculated.  And if you have matriculated, you’d best either crack a book or ask for your time back, because you are woefully uneducated).

Youngling Master has failed to comprehend a truth, at least in this time, at this place, when it comes to “freedom of expression” – he can express himself all he wants, up to the edge of school property.  Once he’s on that property, he’s not “in public” – he is, in fact, in my yard.  And the yard of every single taxpayer in the community, state, and nation.  And we’ve reached a kind of compromise, which is, yes, you are free to believe what ever the hell you want, but school grounds are neutral territory.  You can believe that dogs are food, that certain colors of people indicate certain competencies (or lacks thereof), you can even believe that you’re entitled to marry your sister and eat your uncle Fred, if you so choose (and Fred is both tasty in appearance and slow enough for you to catch him).

I do not CARE what you believe in; I will defend your right to express that belief.

But School Grounds are Neutral Territory.  I don’t get to post my “Vote For No One In 2016” signs on the school grounds any more than you get to post your Trump sign.  Or your “Feel The Bern”.

Youngling Master says he self-identifies with the American South.  Based on the interview I saw on television, I doubt this individual can string together a sentence with more than two three-syllable words in it (unless one is “da-ay-am”), but let us, for a moment, allow that he has thought through this self-identification, and he supports:

• The rights of states to require students of ALL faiths to recite Christian Prayer before school.
• The rights of states to set unreasonable and unrealistic requirements before any individual might cast a vote in an election.
• The rights of one particular group to own, control, breed, sell, kill, and/or dispose of another group of people simply based on skin tone.
• The rights of the state to tell the federal government to take a hike – until a natural disaster comes along, as is likely in the south, then they scream for federal aid.

Youngling Master, I am sure, has never considered life beyond the end of his own personal flagpole.  And that’s fine.  That’s called childhood.  On the television last night, Youngling Master was identified as a high school senior.  One suspects that this is both this particular individual’s fifteen minutes of fame, and his (perhaps unlikely, should he continue this behavior) upcoming graduation may well be his high point of personal accomplishment (unless, later in life, he catches a fifteen pound bass, in which case he will be the most revered and respected man at the bar every weekday evening).

School grounds do not belong to the students.  Nor do they belong in any exaggerated sense to the teachers who work on them or the administrators who oversee them.  They belong to us, as a community.  And as recent history has seen, our first priority for those school grounds is that each and every attendee on those grounds must feel safe.  Safe to exist, safe from harm, safe from violence.

What harm is a confederate flag?  What harm, indeed, is it to promote the symbol of a system that decided that one particular group, due to an excess of pigmentation, was permitted to be abused and owned by another?  If it could happen to them, why can’t it happen to you?

We do our children no favors by failing to explain to them that the confederate flag is a symbol of a culture which is right and properly dead.  It represents the ideals of rich white people to own and control not only slaves but all other people they assume to be inferior because of last name or color or circumstance of birth.  The country we live in is about – all about – opportunity.  We are each handed this opportunity with our ejection from the womb.  It is said we all start with the same skill set and advantages – this is patently untrue, but we’ll take that out in a minute – and we make our own way according to our drive, our intelligence, and our skill set.

We’re not given the same advantages, that much is certain, or this particular fellow would have understood that his introduction to much of the state might have gone better if he had perhaps showered, cleaned himself up, and chosen a better issue.  Or perhaps he might wish to emigrate to a land where plurality of thought – that is, the ability to permit the population to have more than one opinion on any particular issue – is anathema (that is to say, kids, not good).  I am told that certain areas of Iraq and Afghanistan are lovely this time of year, and permit the majority (or at least, those with the biggest caliber weapons) to “call the shots” when it comes to the religion you believe in, the clothes you wear, the music you listen to, the sports you watch or participate in, or the cheers you might give forth at those sporting contests.

I suppose to some kids the entire point of the exercise is to “gig the parents”.  Growing up, I knew more than a few kids who took great care in knowing their parents’ preferences – just so they could go the opposite direction.  Mom and dad were devout Christians?  Kid becomes Buddhist – or atheist.  Mom and dad like blue?  Kid wears black and white, exclusively.  Some kids might even choose to give up certain rights/freedoms simply to irritate the parental units.

Children – and here I am not stating “children” in the sense of age, but in the sense of mental development – insist that the world should change according to their world-view.  They choose to perceive the parental imposition of limits like curfews and the like as restrictions on their rights, rather than precautions to prevent them from falling into bad habits, and perhaps more dangerous activities. Children will perceive the restrictions on their “rights” as parental meddling, when it is quite often concerns (sometimes, admittedly, overblown) for the safety and life of their child.

And sometimes, people – yes, even otherwise intelligent, well-meaning people – will misunderstand that support for expression means support for the ideas expressed.  Or that securing a safe space for all prohibits expression.

Look, I don’t care if you’re a Nazi sympathizer, a Holocaust denier, a member of a fundamentalist Islamic sect, or a card-carrying member of “I Dress Like A Squirrel On Weekends”.  You are free to express as you wish, so long as it’s not on school grounds.

Although, in that last case, if the dog chases your ass, you’d best be able to get up the tree like a real squirrel, or your costume had best have an easily-detachable tail.

Mother’s Day…

I know, I’m back.

As a kid, mother’s day was always a big day in our house.  Mom was a stay at home mom.  Until I was in junior high, mom didn’t even have a driver’s license.  With dad being handicapped by polio, life was sometimes difficult.

We had a regular milk man to deal with some of the more difficult needs of a young and growing family.  Dad built a shelf in the garage where the milkman would leave the new product – the close pin on the edge of the shelf held the order, and a weekly check (the guy came every day at first, and dropped down to two or three days a week before they ended the service).

So mom didn’t get out much.  With five young kids, ANYTHING was a production.  Going to church, school – anything out of the house was a bit of an undertaking.  As money was almost always tight, things were planned carefully – very carefully.

But every spring, we’d have an evening outing.  We’d end up in St. Cloud, at a place called “Farmer Seed and Nursery.”  It was a collection of buildings right across the street from McDonalds, on Division.  It probably started as a small storefront with a greenhouse out back, and ended up taking up most of a quarter of a block – a rather good location, as well.

We’d go into town right after dinner (which was usually right around 5 pm), and Dad would stay in the car.  The varied flooring and darkness of the buildings made it difficult for him to get around – so it was pretty much mom’s doing.  We’d run around picking out plants and ideas – mom would like some, poo poo some others, but eventually, a couple of flats of plants, some seeds, and a few tools would find their way onto the counter.

Sometimes Dad would come in and pay, sometimes Mom would.  But then it all made it’s way into the back of the station wagon, home we’d go, and the next morning (typically a Saturday) we’d be out in the yard, putting in the plants.

At some point, Dad would bring out a couple wrapped boxes – one from Daytons (now Macy’s) with some sort of outfit (skirt, shirt, and jacket, usually pastel), and a big box of Fanny Farmer candy.  Sometimes there would be other things – and of course there’d be the stuff we’d make or get for her.