gyroscope2000

When an issue that has been dead for 30 years is revived somebody somewhere is profiting, but at what cost to the nation?

Okay…let’s say you’re out shopping. Your cart and the other guy’s carts won’t fit in the isle, so who moves? You’re both jockeying your carts to move out of the way, and suddenly for no reason, you both begin to laugh. Simultaneously, you both throw up your hands in exasperation, and one of the two of you moves the cart back and away so that the other can pass. It happens daily; between members of the opposite sex and race, and no one is the worse for wear. It’s the acts of human kindness brought on by proximity and both parties have made a momentary, if not everlasting impression of good on one another. When these moments of solidarity turn to friendship, it will always be those few moments when life offered you the opportunity to laugh together that will be remembered throughout your lives. No man, woman, or child can tell you the exact moment that they decided upon a friend, but most can tell you why they knew this person or that person was going to be their friend.

It’s been 30 years ago in the summertime when three teenagers set out to have some fun and mischief, and the memory of that night is still as clear as a bell. Joe, Pat, Nancy, and I, decided that the cemetery-big ole cemetery with a lot of ancient graves-was the perfect place to smoke a little Mary Jane and clown around for a while. Joe is black, Pat is Mexican, I am white, and it was the group consensus that none of us was quite sure what Nancy was…for all intent and purposes, she was white, but she was different from anyone that any of us knew. We were friends in an age when friendships between the races and sexes were questionable. Our actions that night might have been questionable as well, but our friendship was never questionable. We were four goofball teenagers having a bit of fun and breaking a few minor laws while entertaining ourselves with childish play. The end result was that we got high, scared the crap out of each other, and without vandalizing property or getting arrested, we went home laughing. I haven’t seen Nancy or Joe for a long time, but I have run into Pat a few times over the years. We all grew up and moved on, and it’s a sad reminder that we have grown apart as adults, not because of any rules we broke or any contacts that we might have made, but because we got old. We forgot, as many have, the childish carefree days of youth, and have become mired in some ancient tradition of aging that requires us to leave behind the things we knew as fun and freedom and make a life that has become tired from responsibility.

Ah responsibility, separating the adults from the children and requiring us to grow old. Those friends and friendships still exist, but we (all four of us) have not taken the time to renew and rejoice in the life we once knew as teenagers. All of us have had children, grandchildren, bills, house payments, work, after school activities, and family that separate us from the way we were all those years ago. The harsh reality is that we have spent so much time trying to be the adults that our parents expected us to be, that we have let go of the child within. That child knows that all the talk about race and sex has taken us back to a time when we didn’t care, but that those who could profit from it would use it, once again, to separate us into categories for their purposes. The child inside me is defiant when I hear that blacks hate whites, or whites hate blacks, because I know better. That child will stand solidly with all brothers and sisters in this nation to unite against the old dogs who have found a new use for a dead issue.

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