“He just thinks that anyone who does anything when there’s no direct personal gain to be had is a sucker. There’s no money in serving the nation.”

That’s my dad in the photo, newly enlisted in the Coast Guard. He was 19 years old.

He wanted adventure and to see the world.

He also wanted to serve his country.

After his time in the Coast Guard, he took the GI Bill (which was available to him because was white) and went to college, studying Russian history, which was very relevant at the time. He was the first person in his family to go to college; neither of his parents got to go past 8th grade.

Then he joined the air force. He wanted to be a pilot in the navy and tried that first. He ate nothing but carrots for days, hoping it would help him pass the eye exam, but he still failed and was not going to be admitted to flight school, so he switched to the air force.

He went to air force officer candidate school (OCS). While he was home on break, he met my mother in the bar of the bowling alley of their home town, drove her home, got stuck in the ditch at her house, and had to wake my grandfather up at 2:00 a.m. to drag his car out of the ditch. In the Wisconsin February snow and cold.

Plus my grandfather was no fool and knew what had been going on in the car for a while before my mom and dad realized the car was stuck.

He finished OCS and became a maintenance control officer, which means he was in charge of making sure the airplanes were fit to fly. He knew how to fix things and he knew how to lead other people to fix things.

When I was four, he went to Vietnam.

My mother was 25 years old. She had three children. Her husband was sent to the other side of the world. There was no internet. There was no email. There was only the nightly news and a newspaper.

For an entire year, she went to bed every single night not knowing if the next day would be the day that the chaplain would knock on our door.

We moved to Spain, where Franco was running things. My dad wasn’t home a lot – he went to Turkey for a month at a time every few months.

We moved to west Texas. My dad coached my sister’s soccer team. (My mom coached mine.)

My dad taught me to drive stick shift and how to dig dandelions – you have to get the entire root. We rode our bikes to school and my dad insisted that we attach flags to the bikes for visibility.

We moved to the Panama Canal Zone, where Torrijos was the dictator du jour. My dad volunteered with my swim team, took my CYO group camping, and was an adult sponsor for the Sea Scouts. He took my friends and me sailing on the little sailboat he had bought, a dream he had always had.

At 5:00 a.m., my dad would blast the Boston Pops playing Sousa to wake us up to drive to the lake.

The night before my parents drove me to college, from San Antonio to Houston, my dad and I were packing the car.

“If you’re going to get laid,” my dad said, “use protection.”

“Dad!” I said. “You know I don’t believe in pre-marital sex!”

(I mean – I didn’t. I was 17.)

He rolled his eyes. “It’s going to happen. Don’t be stupid about it.”

When I was in college, my dad retired from the air force and went back to school to become certified to be a teacher. Active duty pay is low. Retirement pay is even lower. He got a job at Walmart to supplement his pension.

I was mortified.

My college friends’ fathers were corporate VPs and professors and lawyers and surgeons.

My mother, rightfully so, set me straight. Now I am ashamed of my shame. Is there any love greater than that of a parent who takes a minimum wage job just so he can feed his family?

My dad got his teaching certificate. He and my mom and dad moved to Sicily. At the age of 61, he had gotten a job teaching math and science at the junior high school on the US navy base on Sicily.

A few months later, he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

He thought he had pulled a muscle running a 10K.

He was 61 years old.

He thought he had pulled a muscle running a 10K.

It wasn’t a pulled muscle.

It was cancer.

It was cancer that he got because he was exposed to Agent Orange when he was in Vietnam.

He went through months of chemo. He lost over a third of his body weight. He had to use a diaper.

At the Lackland AFB hospital in San Antonio, where he was sent from Sicily, the young airmen who would change his diapers and his sheets always called him “sir” and looked him in the eye.

The hospital chaplain would hang out in my dad’s room to talk to him, just because he liked my dad.

The students he had taught for only four months held two bake sales to raise money to buy him a copy of their yearbook. They all signed it and sent it to him.

Friends my mom and dad had made all over the world – Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Italy – called my dad to wish him well. One friend told my dad that everyone at his mosque in Ankara was praying for his healing.

After five months of treatment, we thought the cancer was in remission. (A matter of luck, not of his being a fighter. Beating cancer is all about luck and nothing but luck.)

He gained weight. He exercised and regained strength. His hair started growing back.

Two months later, the cancer returned.

“Why you?” I asked him. “Why should you have cancer? Why not someone awful and mean?”

“Why not me?” he answered. “What makes me so special that bad things should not happen to me?”

We hoped for a miracle, but the only miracle we got was that after ten days in hospice, the two pound bag of peanut M&Ms that one of my aunts had brought down was left untouched.

On the day he died, which was exactly 23 years, ten days, and six hours ago, he was 62 years and two months old.

It has been 23 years, ten days, and six hours since my dad died.

We still mourn him. We still miss him.

Nobody will miss the current president. There is not one single person alive who will say, “He was my friend” or “He was the best father in the world” or “I loved him so much.” Not one.

Who’s the real loser and sucker?

The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.

History will remember Donald Trump.

But it will not remember him kindly.

Pop quiz – think about the great people you remember, both in your own life and in history.

Maybe the names that come to mind include Amelia Earhart and Harriet Tubman and Joan of Arc and Copernicus and Paul Revere and Jim Stockdale and the Chinese kid who stood in front of the tanks at Tienanmen Square and Florence Nightingale and Martin Luther King Jr and Nelson Mandela and the Mothers who march in Argentina demanding to know what happened to their children and that Naval Academy guy who walked into the protest in Portland with his hands up and was beaten by armed goons and every firefighter and every cop who have ever rushed in when others are rushing out and every schoolteacher who has sheltered children with her body while a shooter stood over them with a gun.

The list is long. The list of brave people is long. The list of brave people who, at great risk to their own safety or their own financial security, have taken a stand on the behalf of right is long.

Now think about all the rich people you can remember.

I mean, people who are known for being rich.

Not for doing anything positive with their wealth.

Just – for being rich. And having gold toilets. Or whatever.

Even better, think about all the people you know who became rich through inheritance. Through someone else’s ideas or labor, not even through their own work.

I’ll wait.

And – I can’t think of anyone.

I mean, there must be people in history – lots of heirs and heiresses. But – they do not stick in my mind.

They do not stick in my mind because they are insignificant.

Who cares about them? Who cares about what they did? It’s not even that nobody cares about what they did – it’s that they didn’t do anything for anyone to care about.

But there are worse things than to fade into insignificance.

Even worse than being forgotten would be to be remembered as a complete failure as a human being. As a buffoon. As a waste of space.

And that is how Donald Trump will be remembered.

And that is his great fear.

His biggest concern appears to be his TV ratings. He wants to know that he is – literally and figuratively – seen.

Oh we see you all right, Donald. We see you and we know. We know you are a pathetic little man who has never once in your entire life done anything brave, done anything for anyone else, done anything on your own. If it weren’t for your father’s money, you would be working at a 7-11 somewhere and you wouldn’t even be doing that very well.

Your great fear is that you are incompetent and stupid and incapable and that you are not great and guess what?

You. Are. Correct.

You think having money makes up for all of this but it does not.

I have no idea how much money Colin Kaepernick has but I do know this: 100 years from now – 500 years from now, I hope – I hope the United States still exists in 500 years, Kaepernick will be remembered as a hero and Trump will be remembered as the worst president this country has ever had, a loser so pathetic that his father had to buy his way out of the military (seriously – bone spurs?) and into college, and who failed at everything he tried.

In 1936, at the university in Salamanca, the rector of the university, Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo, gave a speech. General Franco’s chief advisor, General Millán Astray, heckled Unamuno, yelling, “Long live death!” which I think we can all agree is a stupid and confusing thing to say.

Millán also shouted, “Death to intellectuals! Down with intelligence!” so you see where he fits in here. (Millán is the Trump figure, just in case. 🙂 )

Unamuno responded.

General Millán Astray is not one of the select minds, even though he is unpopular, or rather, for that very reason. Because he is unpopular, General Millán Astray would like to create Spain anew — a negative creation — in his own image and likeness. And for that reason he wishes to see Spain crippled, as he unwittingly made clear.

This is the temple of intellect. And I am its high priest. It is you who are profaning its sacred precincts.

I have always, whatever the proverb may say, been a prophet in my own land. You will win, but you will not convince. You will win, because you possess more than enough brute force, but you will not convince, because to convince means to persuade. And in order to persuade you would need what you lack — reason and right in the struggle.

And yes, they sentenced Unamuno to death for what he said.

But Unamuno was right. His words endure. And eventually, the fascists were overcome because THEY WERE WRONG. THE FASCISTS LOSE IN THE END, DONALD, AND THEY ARE REMEMBERED AS PATHETIC LOSERS.

 

At least now we know who they are. I guess.

What do you do when you discover that people you love, like, and/or respect turn out to be Trump supporters?

Let me re-phrase that.

What do you do when you discover that people you USED TO love, like, and/or respect turn out to be Trump supporters?

I discovered months ago that I had friends and relatives who were racists and hence, I assumed, Trump supporters. Yes yes yes I know correlation is not causation but this one seems pretty clear cut to me.

I thought perhaps their racism was born out of ignorance. That they truly did not know that the life situations for Black people in this country are so different from the life situations for white people like them and me.

After all, I, a person who reads voraciously and who seeks information, didn’t even know until recently about sundown towns or redlining or that Black people couldn’t get the GI Bill or join unions.

I just watched Reconstruction and was horrified at how evil some people in the south were after the Civil War and how horribly Black people were treated. I was appalled at my ignorance (once again) and disgusted at my poor education (also once again).

I thought perhaps my friends and relatives were in the same situation: that they, too, lacked knowledge and information. That once they had that information, they would change their views on things.

Because how can someone with complete information have racist views?

Well guess what.

People with complete information can have racist views if they are racists.

Haters gonna hate.

Last year, I saw one of my best friends, L, whom I hadn’t seen in person for several years. “Are you a Trump supporter?” she asked.

“WHAT?” I answered. “WHY WOULD YOU ASK ME THAT? THAT IS ONE OF THE MOST INSULTING THINGS I HAVE EVER BEEN ASKED IN MY ENTIRE LIFE!”

“I’m sorry!” she said. “But you had always voted for the conservatives before!”

“Well yeah,” I answered. “But I’m not a f*ing idiot!”

For what it’s worth: I voted for Rs for president until the 2016 election, when I voted for Clinton. As I said, I am not a f*ing idiot and I love my country. And after what has gone on for the past four years, both at the national and at the state level with the Rs, I will never ever ever vote R again.

“WHEW!” she said. “I was worried. My mother has gone off the deep end and is a Trump supporter and I don’t even know what to think anymore.”

She explained, “My mom won’t watch anything but Fox news. She says she is a ‘trusted advisor’ to Trump – she even has a wallet card they sent her! But all that means is that they send her surveys with biased questions – ”

L knows what a biased survey question is, BTW. She has a master’s degree in sociology.

” – surveys with biased questions and then they lift her language and use it in their campaigns! I have tried to tell her the truth and give her the facts, but she does not want to listen.”

Last week, I was messaging with another friend. We were both bewildered at friends and relatives who have turned out to be Trump supporters.

“What do you do when otherwise good people support Trump?” I asked him.

His response was direct and hard to hear.

That the goodness is flawed.

That there is hate and selfishness at the heart of the “good.”

That Trump supporters are not “otherwise good.” You can’t be “otherwise good” if you support Trump and all his works and all his empty promises.

Which I suppose I knew but didn’t want to admit.

His situation is heartbreaking – he barely talks to his mother now.

I am relieved that at least the people I need to cut off are not close to me. I can do without the woman in my book club and some of my cousins.

But I still don’t get it. I don’t understand how someone can appear to be such a nice person – my cousins are lovely in person! LOVELY! – and yet support that man. How does that happen? How do they become racists in the first place? I don’t understand. I just don’t. And it breaks my heart.

 

 

 

Also if sleeping your way to the top is possible how can I do it because I am tired of being at the bottom

And it starts. The sexist attacks on Kamala Harris.

Are we surprised?

No. No we are not.

This is the way it goes – the way insecure, pathetic, weak men discredit women and yes, I am talking to you, Mr President, who has very very small hands that his own wife doesn’t even want to hold, and you, Rush Limbaugh, who called Harris a “hoe,” and any man who thinks that the fact that he has a penis makes him superior to a woman and makes him fit to run the world.

We are shrill. We are emotional. (Because anger is not an emotion so therefore men do not get emotional.) We have hormones and you know what that means.

And we use sex to get what we want.

(How does that even work? How does a person – a woman – even use sex to get ahead at work? Do you write a contract? How does the quid pro quo get established? Do you discuss the terms before the sex? Or is it just understood? Why isn’t there a handbook for this? Why have I done my whole life wrong? WHY WASN’T THERE A CLASS ON THIS AT BUSINESS SCHOOL? UT-AUSTIN YOU FAILED ME.)

A person I used to respect sent me a link to a story from January 2019 claiming that Harris had “slept her way to the top.” This was his triumphant proof that Harris is not qualified to be vice president.

I will save you the trouble of reading it. It says that Harris dated Willie Brown, who was the mayor of San Francisco, for a short while, when she was in her late 20s. He appointed her to two state commissions.

This is “sleeping your way to the top.”

My acquaintance thinks Trump is the epitome of brilliance and accomplishment and that Harris, who got into and graduated from Howard and got into and graduated from Hastings and was elected San Francisco DA and was elected California AG (twice) and was elected California senator and won huge court cases as a prosecutor, is the person who has done nothing on her own merits.

How many people did she have to sleep with to accomplish all that LORD HAVE MERCY SHE MUST BE EXHAUSTED.

So Trump, who didn’t take his own SATs, whose admission to Penn was facilitated by personal connections and a bribe, who inherited his money and has never accomplished anything on his own except drive businesses and an entire country into the ground, is the standard by which we should measure success?

But Harris, who has a resume that is so bright I need to wear sunglasses to look at it, is the loser who parlayed a few dates with Willie Brown into membership on two state commissions into a brilliant career but IT’S ALL BECAUSE SHE SLEPT WITH WILLIE BROWN?

She must be amazing in bed is all I have to say./sarcasm

Also – I have been on a city commission and I was just appointed to another one. Trust me when I say commissions are not the route to power. You serve on a city commission because you care deeply about the issue, not because you value your free time, not because you enjoy sitting in a windowless room until 11 p.m. on a work night listening to citizens testify in two-minute increments about a deeply controversial issue as they glare at you and imply that you are in favor of disemboweling kittens and puppies when the real situation is that the city just doesn’t have $15 million in spare cash lying around and you personally also do not have that in your checking account.

Commissions are work. That is all. They do not benefit the members personally. We do it as a labor of love because we care about our communities.

So.

1. Sex is currency that can result in career advancement
2. There must be rules somewhere
3. That I have never known about
4. Commissions are a pain in the ass

Which means that the commissions are a smokescreen and it was all the sex Harris must have had with Brown only he didn’t control the juries or the voters and I AM SO CONFUSED.

But the real takeaway is that very powerful men are scared of Harris and that? Is a very good thing.

Rock on Kamala. We are with you.

Part II: In which I do the math about Kamala and everyone she had to sleep with 

And another thing that has me so, so angry about how that guy treated AOC and how her response to him was analyzed – even the analysis is sexist.

Warning – this post is kind of a mess because I am writing it in bits and pieces throughout the week. I sort of have a point but this is not one of those thesis/three supporting paragraphs/restatement of thesis posts. It’s rambling. Forgive me.

Here’s a quotation from The Cut’s analysis of the sexism in the Times’ piece:

As the Times put it: “Republicans have long labored to cast Ms. Ocasio-Cortez as an avatar of the evils of the Democratic Party, a move that Ms. Ocasio-Cortez has used to bolster her own cheeky, suffer-no-fools reputation.”

She’s “cheeky?” When is the last time a male politician was described as “cheeky?”

And another quotation, this one pointing out that it’s unusual for women to challenge men. Which – isn’t that what the entire women’s movement has been about? For the past few centuries?

The Times’ story on the speech bore the headline “A.O.C. Unleashes a Viral Condemnation of Sexism in Congress” and kicked off by noting that Ocasio-Cortez, the youngest woman in Congress, who arrived there in 2019, “has upended traditions.” It called her speech on Thursday “norm-shattering” and described supporting speeches made by her colleagues — including one in which Pramila Jayapal recalled being referred to as a “young lady” who did not “know a damn thing” by Alaska representative Don Young — as a moment of “cultural upheaval.”

All these words somehow cast Ocasio-Cortez and her female colleagues as the disruptive and chaotic forces unleashed in this scenario, suggesting that they shattered norms in a way that Representative Yoho’s original, profane outburst apparently did not. (Perhaps Yoho’s words weren’t understood as eruptive and norm-shattering because calling women nasty names, in your head or with your friends or on the steps of your workplace, is much more of a norm than most want to acknowledge).

You know what this reminds me of? This idea that AOC is shattering the status quo?

(Which – considering they didn’t have a women’s restroom in the Senate building until the early ’90s OMG don’t even get me started on women’s restrooms – maybe she is. )

The cover article that Time magazine ran in the early ’90s called, “Why Are Women Different?”

And now when I google the article, I find that it was called, “Why Are Men and Women Different?”

But I could have sworn when the story was published, it was called, “Why Are Women Different?”

There was a huge backlash – we were so angry.

(I am almost positive it was called, “Why Are Women Different?”)

And men didn’t even understand why.

Fish don’t see the water.

We were angry for the same reason I get annoyed that only non-white characters in a story have their ethnicity identified. How often do you read a description that includes that someone is white?

(And what is it that Black men are so often characterized as “dignified” and Black women are “sassy?” Isn’t that a bit stereotypical? Not to mention bad writing? Show, not tell, people.)

That I get annoyed that it’s only when the person is a woman that her sex is defined: a female judge/pilot/detective/coroner.

The default is assumed to be male.

The default is assumed to be white.

If you don’t know the sex and color of the person in question, the default is white male.

The Times story (did they change the title of the story? WE WERE FURIOUS) – or at least the title – implied that men are the standard against which women are measured.

And white male power – or, as it’s called in the piece in The Cut, “power” – is looked at the same way. It’s the standard against which other power is measured and it’s the power pie from which others (not white, not men) take it.

White male power is so assumed as to be wholly indistinguishable from what we simply recognize as “power,”

I mean, we know men are the standard to which the world is built. Thank you, Caroline Criado-Perez for writing that amazing book, Invisible Women, where she shows us how – where she confirms what we already knew! – that the world, including furniture, seating in public transportation, gym equipment, temperatures in public spaces, medication, medical research, and pretty much everything else is designed for men and not for women.

We know it’s true.

It’s just that we are so tired of being reminded about it and having to fight it.

 

I was gone for a while and I come back and the world is not better.

You guys.

This crap is getting so, so old.

A man calls Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez a “f*ing bitch” and “out of [her] freaking mind.”

He disagrees with her opinion.

Instead of countering her opinion with facts, he goes straight to ad hominem attacks that include a sex-based insult and an assertion that she is not sane.

This tactic of not countering a statement with facts is so, so common. That one I can almost overlook. I frequently get facebook comments claiming that what I have posted is not truthful.

I ignore those comments. The links I post lay out clear arguments with data. If the commenters (soon to be ex friends) think they are not the truth, they may respond with facts that disprove the argument. It is not on me to convince people who cannot even construct a decent argument.

And this tactic of sex-based insults is also so common that I don’t even notice it anymore.

Except now I do.

And it makes me angry.

The only thing he left out was questioning whether she was on her period and telling her not to be so emotional. (Except you know – she wasn’t the emotional one – he was.)

We women have been discredited for millennia. Women who dared to speak their minds have been called crazy and burned at the stake and committed to mental institutions against our will.

In 1893, police admitted Agnes to a local mental institution because of complaints from her neighbours. It seems she told them that people were plotting to steal her money and she ‘believed her life to be in danger’. This led to a diagnosis of paranoia. Increasingly angry and ‘non-compliant’ with her incarceration, she was transferred in 1895 to Hubertusberg Psychiatric Institution near Dresden.

[Question: Who among us would not be “angry and non-compliant” at being unjustly imprisoned? Who among us does not get angry when reading a news story about police brutality related to someone “resisting arrest.” WHO AMONG US WOULD NOT RESIST AN UNJUST ARREST?]

Women are called shrill and emotional. Our hormones make us unstable.

Men tell little boys, “You throw like a girl!” (Instead of just, you know, teaching girls how to throw a baseball properly.) When men want to insult another man, they call him a “p*ssy.” One of the very worst words you can use on a woman in the US is a word I won’t even type out but it’s a term that has caused me to gasp when I have heard it on a TV show.

The very fact that being called anything related to femaleness is considered derogatory – why? Why is it so so bad to be a woman? Why do some men hate us so much?

Ted Yoho went straight to the “but I have daughters” argument.

Which – dude? That makes it worse as far as I am concerned.

But then, it shouldn’t matter! It should not matter that he has daughters.

And I say this as someone who has used this same argument against a man and am only now seeing how wrong it was.

When I was 19, I worked as a waitress in a bar over Christmas break one year. One night, as I was leaning over a table, wiping it off, a man grabbed my butt.

I was so shocked that I said nothing. I didn’t know what to say. This had never happened to me before.

But a few minutes later, I figured it out.

I marched over to him and said, “Don’t touch me.”

His eyes flew open. “But your butt was so cute!”

“Don’t touch me!”

He laughed.

Which – also Step One of How to Infuriate a Woman: Discredit Her Emotions by Laughing at Them.

“How would you feel,” I hissed at him, “if someone treated your daughter like that?”

(Did I not mention he was old? Like at least 40?)

He shrugged. “I don’t have a daughter.”

I was undeterred. “Well IF YOU DID.”

But now, I realize this was the wrong argument.

The argument is not that men should treat women with respect only because they want other men to treat their own daughters with respect. They should not treat us with respect out of fear that some other man might mistreat their daughters.

They should treat us with respect because we are human beings.

Sheesh.

It should not be that complicated.

But that’s the argument that Yoho resorted to. Sort of. Except not really.

He just implied that because he has daughters, he is incapable of sex-based insults.

“Having been married for 45 years with two daughters, I’m very cognizant of my language,” Yoho had said, in a speech in which he did not mention Ocasio-Cortez’s name, and in which he nonsensically refused to “apologize for my passion, or for loving my God, my family, and my country.”

You guys, I am so tired of this crap. I am so tired of these men. I am so done with them.

 

Back soon!

How do you say goodbye to a friend who is dying?

I just got off the phone with my friend Doc T. His wife, L, was my first friend when I moved to Milwaukee. I met her at the Y in body pump. I admired her haircut, got the name of her stylist, Carol (who became my stylist and remained my stylist and Mr T’s stylist until she retired last fall), and voila we were friends.

L is dying.

She has had cancer for a few years now.

They are done. There is no more treatment they can do.

L is direct. Last week, she had her daughter post for her on facebook that she had spent a week in the hospital and was coming home to go into home hospice. “Thanks to COVID there are not currently plans for a service.”

I asked Doc T if L was in any pain.

No, she’s not, he told me.

At least there’s that.

“It’s going to be a slow process,” he said.

What do you say to that?

He continued. “But that gives me more time with her.”

Why don’t the jerks get cancer? Why is it the nice people who suffer? I have a whole list of people we could do without in this world.

My friend is not one of them. She is a nice person. Doc T had finally retired and they were going to do retiree stuff – travel, see the world, enjoy their grandchildren.

And now that won’t happen.

I am working on a project for my city’s anti-racism group. I have an intern who is 19. Last week, on Thursday, I had asked if she could meet on Friday, July 3.

She hesitated. Her family was taking a short weekend vacation, leaving Friday morning.

“But I might have some downtime where I can work on the project the rest of the weekend!” she said.

Nonononono I told her. No. No.

You spend your time with your family while you can.

Work is never more important than your family. Never.

I didn’t want to tell her that I would give anything to spend time with my dad again. That I treasure my memories of our family vacations and time just hanging out on the porch with him. That I still think about the sound of his voice when he would tell us stories when I was a kid. That when he was in hospice, we prayed and prayed for a miracle but the only miracle we got was that the two-pound bag of peanut M&Ms in his room remained unopened and untouched for an entire week.

I didn’t want to warn her that the people you love can be taken from you. That you are not guaranteed a long time with anyone. That fathers can die at 62, an age I now really realize is absurdly young. That friends can die or go into hospice at 67, which is also – it’s way too young.

I just told her to enjoy her weekend – that the work would wait. Work will always be there. Your loved ones will not.

 

 

Did you know hair gets shorter as it dries? Mine does I know that now

Last week, my friend Leigh messaged me.

Leigh: I just cut my own hair. First time ever. And it looks pretty good. I even got the “teen approval check” from S—–. I feel so liberated. I NEVER would have tried this if I were going to the office. But now I think I can do this regularly for quite a while!

Me: That’s wonderful! my stylist retired last Sept so I was kinda lost anyhow so I am just pulling it back into a ponytail and someday, I will go to Supercuts

Leigh: I just used a YouTube video on how to cut long layers. I watched two of them and picked out the one I felt most comfortable with. Then I went to Walgreens and got sharp hair cutting scissors. Then I watched the video a few more times as I did it myself. I figured if I erred on the side of leaving it longer then it could be fixed if I messed it up too much.

Then we stopped messaging and I can’t remember why. I went on my merry way.

With my hair that has not been cut since February.

Mr T got a haircut last month, when the hairdressers opened again.

He had complained repeatedly about his hair getting too long.

I had offered repeatedly to cut his hair.

I used to cut hair in college.

I wasn’t any good at it, but – college students don’t care. Or at least they didn’t care back then.

My attitude was, High school dropouts do it so how hard can it be?

May I say that is an ugly attitude that has come back to bite me in the butt many many times?

I offered to cut Mr T’s hair, but said that he would have to sign a contract first. Our bonus son in law, Brian, a lawyer, agreed to write the contract for us.

Mr T declined.

Mr T is a chicken.

Honestly, what’s the worst that can happen with a haircut?

You get a bad haircut and your hair either has to be cut some more or it has to grow out?

IT’S NOT LIKE ANYONE IS SEEING US THESE DAYS ANYHOW.

That is, nobody but the people at the grocery store or at the food bank where we volunteer (socially distanced, with masks and gloves) once a week.

We are not among civilized people these days.

Well. We are not among any people these days.

It’s the 4th of July and we are in our house, bored. We should be at Summerfest and fireworks but this year, there is neither.

The only good thing about all of this quarantining is that in addition to not having to spend money on cutting my hair, I have also not wasted money on highlighting my hair. Or on painting my toenails. Or on makeup.

(That’s an item that keeps coming into the food bank, where Mr T and I have been processing inbound donations. Lots of unsold makeup coming back in for processing.

Also, and totally off topic: M&M Mars insists on having their candy returned to them rather than donating it to the food pantries. So any unsold M&M Mars products do not get processed for donation but for return to M&M instead. Which is just mean. IT’S MEAN.)

I have not wasted money on makeup. I have not wasted money on new clothes. I have not wasted money on deodorant.

Basically, I am a pioneer woman except with all the comforts of elastic and electricity and with none of the work.

I am an unmake-uped, un-deodoranted (it does not get that hot here, OK? and it’s sure not like I do anything that requires physical exertion), gym clothes clad (for the elastic, not for actual exercise) very natural woman.

But as much joy as it brings me not to have to put any effort whatsoever into my appearance, having my hair hit my shoulders was really starting to bother me.

It’s annoying! I don’t like having long hair.

I could mostly solve the problem by just putting my hair in a ponytail, but then I realized it was actually taking me longer to wash my hair than usual.

Yes! It takes longer to wash long hair than it does to wash short hair!

Not that I have anything to do, being an unemployed person, but washing my hair is boring.

A few days after Leigh told me that she had cut her own hair, I was in the shower, getting more and more annoyed at how much extra time I was wasting washing those extra inches of hair.

I thought, “I am going to ask Leigh what brand of scissors she got. Then I’m going to walk to Walgreen’s and get a pair for myself and then I am going to cut my hair.”

Let me back up here and say that I have cut my own hair many many times.

Let me back up here and say not only have I cut my own hair many many times but also that IT HAS NEVER ENDED WELL.

Let me say here that apparently the only thing I learn from history is that I do not learn from history.

By the time I got out of the shower, my plan had changed from, “Go to Walgreen’s for the Good Scissors and then really think about how to cut hair properly” to, “Grab old scissors from the junk drawer and hack off chunks of wet hair in 2.5″ increments. Without using anything other than the main bathroom mirror. Or any other guide for length.”

Which is the plan I executed.

Which – well – is how I remembered that

• my hair gets shorter as it dries
• my hair gets a lot shorter as it dries
• it’s really hard to cut the hair in the back
• especially when you can’t see it
• and if you are just doing it in clumps instead of carefully pinning hair up in sections the way professional stylists WHO TAKE SO LONG do
• because I guess scissors slip on big chunks of hair?
• and then you get really uneven sections
• that you still can’t see
• which means you can’t fix them yourself

But nobody sees me so – whatever. My too-short, uneven hair. What. Ever.

 

Nobody asks me if I am looking for someone when I am in my own front yard

I live in a middle-class suburb of mostly white people. My neighbor a few houses up is black. He is an engineer. His mother is a professor. He grew up in not only more affluent but also more sophisticated surroundings than I did. You would probably say he has more privilege than I do, or that he had more privilege growing up than I did.

For instance. I did not know until I read the book, The Privileged Poor: How Elite Colleges Are Failing Disadvantaged Students, by Anthony Abraham Jack, that I didn’t really know what office hours were.

I read that book this year.

I finished college in 1985.

Mr T, whose father was a college professor, was flabbergasted. “Why didn’t you just ask?” he asked.

Because I didn’t know that I didn’t know.

I thought office hours were the hours that the professor worked. Yeah, I had no idea what a professor did. I didn’t know that office hours were when professors  were available for students to ask questions.

Why would I ask a professor for help? That wasn’t the professor’s job! It was my job to figure things out. The professor lectured. I took notes. I had the textbook. If I couldn’t figure it out, well, I guess I was too stupid to be there, then.

When I would see a professor in his or her office and it wasn’t office hours, I was always very confused. Why were they even there?

When I read The Privileged Poor, I discovered that not only were office hours time set aside for students but also that some students knew enough that they would use that time to just hang out with the professors.

Which is how you get to know your professors.

Which is how you get the good recommendations for grad school and internships.

Which – I had no idea.

1. As I said, I didn’t even know what office hours were.
2. I didn’t know I didn’t know.
3. Even if I had known, I would never have just gone to hang out with a professor. NEVER. They were old. They were adults. How would I even dare impose on their time like that? What would I even have said? What would we have talked about?

This is something rich kids know how to do. This is something Anthony Abraham Jack talks about in his book: that kids raised in privilege know these things because their parents teach them. They know how to develop relationships with adults so they can gain the benefits that come from those relationships later.

I asked a professor for a recommendation a year after I was out of college. I had been very involved in my residential college (kind of like the Harry Potter house) and the professor who was in charge of our residential college knew me, I thought.

He refused to write me a recommendation, telling me he didn’t remember me.

My bad. I didn’t know how it worked. I thought that showing up and doing the job was enough. It’s not.

You find similar ideas in the book, Limbo: Blue-Collar Roots, White-Collar Dreams, by Alfred Lubrano. Lubrano talks about how white collar kids are taught to shake hands and talk to adults and how to negotiate professional office norms.

These things are a mystery to people who don’t grow up in white collar backgrounds. We don’t even know we don’t know. We just know that something always feels wrong – like there’s a game being played and we don’t know what the rules are.

Off-topic story

Lubrano also, in my favorite example, cites how professors’ kids work differently from blue-collar kids.

Mr T’s dad was a professor, mine was an aircraft mechanic. Both of our fathers went to college and were the first ones in their families to go, but my dad had more of a blue collar, practical view of life. His job was life or death, so he was focused and pragmatic. Mr T’s dad taught English, which, although worthy, doesn’t cause death if it’s not done properly.

Mr T and I each absorbed our respective father’s approach and I saw that in this example from the book.

Lubrano talks about an experiment where a group of professors’ kids and a group of blue-collar workers’ kids were each given a task.

The group of professors’ children argued about the best theoretical way to approach the task.

The group of blue-collar worker’ kids calmly defined the objective, chose a leader, figured out a plan, and completed the task. While the professors’ kids were still arguing.

This is how Mr T and I work. He wants to discuss in great detail the theory of everything and I just want to complete the task.

For example. We were on our way to the airport and traffic was backed up to get onto the highway.

He started complaining about the traffic and asking, “But how can there be traffic on a SATURDAY?”

I got onto my phone to find an alternative route. “Just go this way,” I told him.

He ignored me as he continued to question the presence of traffic ON A SATURDAY.

Back to the topic at hand, which is varying levels of privilege within whiteness

So those middle-class and rich kids learn how to negotiate this world. They know what office hours are. They are comfortable calling adults by their first names, something I had to be told to do in my first job out of college.

Yes. I was working for an insurance company and I was calling all the adults “Mister” and “Miz” whatever because THEY WERE OLD PEOPLE AND I KNEW THE RULES.

One day, a VP took me aside and said kindly, “We’re on a first-name basis here.” Even though he was my father’s age. Which meant he was old. At least 48.

Rich kids know this stuff. They know how to talk to people and they have the connections.

Here’s an interesting aside. Do you know what the key success factor is for entrepreneurs?

Guess.

Rich parents. Rich parents and/or connections to other rich people. (From inc.com)

What really sets entrepreneurs apart from everyone else? It’s not their resourcefulness, imagination, ability to foresee trends, or their belief in their own ideas, according to a recent piece on Quartz. It’s the mouthful of silver spoon they were born with. “The most common trait among entrepreneurs is access to financial capital,” the piece notes, citing a wide range of research.

Are you wondering, “Why is she telling me all this? Isn’t this kind of like saying, ‘Did you know the sun rises in the east?’ Doesn’t everyone know that rich kids have it easier?”

I am saying all this because I do have a point.

And the point is that even though my neighbor was raised in a sophisticated home, with a mother who was a college professor (I don’t know what his dad does), even though my neighbor grew up in an affluent suburb, even though my neighbor undoubtedly knew what office hours were before he went to college, even though my neighbor knew how to talk to adults comfortably and didn’t have to be told in his first job out of college to call his co-workers by their first name, even though my neighbor is an engineer who works at a respected employer, even though my neighbor is married with two little kids, even though he is a stable citizen,

his black skin is all some people see:

Our house was egged soon after we moved in. Standing in my front yard, I’ve been asked by “Helpersons” if I was looking for something. My family is ignored by parents we see almost daily at our kids’ schools. And I recognize the difference between genuine and forced smiles.

My house has not been egged.

Nobody has ever asked me if I was looking for something when I have been standing in my own yard.

And I, too, know what a forced smile looks like. And the only person who has given me one in the recent past is Mr T’s mother.

The only difference between my neighbor and me to strangers is that his skin is black and mine is white.

That is what white privilege is.