There Are No Words...

Today's installment of Effie's World takes a darker turn, ladies and gentlemen. Ye be warned. I've taken a few days to just think things over before I blogged about them, but I guess it's finally time to stop stewing and just put it all out there. If I keep stewing about it for much longer, my glasses are going to fog up from the steam.

For those of you who don't know, I have a temper. A bad one. A "there she bloooows!!!" kind of temper. I've really been working on it, simply because I don't like who I am when I allow my anger to get the best of me. I have good days and bad days, but I can usually keep myself in check. With God's divine help, of course. Teaching piano lessons has actually been great for my temper--there are so many frustrations, but it's not like you can scream at the kid. That wouldn't help anything, and it would lose me my job.

So when I tell you that on Thursday in Effie's class I couldn't remember being that angry in a long, long time, perhaps you'll understand just how bad it was. 

On Tuesday Effie had handed out homework assignments, so I knew automatically what that would mean for class on Thursday. She would walk in, dismiss everyone that hadn't done the homework, and split us up into groups. She would then have us all sit there for an hour and fifteen minutes before asking us to give the same answers to the same homework questions again, just as a group this time and not as individuals. You have no idea how badly I wanted to just not do the homework so that I could leave with the rest of the delinquents, but my moronic nerdiness wouldn't allow me that perfectly harmless infraction. It happened exactly as I'd thought it would, and I ended up at a table with two of my classmates facing the same stupid questions on the Buddha.

Like I've said before in this series of blogs, I've started to mildly enjoy these groups things despite their absolute boredom. I've gotten to know some of the other people in the class a lot better than I probably would have otherwise. This has served the purpose of allowing me to learn that the jocks aren't all bad and the jocks to learn that just because I'm a nerd doesn't mean that I'm Steve Urkel in drag. 

My group-mates this time around were both people that I hadn't had a chance to work with yet, so I didn't really know what to expect. We'll call my classmates Sam and Mary. They were both coffee to my cream, which is fine. Doesn't bother me in the least. I'm prejudiced against stupid, not skin.

As per usual, it turned out that I was the only one that had given the assignment more than the most perfunctory of skims, so I educated my classmates and answered the questions. This left us with roughly forty-five minutes to just sit there and stare at the ceiling. Sam and Mary starting talking, and I tried to join in, but they didn't seem to appreciate my trying to get to know them. They would give me one word answers and then continue talking just to themselves. I didn't mind this so much--I like to observe. So I sat back and listened. 

And listened.

And got mad.

It started when Sam and Mary started talking about their children. I was a little surprised, but that's just me in my naivete, I suppose. Still, though, they both seemed awfully young. Maybe they're juniors or seniors, I thought to myself. I looked at Sam and said, "How old are you?" He said, "nineteen. I had my son when I was seventeen. He's two now." I looked at Mary and said, "How old are you?" She said, "I just turned eighteen. I lost my son when he was two months old, and then I had a miscarriage." 

Thunk.

The above onomatopoeia was my jaw as it hit the floor.

Okay, when I was seventeen, I was bawling my brains out because I didn't want to go to college, mommy! When I was eighteen, I was starting college and trying to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up. And these poor souls were having children? I immediately offered Mary my condolences on the loss of her son. I truly cannot imagine the pain of losing a child. 

Lest you think that I got mad because of their ages when they had children, let me tell you this: that assumption is absolutely, 100% untrue. I don't approve of having children that young, yes, but it's not exactly something I can help. What made me mad were their attitudes towards their children. It was nothing blatant at first, just a feeling that I was getting. They were both saying wonderful, parent-y things, like Sam saying, "I gave up my football career so that I could stay here and be here for my son. I don't want to miss a single minute in his life" and Mary saying, "I don't think I'm ever going to get over losing my son. It's the worst thing ever." I guess you could say my odd little feeling was heightened when Sam asked Mary what had happened to her son, and she said, "There was something wrong with his lungs, and the doctors said he'd had an asthma attack." I asked her if her son had been premature, and she said that he hadn't been, he'd been born right on his due date. Then she added, "I think the doctors did something to him."

I'd like to point out at this time that we live in Memphis. MEMPHIS! Are you writing this down, Captain Obvious? This is the allergy capital of the world! The lung challenge seminar of the ages! Just about seventy percent of Memphis' inhabitants have lung problems of some kind, and there are allergies galore. If there had been anything wrong with that baby that was clearly visible, the doctors would have told Mary all about it. So I'm forced to conclude three things. 1.) The lung problem went undiagnosed and the baby's death was horrifically tragic. 2.) The asthma developed quickly, without either the mother or doctors noticing. 3.) The doctors had told Mary that there might be a risk for lung problems, and she just didn't pay attention. As hesitant as I am to accept he last option, it did give me pause when she was talking about the night her son died. She said she'd gotten up in the night, and just checked on the baby on her way back to bed. "I touched him, and he was cold and he didn't move. And I was like, something's not right."

No duh, something's not right. You're touching a corpse! What else does cold and not-moving mean? And then to blame it on doctors....argh.

Sam went on to say that his son was the most important thing in the world to him and that his son had made him grow up, and when his son's mother gave him the option of either leaving his son alone or going to jail, he chose jail....

Yup. You read that right. Jail. Apparently, Sam has been in jail six, count 'em, six, times since his son's birth. It seems that on the above-mentioned night, he'd gotten mad and torn the house apart. But yup! He loves his son more than anything! He'll even love that kid from jail! No sacrifice is too small.

Mary nodded sympathetically and said that she still had her son's medicaid card and other papers, but how she knew she just needed to throw them away, she needed to just get rid of them and move on with her life and someday when she had another son she'd give him her other son's name....

It was at this point that I started to get upset. You all know how important family is to me. Here are two individuals saying that they just loved their children so much. But Sam doesn't love his son enough to keep his butt out of jail for the boy? Mary loving her son so much that she's not going to allow herself to grieve or remember him, but instead replace him? Does this make any sense to you guys? It sure didn't to me. I didn't appreciate it much, either, when they started talking about how much they partied. There are just some things about classmates that I will never want to know, but that I was forced to hear during this conversation. We'll leave it at that.

That was just one part of the whole thing, though, that made me mad. I could live with these things. A lot of it is cultural, and I realize that we've had vastly different backgrounds and worldviews and all that. I get all that. Truly. 

Here's the rest of the story.

Sam started talking about how he was maybe going to become a bank teller after college. Dare to dream. Mary said, "Yeah, then you can take money away from all those rich white folks!" I don't know what came over me, but I suddenly found myself snapping, "Don't be prejudiced." They both looked at me in surprise. I gulped and prayed that they weren't armed and said, "I teach piano lessons. My mom works three jobs. Don't assume that just because we're white that we're rich." Thankfully, they brushed it off, but it sure felt good to say. I'm tired of people assuming that I have money just because I dress nicely or whatever. I work hard for everything I have.

Eventually, they started talking about the election. It has been my policy all year to stay the heck OUT of all the election mania. I know who I'm voting for, and I'm not interested in getting into a debate. All debate does is cause rifts between friends and excess tension, neither of which I'm particularly fond. But they asked my opinion, and said with much head-nodding and exalted facial expressions that every opinion is important. So I took a deep breath and said that I wasn't particularly fond of either presidential candidate. They liked that a lot. They didn't like it so much when I said that I'd already voted, and that I'd voted Republican, mostly because of Sarah Palin, whom I really, really, really like and have liked for years now.

They asked me why I didn't like Obama. I gave several clear, logical, and truthful reasons for my problems with Obama...at least, I tried to give my reasons. It's rather hard to talk when you're being interrupted every three words. I asked them why they didn't like McCain. Basically, it all boiled down to "he's old." And Mary seemed to be of the opinion (she repeated this statement no less than five times. I counted.) that the world would end the moment John McCain became president. She wasn't very clear on whether it would end by nuclear explosion or another Big Bang. Just McCain being elected seemed to be enough to cause the very heavens to fall out of balance and shatter.

Then, the creme de la creme. Mary said, "I heard on channel five that if McCain gets elected, he's going to bring back slavery."

I hope you're laughing just as loudly as I was. I had to ask forgiveness that night for using a curse word, because I told her that that whole idea was, um, silly. The rest of the class had been drawn into our conversation somehow (the name "Obama" seems to do that. Is this an early form of eavesdropping technology at work, perhaps? I knew Bush would kill us all! The world may never know.) and most of them, even the coffee ones, were looking at Mary as if she were insane. 

I managed to get a hold of myself and I told Mary that for the most part, the human race had grown past the idea of slavery and that it would never come back in America as the country is now. I then found myself adding, "And just before you ask, my ancestors at the time of the Civil War were poor hillbillies in the mountains of Arkansas. We didn't own slaves."

Mary looked at me and said quite seriously, "You don't know how far back your family goes. Some of them might have."

There are no words, although I'll try and find some.

Found some. 

WHAT THE CRAP???? 

How can anybody be so...so...gah! How can a cultural hurt be so ingrained that anyone who is white is suspect just because somebody on the more obscure branches of their family trees MIGHT have had slaves? I've heard of entitlement, but this is ridiculous. You know, I think I'll hate all Englishmen willy-nilly. One of their ancestors MIGHT have been mean to one of my more revolutionary forbears either in America or in Ireland. I think, while I'm at it, I'll hate all Native Americans. They took white slaves way back when, you know. One of them MIGHT have had one of my ancestors as a slave. I know for a fact that some of my ancestors were involved in the Mountain Meadow Massacre. I think I'll hate all Mormons. I'm part Native American, come to think of it. I'll add hatred of all white men to my list, too. Does that mean I should hate myself? What a knotty problem. What to do, what to do....

How do you argue with someone who has not the vaguest idea of logical thought? How is it possible to coexist with anyone who hates you simply because of what your ancestors MIGHT have done? I never thought that I would be a victim of racism, but it has happened. Mary and Sam kept on talking, but I just put my head down on the table and hummed "For the Beauty of the Earth" to myself. (It's amazing how one song can pretty much wrap up all of my beliefs about religion and life in such a lovely package.) It was the only way to keep from combustion. I got out of the classroom as fast I could, a wiser girl about the paranoia and beliefs of some of my classmates. This entire conversation, from the family beliefs to the political beliefs to the extreme sense of entitlement, shook me up pretty badly. 

Maybe the human race hasn't grown past slavery after all. It just may come from a different culture next time. I don't think I would be surprised.