Do You Know Why?

 

 

 

 

 

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5 Things to do on April Fools Day, 2015

1. Get an old T-shirt, large enough to hang down below your waste. Write across the bottom in red letters: What Are YOU Looking At?!?!

2. At work, put out one of those pink bakery boxes, fill it with chocolate brownies, put a label on it that says “Product of Colorado,” and see how quickly people eat them.

3. Put a sign on your own back that says “I’m with Stupid,” and has an arrow pointing up. See how many people try to tell you about it.

4. Post the following on your FB status:

“I CHALLENGE YOU TO REPOST THIS AS YOUR STATUS FOR ONE DAY!

99% of you won’t have the courage to do it, but I’m proud to part of the 1% who will!”

If you’d like you could put a cute animal GIF on it.

5. Stand on a street corner with a petition demanding, now that Ted Cruz has renounced his Canadian citizenship, that he also renounce his citizenship in Cuba and any other places he might accidently be from, and start spelling his last name “Cruise.” Put up a picture of him with a Hitler moustache and a hammer-and-sickle lapel pin. Wear a tinfoil hat the whole time.

Bitter Cold. Can You Blame It?

I have been hearing about how bitter the cold is, and I have to wonder why. Why is the cold so bitter? I think I know. Here we have this perfectly nice cold coming down out of Canada for a visit to New England, bringing along with it some absolutely beautiful snow for skiing and snowboarding and snowmobiles, frozen lakes for skating, and ice fishing, a brisk breeze to encourage us to sit inside by a fireplace and snuggle. And what thanks does it get? Just a lot of moaning and complaining, and people crying about spring. Let’s be honest, everyone, we could have been more welcoming, more friendly, more generous of spirit, could have at least tried to warm up to it a bit. What must the cold think? “Is it me? Maybe it’s because I’m Canadian. No, I know what it is. It’s my honesty.” The cold has no pretense, no illusions. Spring comes promising flowers, but tricks you into thinking they’ll never fade; Summer says come with me on vacation, but doesn’t tell you about having to come home again; Autumn gives you holidays and celebrations, but these only distract us from seeing the shortening of the days and the passing of the leaves. Yet it is the cold of winter that we treat so poorly. But why? It is the winter, not the spring that is the beginning of things. In the fall, all things wither. It is the winter that nurtures and heals, that holds us in its heart as the days grow longer, as the sun returns north, as the whole world prepares to wake into spring. Meanwhile, the cold comes and tucks us, that season when nature weeps its rain, while throwing blossoms around to convince us that it’s happy. And just as we are convinced that spring cares about us it leaves us in July, full of the unrequited passion of the summer heat, which we chase after like some romantic fantasy, only to see it all fade as September turns to October. Winter is the season of hope and the knowledge that that hope will be fulfilled. The cold comes to embrace us and tell us that it’s all going to be all right if we just have patience. So I do not doubt that the cold is bitter. But be careful. I just heard that the cold may be turning brutal. Perhaps it’s not too late. There are still a few weeks in which we can turn this around, show the cold that we appreciate it, that we are not indifferent to the gifts it brings. We might yet warm the heart of the cold in time for spring.

Out of the Straight White Male Closet at Last!

            According to the very reliable source of a couple of Facebook posts I have seen recently, I cannot live a full, proud and honest life unless I make a public declaration of my pride in being a straight white male.  I cannot tell you what a huge burden this has lifted from me and what an enormous difference it will make in my life.

            No, really.  I can’t tell you.

            Actually, I have known that I was a straight white male since I was just a child, and let me say, I have been tormented by that knowledge.  As a young boy I would force myself to play with dolls or take up games like chess or scrabble; or basketball; when I really just wanted to go outside and play football, or watch boxing or professional wrestling on tv; every night I would dream about growing up to be one of those guys who is the embodiment of the American cultural norm, even though I understood that I would suffer terrible reverse discrimination.  In high school, I hid my orientation and identity as well as I could.  I learned Spanish, took home economics, developed a fashion sense and learned how to match my socks to my v-neck sweater, but I secretly kept a set of L.L. Bean clothes in the back of my closet.   I also teased my hair way out, and learned to eat non-white foods like watermelon and fried chicken; and gay foods like quiche.  When I went to college, I majored in theater and would tell everyone what a great actor Sidney Poitier was and how we shouldn’t judge Pee Wee Herman.  I kept not one, but two Little Richard albums next to my stereo; and I would laugh hysterically just at the mention of Lily Tomlin.  I talked all the time about my admiration for Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Eleanor Roosevelt and how I thought that Amelia Earhart was a much better pilot than Lindberg; and I had pictures of people like Martin Luther King, Gandhi, and Chief Joseph on my walls, but longed to have the courage of my roommate, who put up posters of General Patton and George Wallace. 

            It was all a lie, of course, and I hated my fake life.

            But it wasn’t until I left college and started a career that I really understood the straight white man’s burden.  Since I was a theater major, I had to apply for jobs that didn’t use any of my actual skills; but as soon as the employer began to suspect that I might be a straight white guy, I would get an interview and a job offer.  How could I try to pass as non-white if I was always having to pull myself up by my grandfather’s bootstraps?  How could I pass as gay if I kept getting offered really good jobs in prestigious companies?  I’d go out partying at night and drive home; and I can’t tell you how many times I got stopped and was so afraid that I wouldn’t get roughed up or searched or referred to with vile slurs and epithets, or even that I might just get sent home with a wink and a laugh and be told to be more careful next time; just because some racist cop saw that I was a straight white male.

            But now that I have decided to embrace my straight white male identity and declare my straight white male pride, I realize that I am going to have to deal with some prejudice.  I will have to live with the pain of never being looked at with disgust when I and my girl-friend (There, I said it!) show affection, hold hands or kiss in public. We plan to marry some day and I just know that we won’t have the least bit of trouble finding a church to marry us or a clerk to give us our marriage license.   Did you know that gay people actually think that my marrying my girlfriend won’t threaten the sanctity of their marriages at all?!?  I need to accept that people simply aren’t going to ask us which one is the woman, or how we “do It.”  As an out-of-the-closet straight white guy, I will have to deal with the burden of no one ever asking me what “people like me” want; and if something happens, I know that I will be identified as a man, or an American, without any qualifiers.  I will never have the opportunity to be the first straight white guy to do something.

            As a person of no particular color, I believe that we should all be color-blind.

            All I, and people like me, are asking for is to be treated just like everyone else, to know the joys of being denied service; harassed by bosses, random strangers on the street, and the police; thrown out of the military or the Boy Scouts, a job or my church; not represented in our cultural messages, such as advertising, film, or television, except as stereotypes; paid less for the same work.  Let’s face it: white male privilege sucks.

            I suddenly feel so free and strong. Since coming out as a proud straight white male, I can feel my courage rising.

            I think I may be almost ready to come out as a Christian.

I will try to live my life so that I can live a long time . . . and die young.

Notice to All My FB Friends

Notice to All My FB Friends

 

       I am concerned that many of you are not reading my hourly status updates; following the links I post to every FB page or website I have ever visited or liked; checking out my blogs, tweets, or Instagram photos of my meals; engaging with my re-postings of wing-nut rantings, emotional manipulations, and bumper-sticker political positions; or looking at the lovely videos and photos of babies, puppies, kittens, and police brutality I have worked so hard to share.

        I can’t figure out if perhaps FB has some scary new policy or design feature that is preventing you from doing these things, or if the government is somehow interfering with my news feed.

        So I’m asking your help so that you don’t have to miss out on any more of my FB contributions.  If you haven’t read this post, could you please respond in the comments section and tell me what the problem is.  Obviously, if you have read this, then there is no need to respond.

        Only 3% of you will respond to this, but I think I know who you are.