When a Dog Bites, When a Bee Stings…

Okay, You Who Are In Charge of Things, what’s up with the piling on?  It isn’t enough that at the ripe old age of 68 I get a diagnosis that requires a daily injection – self-inflicted! – that hurts like a five pound bee stuck his blankety-blank stinger in my flesh and stayed there for 15 minutes?

It isn’t enough that I am suddenly fearful of walking down the street because I sometimes feel like a toddler in her first pair of hard-soled shoes, wobbling and dubiously balanced?

And it wasn’t bad enough that you decided to send a 9-hours-straight gulley washing rain to spoil our neighborhood’s annual street festival? 

My intrepid neighbors and I weren’t going to let no stinkin’ rain dampen our fun.  Everything went on as scheduled, including my friends’ Sunday brunch at their house across the street.

These two guys own the most beautiful pair of American Eskimo dogs you’ll ever see.  Both are rescue dogs.  The second one rescued has a temperament on him that has always given me pause.  His owners’ protests to the contrary, I thought this dog was probably possessed by some canine devil.  If snarling and lunging at anything that moves is this dog’s idea of “wanting to play,”  both the dog and his owner are bonkers.

So yesterday I took my umbrella and walked across the street for the brunch.  I always go to the back door – it’s just easier than climbing the front steps and ringing the bell, especially when I know for certain everybody would be in the keeping room area near the kitchen.  As usual, Monty and Rupert sensed my presence even before I had a chance to knock.  They both charged the door in that “playful” way of theirs and barked their fool heads off. 

I stood there without touching the door handle, waiting for one of the guys to get them under control so I could enter.   

My host grabbed the unruliest of the two mutts and opened the door for me to enter.  Diablo II wasn’t having it.  In that slow motion moment that always happens when something horrible is about to befall you, I saw nothing but teeth headed for my forearm. 

The pain was excruciating enough for me to scream like a little girl, at the top of my lungs.  There were people inside looking on in horror, some scooping up their small children protectively.  Although I wore a beefy denim jacket, that dog’s teeth reached bare skin and chomped with all the power his jaw provided.

I was flooded with adrenaline and there was no deliberating between fight or flight.  I took my wounded self directly back home to assess the damage and calm my frayed nerves.  How the hell have I lived all these years loving dogs and having a reputation for being good with them without every being bitten?

In the time it took to get back to my safe haven – no more than 90 seconds – a goose egg had risen on my arm, abrasions were hurting and stinging and I was shaking.  All I could think about was how many times that dog had shown aggression towards me and his owners had shrugged it off.  I was both frightened and furious.

Of course my friends were beside themselves with worry.  They had a houseful of guests, so they couldn’t just leave and tend to me.  I took a picture of the wounds and texted it to them, just in case they had minimized the damage in order to assuage their guilty consciences. 

When one of the owners finally had the chance he was at my door with food and apologies.  But here’s the thing:  what he said went something like this:

I don’t understand what is going on between you and Rupert.  He has never done that with anyone else.  We had small children in the house and he didn’t do anything. 

This man is my friend, so I know he wasn’t trying to blame me for the incident, but it sure felt like it.  It felt like he was saying there is something about me that causes the dog to lose its mind.  Obviously, that’s true, but how can he keep convincing himself that I am the ONLY one he will behave that way around?

Anyway, I went to a doc-in-a-box this morning for an evaluation and a tetanus shot (another place that refused to accept Medicare, by the way.) The doctor said it could have been so much worse if I hadn’t had that jacket on.  The bruising is severe and will run through its rainbow of colorations before disappearing, but I will probably not have to take the antibiotic she prescribed, just in case.

Are you kidding?  OF COURSE they are paying for it!  These are responsible people who treat their pets like members of the family.  They treat me like a member of their family, too.  It just goes to show you that no matter how much we love and pamper them, dogs are animals, not people, and they are not as predictable as we like to think.

So how was YOUR weekend? 

On Being First or Only

 

Jackie Robinson

 

Chadwick Boseman as Jackie Robinson

This will not be a complete review of the newly released motion picture 42.  I have just returned from seeing it and I will say it is a good movie – good, but not great.  It tells the story of a man who was anointed by a white man to become the first black baseball player to play in America’s Major League Baseball.

I was born on November 4, 1944, so in spring of 1947, when Jackie Robinson penetrated the “color line” I was only 2 years old.  I was totally unaware of how much Mr. Robinson and I would have in common.

One of the gifts I was given at birth was an exceptional visual and auditory memory.  As the movie played, I remembered the Buick Roadmaster driving across the screen as the same model owned by my grandfather.  I remembered the names of Leo Durocher and Pee Wee Reese and Roy Campanella  coming across the airways in consecutive springs after I entered school.  If we behaved, the nuns would allow us to listen to the World Series as we sat, hands folded, at our pint-sized desks.  And I remembered the name Jackie Robinson.

For many young black movie goers, the way Brooklyn Dodgers owner Branch Rickey went about accomplishing what no other had even attempted to do will be bizarre, even off-putting.  Rickey told Jackie Robinson he would have to be strong enough to stand up to the jeers, insults, racist taunts and rejections he was sure to receive, without fighting back.  To fight back would be to play into the racists’ presumptions that no Negro had the talent nor the temperament to succeed in MLB.

The portrayal of Robinson in 42 by actor Chadwick Boseman is spot on.  Yes, he does, in fact, resemble the Dodger star – same head shape, same abundant curly hair, same dazzling, toothy smile – but there is one scene in particular that I believe absolutely nails the emotional impact of being a first.  After enduring a snarling, epithet-hurling assault from the dugout of the Philadelphia Phillies via the mouth of none other than the team’s coach, Robinson leaves the field and has a monumental meltdown, alone and under the grandstand.  I felt his pain; man did I feel his pain. 

Anyone who has never been on the receiving end of public bullying will have an epiphany if he or she sees this movie.  Black, white, green or purple; if you sit through this scene, you will finally get what it feels like and you are not going to like it. 

I have written before of how I was raised to understand that in order for me to succeed in this white man’s world I would have to run circles around every  one of my white competitors.  I could not be ignorant; they expect that.  I could not be belligerent; they won’t stand for that.  I could not sound like a Negro; they preferred I speak like they do.  All this was instilled in my tiny, unfinished brain by the time I was enrolled as a first-grader in the neighborhood Catholic school.  I was the first black child so enrolled.

People like Jackie Robinson and me got lucky.  We came into the world equipped with special gifts that, if self-acknowledged, self-developed and nurtured by the adults around us, would allow us to endure all the strikes we had against us.

Jackie Robinson had to perform his way into the hearts of his teammates and the front office staff.  Whether he was a nice guy or a jerk was unknown to them.  All they knew was that he was black.  Not ready.  Too soon. “They” won’t accept him.

Until he started bringing money in.  Branch Rickey says this at the beginning of the movie:

Baseball is a business.  There is no black or white in business.  All money is green.

…or words to that effect.

As I was growing up, I remember how my mom used to brag to other people about me and my accomplishments.  “Lezlie was the first colored student at St. James School.”  “Lezlie was the first Negro at Proviso East High School to make the majorette squad.”  “Lezlie was the first Negro to be elected to the National Honor Society at her school.”  “Lezlie was the first African American student to attend her college.”

These were always said with great pride and were celebrated enthusiastically by the poor souls who had to listen to her boasting.  It often embarrassed me.  I felt resentful, for some reason.

Eventually I figured out where that resentment came from.  Nobody but me could fully understand the impact those “firsts” had on ME .  I didn’t have to endure anything like Jackie Robinson did, but there was a definite price to pay for those barrier-busting events. 

I remember being six years old and waking up in a hospital ward. The day before my beloved Collie Dog Snuffy had chased after a squirrel while I became airborne on the other end of his leash.  When I landed my left elbow struck a water meter hidden in the lush lawn of parkway in front of my grandparent’s house.  It fractured in three places; one bone poked itself through my skin and protruded sickeningly.  Surgery was required.

As I awoke I was confused and scared.  Where was I?  Where was my mother?  Why are there bars on my bed? 

I finally looked around me and saw I was in one of six beds in the ward, all of which were occupied by young children.  I learned later that most of them were suffering from crippling diseases or disorders, and I was the only one who would be ambulatory once the residual effects of ether wore off.  That fact alone would have been enough to earn the other kids’ hatred, and it did.  Now pile on the fact that I was the only one in the ward who was not white. 

Jealousy + Fear of the unknown = Rejection. And I was only six.

I remember being eleven years old.  As a Girl Scout I was eligible to attend a two-week sleep-away camp in Three Rivers, Michigan.  By this time I felt I carried a boatload of responsibility to “represent my race” in the most positive way possible.  Again, when I arrived at the camp, I found myself the only brown-skinned person in the place.  I remember wondering if the counselor who shared my first name was being nice to me because she had to or because she was just nice and was not caring about the color of my skin.  I’ll never know.

I remember being told I had been selected to participate in an experiment when I was in eighth grade.  The high school was choosing the 30 students with the highest IQs from all the feeder elementary schools.  They would be put in a special, accelerated curriculum and spend the four years studying together.  I was one of them.  My mother, of course, was beside herself with pride.  I, however, was ambivalent.

Fitting in had become a problem.  Many black kids treated me more like a pariah than anything else.  They didn’t know me because I went to the Catholic school and they all attended the segregated public school.  I was too light-skinned to be trusted because they assumed I thought I was better than they were.  Now, even when I was to attend the public high school with all of them, I was still going to be isolated from the mainstream.

On the other hand, I had few problems from the white kids.  I have an outgoing personality and am not afraid to initiate a conversation with anyone.  When I did that, for the most part, the white kids were receptive.  However… when it came to inviting me to their homes for out of school parties and sleepovers; well, that was another story altogether.  Many of those white kids learned their parents’ true feelings about race. Most had been taught that everybody is the same in God’s eyes, but their parents had neglected to tell them that it was their (the parents’) eyes that mattered when it came to who they would be allowed to befriend.

I can tell you that there were many nights when I would cry myself to sleep, praying to wake up either dark-skinned and obviously black or white-skinned and blonde haired.  Either way, things would have been a lot simpler.

Happily, there are very few barriers remaining to break through.  We have come a long way from the 1940s and 1950s that hosted my childhood.  But until our kids, regardless of race, understand what Jackie Robinson’s achievements really cost him, they will never know how great a hero he really was.  It takes extraordinary strength of character and conviction to walk alone in this life.  That Mr. Robinson had not just the talent, but the strength of character and conviction to lead the Brooklyn Dodgers to the 1947 World Series, is made abundantly clear in this movie.

For that alone, I recommend you see it.

What About Dr. Ben Carson?

 

The day I became aware of Dr. Benjamin Solomon Carson’s speech at the February 7, 2013 National Prayer Breakfast I was dumfounded.  Huh?  The same Dr. Ben Carson who struggled through his young life in a Detroit ghetto?  The same Dr. Carson whose mother was functionally illiterate and worked three jobs at a time to provide for her two young boys?

My mind wandered back a decade or more when I had the honor and pleasure of seeing Ben Carson deliver the keynote speech at one of the endless stream of gala fundraisers I was expected to attend in my position as Director of Community Relations in my corporation.  His star was rising rapidly then, thanks to his fascinating work in neurosurgery, especially his efforts to separate hopelessly conjoined twins.

His soft-spoken delivery of immensely hearable ideas about integrity, hard work and dedication earned him a rock-star-level standing ovation, and I was among the first on my feet.  The swell of pride in my chest felt awfully close to the sensation I’d get when my son hit a grand slam homer on the diamond.  Look at him, I thought.  Look at how much this bad-tempered, under-achieving little black kid has grown to contribute, not just to African American society, but to the worldwide community of people. 

So, now that this dark-skinned wunderkind has popped up on the political scene on what most black people and many white people would describe as “the wrong side of the issues,”  what are we to make of him?  How could he sell himself out like that?

Let me be perfectly clear.  I do  not understand how he or Michael Steele or Juan Williams or Justice Clarence Thomas or Pizza Man Herman Cain justify their politics to themselves.  When the rubber met the road in my own journey through life and I had to choose a team to cheer for, there was never a day that I considered myself a candidate for Republicanism.  But I do have some ideas about how someone like Dr. Ben Carson gets there.

Carson’s mother was one of those diamonds in the rough.  Despite her third-grade education, Mrs. Carson was a woman who believed in raising her kids, rather than being their friend.  Because she was determined to raise good citizens, even in the midst of the furor of the 1960s, she insisted that the obstreperous young Ben complete his homework before playing outside.  She forced him and his older brother to read two library books each week and submit to her a written report that she could barely read herself.  Along about the 5th grade, young Ben found himself actually enjoying the books he was reading and he began reading as much as he could get his hands on.

So Mama Carson, through her strict adherence to priorities she set for her boys, made a proverbial silk purse out of a sow’s ear when it came to Ben’s underachieving.  But, even as he achieved his way to the heights of a scientific career, Ben still struggled with an anger that bubbled just under the surface. 

According to Biography.com, “One time he tried to hit is mother with a hammer because she disagreed with his choice of clothes.  Another time, he inflicted a major head injury on a classmate in a dispute over a locker. In a final incident, Ben nearly stabbed to death a friend after arguing over a choice of radio stations. The only thing that prevented a tragic occurrence was the knife blade broke on the friend's belt buckle. Not knowing the extent of his friend's injury, Ben ran home and locked himself in the bathroom with a Bible.

Terrified by his own actions, he started praying, asking God to help him find a way to deal with his temper. He found salvation in the book of Proverbs in a passage that went, "Better a patient man than a warrior, a man who controls his temper than one who takes a city."

It was his faith, which was also instilled by his mother, that eventually led Carson to choose the Seventh-Day Adventist Church. This denomination of Christianity believes that Saturday (the Sabbath) is a holy day of worship and that there is an impending second-coming of Christ.  And it is his religion that has led Ben Carson to believe in the exceptionalism of the United States as a nation.

From the Christian Broadcasting Network 700 Club website:

Dr. Carson believes as a nation, America has been favored by God because we have acknowledged Him. The forefathers of our nation were clearly guided by Sovereign leadership when they knelt and prayed for wisdom at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787. Together they stood up and assembled a seventeen page document known as the Constitution of the United States of America. Our nation was founded on principles revealed to us in the Bible by a righteous and just God. These teachings began in the home and continued at school. In early public schools reading from the Bible was not only common, it was expected.

It is clear to me that Ben Carson is a philosophical conservative.  He believes in self-reliance and he has demonstrated it.  He believes in the “Christian fundamentals” that allegedly underlie the motives of the Founding Fathers as they constructed the American Constitution.  His religion, Seventh-Day Adventistism, values freedom as a core tenant of their faith. He’s a genuine pull-yourself-up-by-your-jockstraps-or-bra-straps kind of guy.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median income of a neurosurgeon is upwards of $200,000.  Load in the benefits and take into account Carson’s high profile, and his salary is easily topping $300,000. 

According to Forbes Magazine, Dr. Carson is a director on the boards of Costco and Kellogg.  They report Dr. Carson’s total compensation (cash and stock awards) as $221,509 and $229,024, respectively.

Not exactly part of the the infamous 47%, is he?

When I first started earning what my neighbors would have considered “real money” in my corporate job, I remember starting to see things like taxes and government programs a lot differently.  I wasn’t thrilled with the advent of Affirmative Action once I understood what it was designed to do.  In my youthful mind, I had overcome all the strikes against me – and there were many – and had succeeded.  Why shouldn’t everybody else?

I had worked very hard to even be considered eligible for that job.  I knew I had to continue to keep the focus of the white management on my achievements and off my skin color, which meant I needed to work harder and achieve more, jut to stay competitive with my colleagues.  And while I never rose to the level of income Dr. Carson has, I did surpass the magical $100,000 annual salary, which made me “rich” at the time among the average members of the black community.

So why have I never been a Republican, even after I fell in love with and married one?  What’s the difference between me and Dr. Ben Carson?

We have the identical work ethic.

We have the same Christian ethic, albeit I have discarded the religiosity of that ethic.

We have both been called sellouts by other members of the black community.

The difference seems to me to be the way in which we view those among us who did not receive the gifts Carson and I were given.  I believe that the racist foundation of the American society has hogtied a certain segment of the black population into a persistent generational proliferation of people who are not born with a clean slate, and who cannot even reach the playing field.  I believe that only some kind of draconian intervention will ever come close to obliterating that negative baggage that a black infant in the inner cities of America drags along with him when he takes his first breath.

Whereas at one time during my journey I did believe that everybody had the same chance at success as I did, I no longer believe that.  For me, my choice of political ideology has been a matter of priorities.  While I understand how and why a person of Dr. Carson’s achievements could prioritize fiscal issues above social ones, I cannot.

There are many issues, especially when it comes to the economy and fiscal policies, about which I tend to agree more with Republicans than I do Democrats.  I think we should have a balanced budget.  I think we should not spend more money than we bring in in revenues. I think we need to weed out the frauds who milk government programs inappropriately.  I think we should force government employees to work, and not exhibit the slacker attitudes many of them do.  If all of those thoughts make me a fiscal conservative, so be it.

But where Dr. Carson and I apparently differ is in our understanding of the insidious long-term effects of institutionalized and societal racism and how those effects need to be addressed.  Is he a sellout?  I don’t think so, any more than I consider myself one.  He has earned his fame and fortune, and while I’m sure he had to negotiate the racist waters even in the medical profession and sometimes compromise his personal principles, his accolades are truly the fruits of his own labors.

What I do think, though, is that Dr. Carson’s priorities are screwed up.