KICK A HATER GINGERLY DAY

Just when you think you've heard it all, the industrious youth of America have invented yet another category of in(s)ane. As we slowly roll out the Constitutional 'red' carpet to the downtrodden, where could the aisle of hate possibly end? With the redheads, of course!?!???



Through time, the insecure and ignorant have invariably found someone to hate. Using various unjustifiable reasonings, haters will readily vent their inner frustrations on any innocent, unsuspecting individual who has the misfortune of crossing their paths. And as we slowly swim to the surface through the quagmire of equitable Constitutional and human rights, even the haters want to be pc. When our society moves to protect the rights of identifiable factions, the haters, creative as they are, just find someone new to loathe. So now we've come to this.

So now I feel a real need to say this: "KIDS DON'T LEARN TO HATE FROM TV SHOWS! THEY LEARN TO HATE FROM THEIR UPBRINGING!!!!!!".

There, I feel much better, now.

Personally speaking, my childhood was sprinkled with prejudice just as well as love. My parents were immigrants, WWII survivors. My mother was taken off the family homestead at the age of fourteen, forced into slave labor on a German farm. Backbreaking work, raw potatoes and slogging in the snow with no shoes comprised her puberty. She ACTUALLY had plenty of reasons to be hateful. My mother also told me once that she had never seen a black person in her whole life until her ship steamed into Ellis Island. Needless to say, there were plenty of perjoratives slung around my house.

And from this childhood my personal philosophy has become one of embracing the good and burying the bad of every event. Each day passes from darkness into light. Life is beyond our control. One can choose to hate and perpetuate the sins of the father OR draw one's own conclusions and really be your own person.

But lest you think I'm trying to place myself in the running for the 'Mama Teresa of the Year Award', there are still plenty of biases I hold that I struggle everyday to overcome. Proudly though I can say these all stem from personal experiences and not something I heard from somebody else. My decision was made long ago to judge a person face to face, not by inherited biases.

Jews and Germans were a favorite "haters" target in my house. Personally, I've worked off and on for Jewish bosses since the age of 14. Despite my efforts to overcome my upbringing, when asked my opinion of the group as a whole, my favorite line is: 'A Jewish person would sell their own grandma for the right price'. But I don't HATE them for it. It's just an observation. And I was never wary of black men until 2 of them tried to force me into the bushes in front of the Shedd Aquarium one hot summer's night as I was frantically searching for my 'lost' 1st husband along the lakefront and they offered to help. To this day I remember running willy nilly across all 8 lanes of LSD (while on LSD) to get away. Motorists slammed on brakes and swerved. I kept running. All the way back to our van, 2 miles away, never stopping, never looking back. There I waited, shaken, until everyone in our party returned. And I was grateful to have escaped. Glad I had chosen becoming road kill over possible assault or worse.

It took me a long time to not instinctively move away and clutch my purse when a black man got on an elevator with me. But again, I tried really hard to not let that bad experience cloud my judgement in new encounters. Then, many years later, a half African-American sweetheart became my son-in-law. As a mama-in-law, I couldn't have asked for a more caring, considerate, polite, thoughtful and respectful new 'son'. As a lifetime loser at love, I thank my G&G everyday that my beautiful, kind, talented daughter drew the queen of hearts.

And speaking of hearts (which are red) and blood (which is red) and anger (which is red): KIDS - STOP THE SELF LOATHING. Turn all that energy into things that really matter and I guarantee you'll feel much better when it's said and done. "You can crawl in the gutter OR rise up above"(c.'97).

But enough of that crap. I'm getting ready to go out and KICKstart GINGERLY some teenage badasses' brain. Now, if I could only find my little red hammer...

MAMA QUOTE OF THE DAY: "You can't hate your own grandchildren".

DIS IS YO MAMA