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You know, most people assume I left California simply because I because I became a Christian. That I inherited properties here in Louisiana and relocating here was necessary to oversee them. That the changes in my life at the time required a fresh start in a new place, even if that new place was really my old hometown, after all.
No, no. That’s not it at all. Those are all good reasons, really. But in the end they only made the decision easier. Provided some nice, convenient justifications, if you will.
No, the real reason I left California, the reason that made the decision oh so very easy for me, the reason I’m never, ever going back there, is this.
The people there are painfully stupid.
In California, you don’t have to be blonde…to be blonde.
No offense to blondes, you understand. There are many very smart blondes out there.
Just not in California.
Case in point. Here’s an example of what one might be forced to experience on a daily basis in California. I should warn you, though. This video is quite painful to watch. You really shouldn’t put yourself through this unless you’re the insatiably curious sort, like me.
Even then, I really suppose I should apologize for gratuitous torture.
I was off with some of the church gals just a couple of months ago, delivering big boxes of canned foods, flour, sugar, etc. Donated mostly but a lot of it purchased by the church to kinda round out the selection.
I mean, have you ever seen the typical church “box o’ donated foodz”? Typically something like ten cans of cream corn, a can of beets and maybe a bag of beans or some such. So we buy some other stuff to toss in there. Flour, sugar, fresh bread. Some basic staples. Rice and beans, certainly.
All of which tends to make for a bunch of pretty heavy boxes that need slinging around. So here’s the church truck (we use a truck for donated foodz delivery) with two little church girls (plus me) in the back, one in the front and the young church dude (who owns the truck) up front driving.
Now we’d done this time and again, and it’d become rather rote. We shop until the church fund allocated to donated foodz is tapped out, divy everything up to the boxes (one for each of the folks on the list), load ‘em up and head on out. At each stop I hop out and grab a box. The trio of bouncy church giggles head on in to make the folks there smile and I lug the box to the porch or step or whatever.
The driver usually stays with the truck. I don’t know when it became part of our routine that he didn’t actually do anything but drive. I think maybe he always just came along because it was his truck and that’s it.
So this time, just a couple of months ago, it was hot. I mean, it’s summer down here. In Louisiana. Swamp country. Ergo, very hot and humid, to the point that one often is tempted to ask God just what you did wrong that you have to suffer so. So I wore a t-shirt that time and left my little collar at home.
Naturally, that’s the day it occurred to the giggle squad that I was missing all the fun in actually engaging with the folks we were visiting. So they offered to lug the boxes a while. And I argued, no I came along to haul the boxes so you, the giggles squad, could make your church look nice to the folks we were delivering this stuff to. Eventually I honed the point to, no I don’t want our church to not look nice by stomping in there myself and scaring the old people.
Eventually it became almost a heated argument. Everyone was, at least, passionate about their position anyway. They all (even the driver who, in my opinion, wasn’t a part of the discussion ) were firm on the position that I shouldn’t be ashamed to present myself to folks I’m actually delivering charity to.
And, yeah. I get that. And I’m not ashamed or any such thing. I’m just aware that an almost six foot tall, raspy voiced, redheaded mass of scar tissue and tattoos stalking into your home tends to make most sane people a little nervous. So I’m polite enough that it seems a better idea for the giggle squad to do the face work.
Eventually the argument waned, as I’d stuck to my guns pretty stubbornly. But in retrospect it occurred to me what were dealing with there. This idea that’s permeated our society that you should be proud of who you are. That you should put who you are right in other people’s faces, and proudly. Most especially if there’s any chance those people might disapprove or even be uncomfortable with who you are.
That’s stupid. I wasn’t proud of “who I am” that day, not in the sense of how I looked at that particular moment, which is what we were confronting. Didn’t feel bad about it either, just aware that I made for quite a picture, if you get me.
And there’s been a bit of a division between me and the giggle squad ever since because of this. How do you explain the difference between ashamed of yourself and simple awareness that how you look today might be slightly startling? I really don’t think most people understand that there is a difference anymore. If everything about you isn’t great and wonderful all the time, then you’re not proud. And you should be proud.
I contemplated bringing the concept of humility into the conversation but decided, in light of their reactions so far, they might all suffer an embolism or something if I did.
Not sure exactly why being proud is so important, really. I asked but the giggle squad seemed to have trouble articulating just then. Seems to me bad things happen when your especially proud of yourself. Been my experience anyway.
A friend of mine over on TOL wrote this recently. Pardon me if I’m lazy and chose to just cut and paste it rather than write all this myself. Facts are facts though.
“I live just South of Boston, so I’ve heard more (local) coverage on this than I ever really wanted to. I’ve heard interviews with the actual people involved, heard the news conferences (including the one with the police chief,) and have read the reports not just by the police but the statement from the neighbors. Here are a few details about which you might not be aware:
**This event actually happened last week, and the charges had already been dropped when Prof. Skippy Gates took the story to the media. (It isn’t unusual for charges to be lessened or dropped, especially if an arrested person has no priors.)
**Gates’ home had been burglarized recently, so neighbors were on the alert about unusual things. And Gates had been away from home. The neighbors may not have been aware he had returned from his time away.
**Gates was with his driver when he was breaking into his own home, so to the neighbor who called it in, it looked like there were two men trying to burglarize the home, subsequently breaking the front door.
**Gates initially refused to provide his ID….then gave the officer his Harvard ID (which doesn’t list his address.) He became hostile when asked for further ID.
**The police HAVE TO follow up on calls. The initial report said two men. The police needed to determine who the second man was, and where he went…in part, to insure that Gates, too, was safe, and that there was no one in the house who shouldn’t be there. (Gates was furthered angered when asked about who else may be in the house.) Also, even if his ID gave that as his address, it’s standard procedure in ALL police responses to run the names and address of EVERYONE involved to make sure there are no outstanding warrants for anyone, and to make sure there are no orders of protection prohibiting someone to be at an address. This can be problematic in domestic abuse cases, where a husband’s ID may say he lives there, but he is not supposed to be on the property.
**Sgt. Crowley taught for five years at the police academy. His area of expertise? Preventing racial profiling. He was appointed to that position by a black superior. He has a spotless record, and numerous commendations.
**Crowley was accompanied by a black officer and a Hispanic officer. They are backing his version of what happened.
**Crowley stepped onto the porch as he tried to report by radio what was happening at the call (standard procedure.) Gates, who had been yelling inside the house, followed Crowley out on the porch to continue yelling. Gates was twice warned that his behavior was disorderly.
**Gates, by his own admission, in his own words, “got in the face” of officer Crowley.
**Gates was then arrested on a charge of disorderly conduct. He was hand-cuffed…also standard procedure.
**Gates has built his career on racism. It is his bread and butter. Without it he, like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, will be rendered irrelevant. THAT’S why he’s made such a big deal about this.
By the way, there should be audio coming. There will be the 911 calls and the radio transmissions released (rumor is you can hear Gates in the background on these,) plus a neighbor has still photos showing Gates screaming at the officers. You’ll probably see/hear those in the next week or so.
If Gates had done as we are taught as children, and been respectful of an authority figure (a police officer,) and answered the questions as a normal person would, this would never have happened. He deserved to be arrested, and they should have prosecuted him.”
Again, I’ll point out what I think is the most telling point in all this ridiculousness. Everyone I’ve seen so far accusing the police officer of racism or in any way abusing his authority have been consistently and obviously unaware of the facts of the incident. And I honestly have to wonder if this ignorance is intentional or not.
“A Cambridge, Massachusetts, police officer said Thursday he will “never apologize” about how he handled the arrest of prominent black Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.
“That apology will never come from me as Jim Crowley, it won’t come from me as sergeant in the Cambridge Police Department,” Sgt. James Crowley told Boston radio station WEEI. “Whatever anybody else chooses to do in the name of the city of Cambridge or the Cambridge Police Department which are beyond my control, I don’t worry about that. I know what I did was right. I have nothing to apologize for.”
Crowley also said he was exercising caution and is clearly not a racist based on his previous actions.
Those actions, Crowley told the Boston Herald, include giving mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to former Boston Celtics star Reggie Lewis, who suffered a fatal heart attack in 1993 at Brandeis University when Crowley was a campus cop.
“I wasn’t working on Reggie Lewis the basketball star. I wasn’t working on a black man,” Crowley told the Boston Herald. “I was working on another human being.”
Gates was arrested last week at his home after a confrontation with Crowley. Cambridge authorities on Tuesday dropped disorderly conduct charges against Gates.
Crowley also told WEEI that when he asked Gates to come out of his home, he thought a break-in had occurred or was still happening.
“I didn’t know who [Gates] was. I was by myself. I was the only police officer standing there, and I got a report of people breaking into a house,” Crowley told WEEI. “That was for my safety first and foremost. I have to go home at night, I have three beautiful children and a wife who depend on me. So I had no other motive than to ensure my safety.”
Responding to a reporter’s question on Gates’ arrest, President Obama said Wednesday night that the Cambridge police “acted stupidly.”
Obama defended Gates while admitting that he may be “a little biased” because the professor is his friend.
“But I think it’s fair to say, No. 1, any of us would be pretty angry; No. 2, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home; and, No. 3 … that there’s a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately.”
The incident shows “how race remains a factor in this society,” Obama said.
(source)
I agree. This incident does indeed show exactly how race remains a factor in this society. Whenever anyone treats anyone else without proper consideration for their race, rather than treating them as the would any other human being regardless of their race, they’re labeled a racist and reviled.
Of course this keeps racism alive and well in this society. We have to be racist in order to avoid being labeled racist.
Here are the police reports of the incident. You can clearly see where the Jim Crowley failed to realize Professor Gates was a black man and alter his reaction to the man’s behavior based on his race.
Honestly, Mr. Crowley. What were you thinking? Learn something from your own police department’s reaction to this situation. Being politically correct is far more important than protecting yourself as a law enforcement officer.
So, it’s weird being me sometimes.
A recent example: the police came, handcuffed me, drove me off and eventually let me go again. This was just a few days ago. And I find I’m more grateful than perturbed at having gone through all that.
Because, you see, I can understand. I can see the thing from their point of view and I’m grateful the our local police responded to the situation in the way they did. Had the same situation occurred with any other people (which is to say, a group of people not including myself) I would want them to react in the way that they.
So here’s the deal.
I wrote a while back about an acquaintance of mine, a lesbian who suffered in an abusive relationship, whom I’d tried my best to support. And when the time came that she left that relationship and sought safety from the inevitable retaliation for that, I helped her with that as well. The piece I wrote, here on this blog, was largely about how a Christian should approach such a situation.
(It’s here, if you’re interested)
I didn’t go into a lot of depth on this particular situation that had inspired that little article. If I had I would have probably mentioned something about statistics showing abused women return to those relationships, once they’ve escaped them, an average of seven or eight times before leaving permanently. Those that they survive that long, of course.
Because, as you’d expect, the woman I was talking about did indeed return to that relationship again. More than once. No surprise there. And I continued to lend her my support, offering safety and whatever help she need during all that.
Which is rather how I ended up being handcuffed and carted off by the cops.
You see, that last time she called me, in tears and begging for help, I went to help. Now, I’m not a complete fool. I knew full well there would be some ridiculous drama in all that but I went anyway. I know I, as discouraging as it may be, am likely the closest thing this woman has to an example of Christ in her life.
Let’s all take a moment and suffer the heartache that simple statement causes. And you’ll forgive me my anger at the body of Christ today that I’m the best example around for this woman. I mean really. That’s just a deplorable state of affairs.
So, and back to the point, I show up and find the abuser had returned home and caught her in the act of preparing to flee again. And she was not surprisingly very upset at this. She was in the process of shoving her into every available solid object in order to express her displeasure. So I, being the hothead that I am, naturally jumped right on in there and beat the hell out of her.
And don’t get me wrong. I fully believe that’s approximately how one should respond when confronted with one person abusing another. Most especially if you’re fairly confident you’re pugilist enough to dominate that situation. And I figured I was. And so I did.
I just didn’t give proper consideration to the overall situation. That I was on this woman’s property. And that the victim in all this, as one who understands such situations would likely predict, did not respond well to my beating the hell out of her abuser.
She, in fact, called the cops. And then hit me with a chair because I wouldn’t let the woman (forcing myself to speak politely here) up off the floor.
Well, to be honest, it probably had more to do with my holding her down on the floor by the throat. But still.
Which is about when I realized maybe I need to extract myself from the drama a bit. So I stepped back and, considering she’d already called the cops for me, let things play out as they may until they arrived. I figured if one jumped on the other again I’d just make sure no one got themselves killed and leave it at that. And I was prepared to defend myself if, as I predicted, I became the target of all the anger flowing around. So I let her up, backed off, limped backwards out the door and took refuge out in the yard waiting for the cops.
You know. Where I could still discern what was going on in there a bit but take off running if need be. Like I said, not a complete fool.
Now, it really shouldn’t have surprised me all things considered, but I was surprised nevertheless when the abuser told the cops a wacky story about my coming over, picking a fight and just attacking her for no reason. I mean, it was an obvious load of bull and the woman couldn’t even lie worth a darn. Never mind my friend standing there obviously beat all to hell and back. And I know cops well enough to know they can usually see through even a very well crafted load of bull, even when told well. But it surprised me, though it shouldn’t have, when my friend backed her up on it.
Hence my getting cuffed and carted off for a bit.
Now, the area where the cops earned my respect here is this: They knew full well the whole thing was bull. They already knew me, knew the two other women and, in fact, were intimately familiar with the whole history between all three of us there. They already knew the whole story before they even asked my version of events. It was obvious when they asked me that they already knew. And so I was carted off down the street a couple of blocks just to remove me from the situation until they could get the real deal out of the knuckleheads back at the house.
In the end I hung out with a couple of the cops I knew well and we waited for the cops on the scene to hash things out. Eventually they did. My friend pressed charges against that other knucklehead and went on to the shelter again. The cops then gave me the rote chastising for getting involved in the whole thing (and really, I certainly could have and should have went about it all much better) and that was that.
Leaving me with three thoughts on the whole matter:
1) I really hope my friend either doesn’t return to all that again or at least survives her next return long enough to get back out again.
2) The cops around here aren’t all that bad. In fact, pretty much anyone that gets me out of some stupidity of mine has my respect. So there you go.
3) I’m getting too old for all this drama. I mean, really. Getting cuffed and carted off would been a furiously exciting time for me not all that long ago. Now, not so much. No longer on my list of happy fun times.
Be sure to thank God again today that you were born in America! Far too few are so lucky! In the good ole US of A we have a standard of living that’s just amazing, and we take it for granted far, far too often!
Even the average Joe Citizen lives in a manner that would be considered wealthy by the standards of just about any other randomly selected nation on earth. In fact, I’m pretty sure there isn’t another country anywhere who’s average citizen lives in a manner exceptionally or even notably more luxurious than our Average Joe. Most, in fact, strive to achieve our level of comfort! America is an extremely comfortable country!
The current official poverty threshold in the US of A is about $10,000 for single people, $14,000 for couples, about $20,000 for a family of four. For a family of three, such as mine (me, hubby and my step-son, of whom he is the domicile parent) it’s about $17,600 or so. My hubby has a pretty good job with the state and he actually makes slightly less than that. Which means we are, by the standards our government uses, officially impoverished.
And that’s all the time. Every day of every year, until probably the hubby’s next raise, we’re impoverished Americans.
We own four air conditioners (running all four pretty much all the time), have hot water at our beck and call, four televisions with satellite t.v. on all, expend more than $200 a month on various luxuries and entertainments, own a Playstation, a refridgerator, electric stove, freezer (which we constantly stock with hundreds of pounds of red meat), dishwasher and two automobiles (though, admittedly, one isn’t working right now). We vacation as often as two or three times a year, pretty much whenever it occurs to us to do so. We have two computers in the home and constant access to the interwebz. We actually leave the country to vacation about one out of every five vacations or so and leave the state pretty much the rest of the time. We own somewhere around $10,000 worth of furniture and various household stuff. And about $5,000 worth of various firearms, many of them just for hobby shooting and not for hunting or even home defense. I have medical bills that, until very recently, sucked up as much as $4,000 a year. And my hubby’s retarded older brother lives with us and we take care of him as well.
All that and we’re impoverished.
God bless America! Thank you, Lord, that I was born in a country where even the poor lives like fat cats!
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