My baby’s after school routine was such where you could set your watch by it. The school bell rang, and as kids in their white shirts, khakis and red sweaters or sweatshirts poured from the school, a lone little figure would come dragging out, like a laborer finishing a hard day’s work. She would trudge, knapsack over one shoulder, lunch box in her opposite hand, to the sidewalk, look for my car, and wave. On really good days, she would do a little dance for the world to see.
Her brother would usually be holding court by the corner of the church, which was adjacent to the school’s parking lot. The whole structure took up the length of the block. I never saw Scooter exit the school, just looked up, every day, and saw him, on the corner by the church, a head above a bunch of other boys in hooded red sweatshirts, fall coats flung carelessly to the ground.
Most days, Scoompi finished her wave and/or dance, and launched herself at her brother, hooking her arms around his thigh (she would never reach his waist) and hollering, as loud as she could, “I LOVE YOU!”
She only did it because Scooter didn’t like it. Even his friends caught on and just knew to acknowledge Scoompi or get the same. Scooter flushed red every day but amidst the mothers and school staff present who always said, “Awwwww…” corporal deterrence could not be practiced on his little sister. Once he stopped squirming, she grabbed her knapsack and lunchbox, waited for the crossing guard, and after crossing the street, ran for my car like a marine humping his stuff to the last Huey leaving the rice paddy that afternoon.
The entire routine took less than five minutes.
She was in my backseat, little head poking between the front bucket seats, giving me a kiss on my cheek.
“Hi!” she screamed. I was already half deaf, and compared to what her brother got, I was let off easy.
“Hey, baby,” I said. “Wow, your face is cold.”
“Uh huh,” she said. “The seasons ARE changing. What? You flunk third grade twice?”
“Uh, yeah,” I said, pushing my window button as my son strode up to the car.
“Going to the library, Daddy,” he looked at his friends milling around a few feet back.
“Hey fellas,” I shouted through the open window, then, just as loud, said, “Young man? You don’t TELL me where you’re going. Let’s try this again.”
Scooter looked furtively over his shoulder, and said, in a lower voice, “Hey, Daddy, can I go to the library for a while?”
“Be home by 5.30, Man.”
“Thanks, Daddy. You got any money…oof!”
I was pulling on the window button, and the rising glass almost caught his nose this time. Scoompi howled with laughter.
“I guess not,” I heard him say through the glass. “You coulda just said ‘No!’” He and his friends lumbered off. I had a feeling the library time would be spent in part at the park, which was midway between the school and the library. Just a thought.
“I gotta go get a haircut, Baby.”
“OK. Daddy?”
“Yeah?”
“Why does your barbershop smell like burning leaves?”
“Oh…you know, it’s Fall Baby. Leaves get burnt.”
“No, Daddy, it smells like someone is burning like, leaves and rope in there all the time…”
“Really?”
“And why does Randy, your barber, always have a Coca Cola bottle in a brown bag that he can’t put down for long while cutting hair?”
“Um…”
“Did you ever stop to tell him smoking is bad for him? He’s kinda fat already.”
“Grown man, Baby, he is entitled to his cigarettes, long as nobody else is working to pay for ‘em.”
“Daddy?”
“Yeah Baby?”
“Those aren’t cigarettes.”
Oh.
“So,” I choked, “How was school?”
She stretched her little body across both back seats and groaned.
“Stupid. We had some dumb Indian come to our school, dressed in deerskin…”
“Buckskin, Baby…”
“Whatever. I mean, he shows up with the whole outfit and has NO weapons. I’m waiting for him to demonstrate just HOW they took out all those buffalo. He pulls out a doggone guitar and starts singing some dumb song. Didn’t white people invent Country music?” She shook her little head in disgust.
“So then, at question time, I ask, ‘Where is your bow and arrow? And your tomahawk?’ He says Native Americans don’t use them anymore. OK. Like Native Americans are walking around with deer skin pants on and wearing feathers in their hair, right?”
She had a good point.
“So he tried to act like I was stupid, and I asked him why chiefs and smart people in the tribe got a buncha feathers, but he only had one. Did that mean he was in special classes while in his tribe? Was this why they lost their land to palefaces? Because they put one feather dummies with no weapons on the front line when the cavalry came? He then tried to lose his temper and ask what I knew, so I told him my daddy was a professor researching Native Americans, but he was only researching the smart ones who got casinos, not dummies like him who got a quarter share in an oil change joint on Kedzie and had to pad their paycheck going to schools acting like Tonto’s retarded brother.”
Wow. “How much detention you get?”
“Big Booty…” I looked at her hard in the rearview.
“Sr. Mary Tamika was out today. The sub made me stay in at recess but didn’t write me up.”
“Good deal.”
“Kinda. I had to write something about being culturally sensitive and not making grown men cry.”
We pulled into the barbershop. Randy, my barber, was outside, exhaling smoke.
“Hey Doc, hey Scoompi,” Randy’s eyes were red.
“Hey yourself,” Scoompi said and trooped into the shop, sitting at the chess table.
“She know how to play?” Randy asked, stubbing out his smoking material.
“I didn’t teach her. She seems to know everything else,” I said.
I got my hair cut. Scoompi got up once or twice to critique Randy’s work and to remind him not to cut my moustache down too low. I was going to apologize when Randy said, “Forget it Doc. I got an 8 year old daughter, too.”
“She critique your barber?”
“Naw, the dude that sells me clothes.”
Two older men in the shop started going back and forth, loudly. Scoompi stopped paying watching Randy and focused on the old men with rapt attention.
“I don’t care what you say! How you know anything about good looks? You so ugly yo mama had to tie a poke chop round your neck so the dog would play with you!”
The grownups had heard it before.
“Ugly? Fool, please. Yo mama is so ugly that when she looks in the mirror, the reflection looks back and shakes its head.”
“Hold on now…you so ugly, after meeting you, I've decided I am in favor of abortion even in cases of incest.”
“Fool, Learn from your parents' mistakes - use birth control!”
“I heard yo’ ol lady got a weave made outta steel wool…now she think she got good hair…”
“Yo’ ol’ lady wasn’t always a lady…her name usedta be Frank…”
“You ever wonder what life would be like if you'd had enough oxygen at birth?”
Then came the old Redd Foxx favorite. “I could stick yo’ head in some dough, and make some gorilla cookies…”
That one sent my babygirl and the other kids in the shop into gales of laughter. The men stopped.
“Is there a little girl in here?” one asked.
They went back to murmuring to themselves.
The men went back to getting faded up. The little boys gave Scoompi the evil eye.
As I paid and tipped Randy, Scoompi went up to one of the men, who was adjusting the Stacy Addams brim that matched is fire engine red suit and fake alligator shoes. She pulled the hem of his six button suit coat.
“Yeah, Punkin’? “
“What was that you all were just doing? That was hilarious!”
“Baby girl…Doc? This one yours?”
“You know it.”
“Figgered. Honey, that’s just old men playing the dozens. Don’t pay us no neva mind. Doc, why you bring this chile to the shop? Baby, playing the dozens is for old men, ain’t got nothin’ but time on they hands. It takes years to get good. Don’t pay us no ‘tention. Would yo’ daddy over there talk like that?”
“It’s OK Mister. He says worse at home. I just knew he wasn’t creative enough to make up all that funny stuff by himself.”
The entire shop howled with laughter. The old man straightened his brim, chucked her under her chin, and grinned. “You play the dozens just fine, Baby. Be good. You stay in school!”
We were riding home in silence when she said, “Daddy, is it BAD to play the dozens?”
“Naw, Boo. It’s just not always…appropriate.”
“Propreeit?”
“It’s not always the right thing to do at certain times.”
“Oh.” She looked out the window.
“Is it ‘propriate to do it if someone picks on you?”
“Oh yeah.”
“What if someone picks on your friend?”
“Uh, yeah. It’s fine then.”
“When is it not fine to play the dozens?”
This was my chance to impart my daddy lesson of the day. “When you have a guest speaker trying to teach you about his heritage.”
“Really? Hmmm…I don’t do that. I just tell the truth.”
“Well, no matter what, if you play? I don’t want you swearing. Unladylike. You gotta find words that are funny that won’t get you sent to hell…”
“Like what? The swears are all the funny ones…”
“Start with words like ‘heffa’…”
“Huh?”
“Means big ol’ cow…”
“Oh….so, what if it hurts their feelings?”
“Baby, life is full of people who can dish it out, but not take it. Like President Truman said, ‘If you can’t stand the heat, get outta the kitchen…”
The next few days were uneventful. By the weekend, Scoompi’s little friend Ham came over to play. Hamilton towered over Scoompi and hit like a grown man. The varsity football coaches, and even the school priest begged Ham’s mom to let him play. Hamilton was in Scoompi’s third grade class. Mom wisely said ‘no’, and several seventh and eighth grade players heaved a sigh of relief.
Ham was a gentle soul, however, and unaware of his strength. His spare time was spent reading and writing, and playing with Scoompi, who was never fazed when Ham ran into her, and who tackled him with a ferocity that made bigger boys question her sanity. Even Scooter didn’t wrestle with Hamilton. He was a great kid, a smart boy who athletic directors were already drooling over at his ripe old age of eight.
“Want to watch Sponge Bob?” Ham’s enunciation and diction could rival Bryant Gumbel’s. His mother was brilliant.
“No,” Scoompi replied. I want to ask you a question.”
“Kay, wanna go toss the football around?”
“No, Ham. I wanna know: why you let those girls in class say those mean things about you?
I could hear Ham rolling around on the floor, no quiet feat. “I dunno. Gee, Scoomp, I mean, who cares what they say?”
“I do. I’m your friend, and I don’t like it. That Ol’ stupid Sr. Mary Tamika should put a stop to it.”
Ham was quiet. Like all red blooded men, even miniature ones, Sr. Mary Tamika was not someone you argued about. Ham, at 8, was probably only six or seven years past nursing age. His attachment to the voluptuous nun would be even stronger than men four times his age. Not stronger by much, mind you. But stronger still.
“Oh, Scoomp…Sr. Mary Tamika is nice…”
“Whatever, man. She is trouble in a tight black dress and a headpiece. I’m only worried that I only got five more years to take her down before graduation…”
“Oh…well, the girls never talk bad about me in front of her…”
“I’m gonna handle this for you…I don’t like those girls anyway, they’re mean.”
“How? You too teeny to fight. I think we should just ignore them.”
I could only make out my daughter mumbling.
“What do kitchens and eggs have to do with any of this?”I heard Ham ask.
I would later find out.
I was in my office the following week when my phone rang.
“Good afternoon, Doctor,” I recognized the mild voice of doom immediately. “This is Mr. Smith from…”
I sat up in my chair. “Afternoon, Principal Smith, what can I do for you? That boy of mine giving you trouble?”
A lighthearted chuckle. “Alexander is always a pleasure. A saint that one. What a good Catholic!”
You wouldn’t be saying that, I grimaced, if you knew he’s been studying the Koran with his maternal grandfather and picking apart our faith like a stack of so many Legos.
“…no, sir, I am afraid I am calling about young Alexandra…we tried your home, but we didn’t get an answer…”
Thank God for that.
“…some parents have phoned over the last few days…classmates, even some of their older siblings…well, apparently, the girls have had some problem with Alexandra…this stretches to the 8th grade, and one or two of the older boys as well…”
“Oh.” Whenever I had to deal with school administration regarding Scoompi, I treated them like the police. Say nothing until you have counsel.
“So, these parents would like to meet, and as a community, and you being such an active member, we would like to see if you or your wife can make it this afternoon, say 5pm?”
“In your office?”
“No, I’m sorry sir, there just isn’t room. We can do the cafeteria, however. It should accommodate us just fine. The gym is in use.”
What the heck?
That afternoon, my innocent child hopped in the car, kissed me on her cheek and sat back, quietly, as if all was wonderful in her realm.
“Scoomp?”
“Yes Daddy?”
“Mmmm…I had a call from Mr. Smith today.”
“Really?” The look on her face was…well. Lee Harvey Oswald had looked no more innocent.
“He wants us to get together with some parents…apparently…some kids have been having a hard time with you?”
She yawned. “Oh.”
“Baby, has someone been bothering you in school?”
Shaking of head. “No Daddy,” she grinned broadly, “School is just fine. Been better than ever, lately.”
I was curious. Usually, we were alerted to detentions through parent notes, which we were required to sign and have our child return. None of those. For the life of me, I couldn’t see what a bunch of other kids, especially older ones, would find threatening about my daughter. She was by far the smallest one in her class.
Luckily, my wife was in seminars all week, otherwise she would have taken the call and probably flown off the handle over nothing. In fact, I was getting a mite angry, the thought of these bad kids ganging up on my pumpkin. We all know mothers can put forth some righteous indignation. Well, Daddies aren’t any slouches, either, I thought. Especially when you mess with our baby girls…
The cafeteria wasn’t packed, but it was…well occupied. I walked in, Scoompi in tow, her head down.
Mr. Smith greeted us. “AH, you’re here. Let’s get started and see if we can get to the bottom of this.”
He smiled and gestured, “These parents are concerned…apparently their children have come home, upset, sometimes in tears, after verbal altercations with little Alexandra, here…”
One mother looked from Scoompi to her husky son, who were her spitting image. Son. Scoompi. Son, Scoompi.
“But she’s just a sweet lil ol girl!” the mother exclaimed. “What damage could she do you?”
Suddenly, the mom was dragging her son out of his chair, into the hallway, hollering at him, “She’s just a little kid! Why you lie? Got me comin’ up here, after work, tired, for this?” She was pushing him ahead of her, and at the doorway she reached inside her purse for a wicked looking strap. We listened until he heard the rhythmic “Whop, whop!” followed by heavy sighs, “Uuuh, uuuh…” then the inevitable sobs and screams. The fathers in the room bit their lips to keep from laughing. Several mothers of older kids stood up, frowned at their children and left out the other exit.
The girls that were left were a handful, all in Scoompi’s class but one, who was an older sister of one of my daughter’s classmates.
“Well, we don’t see her as a little kid,” one mother spat. “She has said some evil things to my child, and I don’t like it. I wanna know what kinda parenting you supposedly doing?”
“Well, now,” Mr. Smith said gently, “the girls in this room, except for Alexandra, are on record of having been accused of bullying some classmates, and teasing others mercilessly, as Alexandra is accused of doing…”
“Don’t tell me my child is bad!” Another mother shouted. “I pay good money for my child to go here! My child has been taught not to take disrespect from nobody! As long as she respect me, she got no problem!”
The other parents all looked at her, and there was an isolation that took place, although no one moved a muscle.
“If my child has done anything wrong,” I said, “she has a right to face her accusers. I love my child like you love yours. No one is going to accuse her and not have me defend her. Let’s speak up. It’s late and we all want to go home.”
One little girl said timidly, “Well, one afternoon, she said that I had no right talking about anyone, because I was so ugly she’d stick my face in some dough and make some gorilla cookies…”
Another stood and said, “I was talking to my friend about something and she told me I’d be a two faced heffa but if I had another face I sure wouldn’t be wearing this one…”
I saw Mr. Smith mouth the word “heffa?” to himself with a look of confusion behind his glasses.
“I told her my daddy would beat her up but she said my Daddy was too busy spending quality time with his special friend to pay me any attention,” one little girl pouted. “Daddy?” she turned around. “How does she know Maurice?”
The older sister said, “When I tried to take up for my little sister, she asked me why my teeth buck out and then said, ‘You know we know why, DON’T we?’” She collapsed in tears. “There were BOYS around, and they have all been calling my house ever since!”
Before I could say anything, Mr. Smith said, “Each of you said something interesting. Apparently, Alexandra said mean things to you in response to something you said…”
There was the sound of a throat clearing at the door.
She couldn’t have been more than five six, and the floor length black dress and habit on her head still left everything to the imagination. Her cheekbones were defined, but not prominent. Her lips were full, and her brown eyes flashed. Her skin was even and as dark as milk chocolate. Her teeth were good. She walked behind me and I could smell what was probably Ivory soap. I was hooked on it from that moment forward. She wore a rope around her waist that cinched her dress and accentuated the curves on either end. She didn’t walk. She didn’t glide. He just…took charge and moved.
“Oh, wonderful,” Mr. Smith said, and the smile on his face wasn’t just one of relief. She had him, too. “This is Sister Mary Tamika, most of the children’s teacher. Sister?”
Her voice was low and sultry, her diction good. She was strong without being forceful.
“I think we have a misunderstanding, but I am so happy I have you all in one place at the same time. The position…is not quite what we think it is, but we can make the most of it.”
Every word sounded like it was music. The fathers left in the room stared, then each gave their wives a look like, “Why you?”
“Your daughters, including your older daughter, Ma’am, have taken it upon themselves to tease a young man in my class almost daily.”
It fit. Ham.
“This young man is a brilliant student and has the potential to be a gifted athlete, but his size and overall friendliness often makes his the target of your daughters’…mean language….
“Alexandra is no angel, but what I have witnessed, after her having rather spirited conversations with your children, is this young man has had a week of peace. You, young lady,” she pointed at the older sister, “ought to be terribly ashamed of yourself, as you were usually the ringleader in picking on a young man several years your junior. I have no sympathy for you.”
“I am not certain what language Alexandra has used, but I can assure the rest of you that if you heard some of the things your children said to this other student, you would question your own parenting skills…”
“I ain’t gotta question nothing!” The lady who’s spoken earlier was on a roll again. “I pay my money…”
“We will happily refund you…”Sr. Mary Tamika said icily, affixing the woman with a stare that would stop a rabid goat. “This is not Wal Mart, but a school, a community…your money means only so much.” Mr. Smith didn’t look so sure of that one, but the nun continued. “Perhaps we don’t need your child here, since it is obvious she gets her poor example of behavior from home…”
Fathers glared at the lady. She shut up.
“I am so glad we had this time together,” Sr. Mary Tamika smiled. A paper clip dropped from her habit. She bent to pick it up. The mothers hustled their children into coats, stood, and filed out. Every father remained sitting. Me? I did my multiplication tables in my head.
“Well, thank you, Sr. Mary Tamika, and thank you folks for coming out…” Mr. Smith hurried from the room, hand in his right pocket.
“You should be proud of her,” the nun looked me in my eyes. “I don’t applaud her methods but so endorse her sentiments. “
“Uh huh,” was all I could croak. She put her hand on my arm. Then she turned to my baby girl, who was smirking.
“You got out of something really nasty, little girl,” she began sternly, “I want you to find other ways to resolve conflict. You hear me?”
Scoompi looked at her and locked into her eyes.
“I did nothing wrong,” she said firmly.
Sr. Mary Tamika smiled. “You remind me so much of a little girl I knew so well. Oooh, that attitude! She played the dozens for many, many years, until she met her match. A nun who taught at her school lit her up but good. That cured her. Yes,” she laughed, “that lil brown girl, she made some bad choices later, she did some very unholy thing, and she loved her some men…but she always remembered that nun. Became one herself. Never did get beat by anyone at the dozens except that Black sister so long ago.”
Scoompi gave her the evil eye. “SO? I took up for someone. Wrong is wrong. Even Jesus probably played the dozens when he chased the money changers out the temple. It's like the president said: If you can't stand the heat, get out the kitchen... You just like giving me a hard time, Big…”
The nun leaned forward, and it was a whisper, but I swear I heard it clear as day.
“Look Lil Heffa…You've never been outspoken; no one has ever been able to….but I tell you this: if I catch yo lil tail playin’ the dozens in my class again, or referring to me as ‘Big Booty’, I'm gonna put five of these where you sneeze….I’ma make you look like an extra on the Simpsons…”
She stood, gave me a sweet smile, and said, “We’re all through, Doctor. Good seeing you again as always…Sometimes? Things get a little outta whack. But if you hit it just right, everything is all better. Right Alexandra? I mean, right Scoompi?”
She shimmied out.
Scoompi glared at her.
“C’mon, Baby…let’s go home. Perhaps we need to keep this between us.”
We walked in to a warm house and aromas out this world. My wife came out of the oven with an apron on and an envelope in her hand.
One strong swat on her bottom and Babygirl was running up the stairs.
“What was that for?” I tried to feign incredulity.
“Why is it this child thinks it’s fun to belittle another nationality? This letter was forwarded by your girlfriend at the school, Sr. Mary Whosis, the big booty heffa always making eyes at you?”
“Oh?”
“Apparently, someone plays the dozens so hard around here this child thought it was fun to refer to a Native American guest speaker as “Tonto’s retarded half brother”, among other things…Now the man refuses to come back to the school. You need to talk to your daughter!”
Given what could have happened?
I breathed a sigh of relief.
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
The Talent Show
“Daddy?”
“Yes Pumpkin?”
“Did you know Robert Marlon?”
I sat up. “Who?”
She gave me the Popeye look she’d given Sr. Mary Tamika recently. “Robert Marlon. The guy who sang ‘I Shot the Sheriff?’”
It took a moment to register. “Oh! You mean Bob Marley, Baby. Yes. I have a lot of his music. Why do you call him Robert?”
“I hate nicknames. His mother named him Robert, Robert sounds more grown up than ‘Bob’.”
“Hmmm…coming from someone who responds daily to ‘Scoompi’…”
She waved her hands at the air. “If you have a stupid name like ‘Alexandra’, you take whatever comes your way. But if you are named ‘Robert’, ‘Bob’ sounds stupid.”
“Mmm hmmm…we’re just getting all into world music today, aren’t we Hon?”
She ignored me. “Anyway, Robert Marlon…”
“Marley, Baby…”
“Robert Whosis sang about people that were kicked around by the people in charge…”
“And made himself very rich in the process, thus becoming one of the people in charge…So much easier to do the kicking when you can afford expensive boots…”
“No, he was a sufferah…”
“Hard to suffer with a big house a BMW and a lot of women.”
“What do women have anything to do with it? Anyway, I learned that people can use music to make people act fair.”
That was a warning sign, but I completely ignored it. When your child arrives at logical point “B” from logical point “A”, as a parent, you are too overwhelmed with pride to catch a conspiracy in the making. Well, fathers are too overwhelmed. Mothers tend to see through the smoke and ask, “What’s burning?”
“The school talent show is coming up,” she said slowly.
“OK.” I was ready to get back to my research. Providing for a family meant a man had to constantly explore new sources of revenue. This casino thing was looking better than selling newspapers out of the back of my car. Academia had its benefits, but a seven figure income was not one of them. As someone saving for my own kids’ education, I was sure the money universities charged for tuition versus what it paid professors was the result of some kind of fuzzy math.
“I think I want to be in it…”
“Um hmmm…”
“So I have your permission?”
“What’s that Baby? Oh, yeah. Hey, bring Daddy a glass of Ice tea. No sugar.”
When she returned, there was a paper in her hand.
“Here is the talent show permission slip. Sign here.”
I mumbled, “Thanks,” took the tea, and scribbled my autograph.
“Hey, Baby?” She was headed back up the stairs.
“Yuh huh?”
“What did I just sign?”
“Something for school, Daddy.”
I grew alert. “Was it your report card?”
“No, Daddy.”
“Oh, OK. Carry on Love.”
Office hours were wrapping up the next day when the department secretary buzzed me. “Your wife on line one, Doc.”
“Hey!” I liked talking to my wife. Except when I was in trouble. I’d been pretty good lately.
“Hey, Honey, um, did you sign the baby up for the school talent show?”
Did I?
“Um, yeah, I think so.”
“So, you read the form?”
Trick question? Like the time I bought a car and was asked later, “Honey, did you ASK what the payment was?” I really liked that car.
When confronted, play dead. I saw that in a movie once.
“Honey?”
Tar baby sit an’ don’t say nuthin’…
Cough a bit so they know the line is still open.
“You are aware you gave permission for your eight year old daughter to sing a song encouraging the students to revolt against, let me see, “their religious oppressors”, which is, surprisingly, spelled correctly…I digress. You agreed to let your child sign a song advocating the overthrow of the school administration?”
“Damn,” I said in a clear, strong voice. “That school sure is teaching those kids how to speak up for themselves.”
“Your girlfriend, Sr. Mary Tamika, called me, and sweetly suggested, after assuring me our darling child had a nice, extended time out and was writing ‘I will not dupe my brilliant father’ a number of times, this young lady read a poetry selection at the show. I agree.”
“Yeah, grilled chicken for supper sounds lovely.”
“You will be working on this with her in the evenings, I take it?”
“I’m not sure it is fair to make her participate in an optional activity, Hon, if we are going to tell her what she has to say and do. That isn’t stoking her creative spirit at all.”
“I’ll let you read the lyrics to the song she wrote when you get in. Love you.”
I was at home, my child standing in front of me, as I recited words from a piece of paper I held in my right hand.
“…our principal, he’s no prince and he’s no pal, if he’s unhappy, oh well…we don’t have to deal with them being snooty, just fire the nun with the real big booty…and if Fr. Mike don’t take our side, well, he can join Sr. Mary Tamika on a long ride…now you see the light…kids, stand up for your rights…Get up, Stand Up…Stand up for your rights…get up stand up…kids get up and fight…”
“Well?” My wife’s foot was tapping.
“Well, there are definitely some plagiarism issues…”
“Artistic license,” Scoompi piped up. “I’m redoing a famous song.”
“Um…”
“Young lady, that is downright disrespectful,” the missus started. I tuned out. I’d heard this litany before. I waited until I saw Scoompi grab her behind like it was on fire and run upstairs.
So when it was said and done, Scoompi wound up practicing some poem about phenomenal women by some famous poet I think I heard of. Both Sr. Mary Tamika and my wife thought it was proper and fitting, a first in itself. The fact those two agreed on something, that is. I had to listen to her recite it every night. It made me sleepy.
As the competition neared, I noticed my baby girl was spending more time in her room, playing with the karaoke machine she received for her past birthday. Never in my life did I tire of hearing Bob Marley more than that last week. The weekend before the show, Scooter had K.O and some of his crew in for a sleepover. Usually Scoompi avoided them after destroying them at video games. I was dozing on the couch when I heard her demand an audience with her brother and his friends.
Nosy parenting is good parenting. I made myself an iced tea and listened at the ventilator grill.
“You bums OWE me!”
“Scoompi, we’ll get expelled…”
“They can’t expel who they don’t see…I’ll take the heat…I just need you pantywaists to do the background…”
“Talent shows are dumb anyway…just forget it…”
“It’s me or her, K.O. What about taking a stand? Look,” I heard menace in my voice, “I got enough dirt on everyone in this room…”
“I won’t be able to sit for a week if I get in trouble at school…”
Oh, they must be discussing recess or something. I went back to the sofa and started my nap again.
“Daddy?”
“Yes Hon?”
“Robert Marley. Did he ever really stand up?”
“Once that I know of. Some goons tried to kill him. He survived and performed a concert afterwards, to show they didn’t affect him. He did his song and acted out, in dance, everything that happened, including him triumphing in the end.”
“Hmmm…”
School talent shows are funny things. It amazes me how many parents force their no talent kids to embarrass themselves in front of a room full of people. The parents think the kids have ability, and as a result of its display, they will look like enlightened, hardworking guardians. In reality, they paint themselves as modern day Genghis Khans, ready to sacrifice all for their own aggrandizement. Nero was a better protector fiddling while Rome burned than most elementary school parents who abuse their children by letting, or forcing, them to participate in school talent shows. Reunions talent shows are worse. I have left such events wanting to punch in the mouth parents (mothers, too) who harped over their kids’ ability, or lack thereof, like they had something golden on their hands.
The fun part of talent shows are the kids who know they have no talent, and try to make a go of it before getting yanked by staff. I was cracking up after a sixth grader opened his mouth and bellowed, “Way DOWN in the JUNGLE deep…” and proceeded to deliver half of Dolomite’s famous rhyme before a nun hustled him offstage to raucous laughter.
Scoompi stepped onstage, wearing the fatigue pants, black turtleneck and black beret I agreed to as a consolation for having to recite poetry. She as introduced and took a deep breath. One of the bourgeois moms next to us gasped at her appearance. I balled up my fist.
“Hey, Squirt, you too little to be onstage,” a kid heckled.
Scoompi leaned into the microphone and said, “Shut up. Didn’t you flunk sixth grade twice already? Don’t you have kids at home?”
Parents started tittering. Students laughed.
“You shut up Pipsqueak…”
“When was the last time I pulled your mom off the corner to keep her from getting into all those strange men’s cars? Keep quiet. Let me do my job.”
A murmur went over the crowd. I saw a nun heading towards the stage when Scoompi yelled, “Get HIM! He started it!” Parents began murmuring again, in assent. The students roared in approval. The nun started for the large sixth grader.
Scoompi read the first three lines of her poem before balling the paper up, throwing it down, and stepping on the wadded up mess.
“I didn’t come here to read off a paper,” she started. Some parents clapped. I felt my heart drop to my stomach. “I didn’t come to argue with three time sixth graders whose parents keep buying their way back into the school…” That got some laughter, and not just from kids.
“And I didn’t come hear to read no doggone poem. My name is Scoompi,” she sucked her bottom lip under her teeth, and pointed both thumbs at herself. “And I came to sing.”
Boys all over the gym began hooting. I heard the instrumental to “Get Up, Stand Up” start, and felt a jab in my arm. “You let her watch El Cantante?” my wife hissed.
“That’s the least of our problems here,” I muttered in response.
By the time the nuns made it to the stage, she was already on her second chorus, and had taken to pretending she was standing in time out, writing lines on a blackboard, and then walked around with her little rear poked out, wagging her finger like she was lecturing students. I recognized the walk. Everyone did. As she was pulled off the stage, she threw her beret into the crowd and screamed, “Get up! Stand up! Don’t give up the fight! The big booty’s coming to get me, ya’ll! Keep up the fight!” She poked her rear out again and strutted around the stage, wagging her finger. I noticed Sr. Mary Tamika leading her off the stage,walking the walk my daughter had just mimicked almost perfectly. My wife looked like she wanted to drag Scoompi home by her forehead.
The kids went wild. They were standing on their feet, stomping and whistling. A couple of mothers fainted. The fathers were rolling in the aisles.
I thanked God for the millionth time I had paid a year’s tuition in advance. It is so much harder for your child to get expelled when you do that.
Offstage, I heard my little girl screaming, apparently a nun, “You never were loyal, Puchi!”
I thought there was an unwritten rule the principal’s office was closed on the weekends. Yet there we sat, me, the missus, Scooter and K.O., on that Saturday night, waiting to pick up my baby girl.
The principal, a tall, lanky man who wore wire framed glasses, walked in, holding Scoompi by the hand. She was wearing shades and the principal was singing, “He’s no prince and he’s no pal…” softly. My wife punched me. Scooter and K.O. looked like they wanted to burst.
“Well, I’m sure it’s just been a misunderstanding, Doc,” he said affably. “Why, little Alexandra’s song caused so much excitement that we sold out of concessions! Of course, some corrective consequences are in order, but there’s no reason you can’t take our little revolutionary home tonight and we will talk with her teacher on Monday.”
Scoompi stood stoically. “Ise just a sufferah,” she said simply. Scooter groaned.
“Did you learn anything from this, Alexandra?” The principal must have been high that night. There was no way we saw the same show.
“Yes, sir.”
“And?”
“Before doing anything that might be popular, even for the revolution, get it copyrighted so you can get royalties.The revolution must be marketed, but for now, I jus’ suffah de consequences.”
Scooter and K.O. excused themselves.
“Yes Pumpkin?”
“Did you know Robert Marlon?”
I sat up. “Who?”
She gave me the Popeye look she’d given Sr. Mary Tamika recently. “Robert Marlon. The guy who sang ‘I Shot the Sheriff?’”
It took a moment to register. “Oh! You mean Bob Marley, Baby. Yes. I have a lot of his music. Why do you call him Robert?”
“I hate nicknames. His mother named him Robert, Robert sounds more grown up than ‘Bob’.”
“Hmmm…coming from someone who responds daily to ‘Scoompi’…”
She waved her hands at the air. “If you have a stupid name like ‘Alexandra’, you take whatever comes your way. But if you are named ‘Robert’, ‘Bob’ sounds stupid.”
“Mmm hmmm…we’re just getting all into world music today, aren’t we Hon?”
She ignored me. “Anyway, Robert Marlon…”
“Marley, Baby…”
“Robert Whosis sang about people that were kicked around by the people in charge…”
“And made himself very rich in the process, thus becoming one of the people in charge…So much easier to do the kicking when you can afford expensive boots…”
“No, he was a sufferah…”
“Hard to suffer with a big house a BMW and a lot of women.”
“What do women have anything to do with it? Anyway, I learned that people can use music to make people act fair.”
That was a warning sign, but I completely ignored it. When your child arrives at logical point “B” from logical point “A”, as a parent, you are too overwhelmed with pride to catch a conspiracy in the making. Well, fathers are too overwhelmed. Mothers tend to see through the smoke and ask, “What’s burning?”
“The school talent show is coming up,” she said slowly.
“OK.” I was ready to get back to my research. Providing for a family meant a man had to constantly explore new sources of revenue. This casino thing was looking better than selling newspapers out of the back of my car. Academia had its benefits, but a seven figure income was not one of them. As someone saving for my own kids’ education, I was sure the money universities charged for tuition versus what it paid professors was the result of some kind of fuzzy math.
“I think I want to be in it…”
“Um hmmm…”
“So I have your permission?”
“What’s that Baby? Oh, yeah. Hey, bring Daddy a glass of Ice tea. No sugar.”
When she returned, there was a paper in her hand.
“Here is the talent show permission slip. Sign here.”
I mumbled, “Thanks,” took the tea, and scribbled my autograph.
“Hey, Baby?” She was headed back up the stairs.
“Yuh huh?”
“What did I just sign?”
“Something for school, Daddy.”
I grew alert. “Was it your report card?”
“No, Daddy.”
“Oh, OK. Carry on Love.”
Office hours were wrapping up the next day when the department secretary buzzed me. “Your wife on line one, Doc.”
“Hey!” I liked talking to my wife. Except when I was in trouble. I’d been pretty good lately.
“Hey, Honey, um, did you sign the baby up for the school talent show?”
Did I?
“Um, yeah, I think so.”
“So, you read the form?”
Trick question? Like the time I bought a car and was asked later, “Honey, did you ASK what the payment was?” I really liked that car.
When confronted, play dead. I saw that in a movie once.
“Honey?”
Tar baby sit an’ don’t say nuthin’…
Cough a bit so they know the line is still open.
“You are aware you gave permission for your eight year old daughter to sing a song encouraging the students to revolt against, let me see, “their religious oppressors”, which is, surprisingly, spelled correctly…I digress. You agreed to let your child sign a song advocating the overthrow of the school administration?”
“Damn,” I said in a clear, strong voice. “That school sure is teaching those kids how to speak up for themselves.”
“Your girlfriend, Sr. Mary Tamika, called me, and sweetly suggested, after assuring me our darling child had a nice, extended time out and was writing ‘I will not dupe my brilliant father’ a number of times, this young lady read a poetry selection at the show. I agree.”
“Yeah, grilled chicken for supper sounds lovely.”
“You will be working on this with her in the evenings, I take it?”
“I’m not sure it is fair to make her participate in an optional activity, Hon, if we are going to tell her what she has to say and do. That isn’t stoking her creative spirit at all.”
“I’ll let you read the lyrics to the song she wrote when you get in. Love you.”
I was at home, my child standing in front of me, as I recited words from a piece of paper I held in my right hand.
“…our principal, he’s no prince and he’s no pal, if he’s unhappy, oh well…we don’t have to deal with them being snooty, just fire the nun with the real big booty…and if Fr. Mike don’t take our side, well, he can join Sr. Mary Tamika on a long ride…now you see the light…kids, stand up for your rights…Get up, Stand Up…Stand up for your rights…get up stand up…kids get up and fight…”
“Well?” My wife’s foot was tapping.
“Well, there are definitely some plagiarism issues…”
“Artistic license,” Scoompi piped up. “I’m redoing a famous song.”
“Um…”
“Young lady, that is downright disrespectful,” the missus started. I tuned out. I’d heard this litany before. I waited until I saw Scoompi grab her behind like it was on fire and run upstairs.
So when it was said and done, Scoompi wound up practicing some poem about phenomenal women by some famous poet I think I heard of. Both Sr. Mary Tamika and my wife thought it was proper and fitting, a first in itself. The fact those two agreed on something, that is. I had to listen to her recite it every night. It made me sleepy.
As the competition neared, I noticed my baby girl was spending more time in her room, playing with the karaoke machine she received for her past birthday. Never in my life did I tire of hearing Bob Marley more than that last week. The weekend before the show, Scooter had K.O and some of his crew in for a sleepover. Usually Scoompi avoided them after destroying them at video games. I was dozing on the couch when I heard her demand an audience with her brother and his friends.
Nosy parenting is good parenting. I made myself an iced tea and listened at the ventilator grill.
“You bums OWE me!”
“Scoompi, we’ll get expelled…”
“They can’t expel who they don’t see…I’ll take the heat…I just need you pantywaists to do the background…”
“Talent shows are dumb anyway…just forget it…”
“It’s me or her, K.O. What about taking a stand? Look,” I heard menace in my voice, “I got enough dirt on everyone in this room…”
“I won’t be able to sit for a week if I get in trouble at school…”
Oh, they must be discussing recess or something. I went back to the sofa and started my nap again.
“Daddy?”
“Yes Hon?”
“Robert Marley. Did he ever really stand up?”
“Once that I know of. Some goons tried to kill him. He survived and performed a concert afterwards, to show they didn’t affect him. He did his song and acted out, in dance, everything that happened, including him triumphing in the end.”
“Hmmm…”
School talent shows are funny things. It amazes me how many parents force their no talent kids to embarrass themselves in front of a room full of people. The parents think the kids have ability, and as a result of its display, they will look like enlightened, hardworking guardians. In reality, they paint themselves as modern day Genghis Khans, ready to sacrifice all for their own aggrandizement. Nero was a better protector fiddling while Rome burned than most elementary school parents who abuse their children by letting, or forcing, them to participate in school talent shows. Reunions talent shows are worse. I have left such events wanting to punch in the mouth parents (mothers, too) who harped over their kids’ ability, or lack thereof, like they had something golden on their hands.
The fun part of talent shows are the kids who know they have no talent, and try to make a go of it before getting yanked by staff. I was cracking up after a sixth grader opened his mouth and bellowed, “Way DOWN in the JUNGLE deep…” and proceeded to deliver half of Dolomite’s famous rhyme before a nun hustled him offstage to raucous laughter.
Scoompi stepped onstage, wearing the fatigue pants, black turtleneck and black beret I agreed to as a consolation for having to recite poetry. She as introduced and took a deep breath. One of the bourgeois moms next to us gasped at her appearance. I balled up my fist.
“Hey, Squirt, you too little to be onstage,” a kid heckled.
Scoompi leaned into the microphone and said, “Shut up. Didn’t you flunk sixth grade twice already? Don’t you have kids at home?”
Parents started tittering. Students laughed.
“You shut up Pipsqueak…”
“When was the last time I pulled your mom off the corner to keep her from getting into all those strange men’s cars? Keep quiet. Let me do my job.”
A murmur went over the crowd. I saw a nun heading towards the stage when Scoompi yelled, “Get HIM! He started it!” Parents began murmuring again, in assent. The students roared in approval. The nun started for the large sixth grader.
Scoompi read the first three lines of her poem before balling the paper up, throwing it down, and stepping on the wadded up mess.
“I didn’t come here to read off a paper,” she started. Some parents clapped. I felt my heart drop to my stomach. “I didn’t come to argue with three time sixth graders whose parents keep buying their way back into the school…” That got some laughter, and not just from kids.
“And I didn’t come hear to read no doggone poem. My name is Scoompi,” she sucked her bottom lip under her teeth, and pointed both thumbs at herself. “And I came to sing.”
Boys all over the gym began hooting. I heard the instrumental to “Get Up, Stand Up” start, and felt a jab in my arm. “You let her watch El Cantante?” my wife hissed.
“That’s the least of our problems here,” I muttered in response.
By the time the nuns made it to the stage, she was already on her second chorus, and had taken to pretending she was standing in time out, writing lines on a blackboard, and then walked around with her little rear poked out, wagging her finger like she was lecturing students. I recognized the walk. Everyone did. As she was pulled off the stage, she threw her beret into the crowd and screamed, “Get up! Stand up! Don’t give up the fight! The big booty’s coming to get me, ya’ll! Keep up the fight!” She poked her rear out again and strutted around the stage, wagging her finger. I noticed Sr. Mary Tamika leading her off the stage,walking the walk my daughter had just mimicked almost perfectly. My wife looked like she wanted to drag Scoompi home by her forehead.
The kids went wild. They were standing on their feet, stomping and whistling. A couple of mothers fainted. The fathers were rolling in the aisles.
I thanked God for the millionth time I had paid a year’s tuition in advance. It is so much harder for your child to get expelled when you do that.
Offstage, I heard my little girl screaming, apparently a nun, “You never were loyal, Puchi!”
I thought there was an unwritten rule the principal’s office was closed on the weekends. Yet there we sat, me, the missus, Scooter and K.O., on that Saturday night, waiting to pick up my baby girl.
The principal, a tall, lanky man who wore wire framed glasses, walked in, holding Scoompi by the hand. She was wearing shades and the principal was singing, “He’s no prince and he’s no pal…” softly. My wife punched me. Scooter and K.O. looked like they wanted to burst.
“Well, I’m sure it’s just been a misunderstanding, Doc,” he said affably. “Why, little Alexandra’s song caused so much excitement that we sold out of concessions! Of course, some corrective consequences are in order, but there’s no reason you can’t take our little revolutionary home tonight and we will talk with her teacher on Monday.”
Scoompi stood stoically. “Ise just a sufferah,” she said simply. Scooter groaned.
“Did you learn anything from this, Alexandra?” The principal must have been high that night. There was no way we saw the same show.
“Yes, sir.”
“And?”
“Before doing anything that might be popular, even for the revolution, get it copyrighted so you can get royalties.The revolution must be marketed, but for now, I jus’ suffah de consequences.”
Scooter and K.O. excused themselves.
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Baseball Mom & Religion
It was Saturday, which meant that Scooter had a baseball game. The misconception is spring has nothing but lazy weekends as the school year winds down. Nothing is further from the truth. My weekends were spend at the ball field, and then in the office. My research on casinos would have to wait, although I was sure part ownership of one would help me devote most of my time to family stuff.
Scooter was pretty quiet this morning. His bronco team was playing the Cubs, a collection of preteen mediocrities of the lowest level save one: their star pitcher was a kid named Arnold. Arnold was six feet even in sixth grade and threw heat like Satan aiming at his former homies left in heaven. This kid could throw. As a result, no one on Scooter’s team could hit him. So they usually lost. Sadly, Arnold was not only a good pitcher, but a decent kid and a good sport. He seemed genuine when, at the post game lineup, he slapped hands with everyone on Scooter’s team and said, “Good game!”
Scooter had been catching since tee ball, and had a good bat, but hitting Arnold was just something he could not manage. No shame in it. The rest of his team couldn’t manage it, either. Made for a pretty sad afternoon, though.
“Look,” I overheard Scoompi say, “Let’s pray on this. All of this religion has got to be good for something. Let’s give it a try.”
Most parents would welcome their little ones taking the initiative when it came to religion.
I know my kids.
“Dear God,” Scoompi started.
“You mean Jesus?” Big brothers know all.
“I mean God. I don’t do middlemen. I go straight to the top. God SENT Jesus. That mean’s God is in charge. This is a God prayer. When we need for Little Timmy Rawlins to get a hit against a team you usually beat, we’ll call on Jesus. If you wanna beat Arnold, you need God…
“Dear God, Scooter and his team should really win this game today. You’ve already blessed Arnold with a for sure major league career, while my brother and his friends are stuck with limited talent that will assure them futures as accountants, eye doctors, or worse, teachers. Let them have this one win, because life for them in baseball is going to end soon and disappointingly enough. Amen.”
“I’m not saying Amen to that!”
I could almost hear her shrug. “Fine. Then lose.”
“Fine. Amen. Next time we pray to Jesus. And tone it down some. You don’t know none of us are going pro…”
“I know none of you can hit Arnold, and he’s gonna stay in the minors a while…”
“What was that crack about teachers? Daddy’s a teacher.”
“First, Daddy is a professor, and second, Daddy thinks he’s a doggone Indian. Teaching must do bad things to you.”
We walked to the park, the three of us. The missus was going to meet us there. I set up the camp chairs and bought Scoompi a snack. She took up her usual spot, in front of the fence, next to Scooter’s dugout. The boys all greeted her, loudest of all K.O, Scooter’s best friend.
“What’s UP, Scoomp!”
“Sup K.O.”
“We gonna lose.”
“Not today. I prayed for ya’ll.”
“Didn’t Sister Mary Tamika kick you out of religion class? Man, don’t pray for me.”
Scoompi ignored K.O. She had a little girl’s crush on him but had long ago mastered the grown woman’s art of ignoring what men think is logic.
The game started. Arnold came out and whipped three up, three down. Scooter’s team held their own, though. We were scoreless in the sixth when K.O struck out, again. Little Timmy Rawlins stepped to the plate. Timmy was Lilliputian, and I guess it clicked in his head that if he didn’t swing, Arnold’s heat would miss his strike zone. Four pitches later, Timmy was on first, grinning.
“C’mon, God,” I heard Scoompi mutter, “I really never ask for much.”
Little Timmy took off like a bullet for second and made it with time to spare before the Cubs’ lousy pitcher got the ball there. “Bout time,” Scoompi muttered, before looking heavenward and saying, “OK, thanks. But let’s not let them down.” She turned to the dugout and screamed, “Cheer him on you bums! None of ya have even SEEN base this game.”
One of the team mothers leaned over and said, “It’s so precious how passionate she is…”
It was something, but I wasn’t sure just what. My wife came over and sat down.
“Cubs? How bad we losing?”
“We’re tied, actually,” I said.
“Oh, goody! How’s my boy doing?”
“Actually, Timmy Rawlins is on…wow!”
Timmy took third. The Cubs’ third baseman was watching the ball fly over his head when the littlest guy on our team stole home, putting us up by one.
The boys in the dugout were cheering like Timmy was David taking down Goliath. Even Arnold waved and smiled from the mound.
Our next batter struck out, but we held them, and when it was over, our guys were grinning like they’d invented fire on a cold November night. Arnold stopped and gave Timmy a hug. Both sets of coaches were speechless.
Over the din, I heard a high pitched, “Yaaaaaaay! God!”
“What on earth could she mean? You have got to speak to her,” my wife said, but she too was happy with the win.
On the way to the car, the missus said, “Since we are so close, maybe we should do Saturday mass.”
Scoompi spoke up first. “Wuffo?”
“Well, aren’t we thankful the boys won?”
“Very. I gave God his props. Back there, where everyone could hear me, Mama.”
Scooter wanted to go to church like Frosty wanted a Bermuda vacation. I wasn’t dying to go either, but I realized Saturday afternoon mass meant sleeping in Sunday morning. Maybe even a nice cholesterol laden breakfast that I was usually forbidden.
“C’mon, Kids, Mommy has spoken,” I laughed. Scooter didn’t care. He was fresh off the win. Scoompi looked betrayed.
Saturday mass is more lighthearted, and goes by quickly. Scoompi refused to sing and flopped when she knelt and sat, but a couple of evil eyes from her mother stopped that. After mass, Scoompi walked right up to the visiting priest who officiated and pulled his stole.
“Hello, Cutie!”
“Do you talk to God Father?”
“We ALL talk to God, Honey. What’s wrong?”
“Well, because he lets you say mass for him, you probably have a quicker line to him than I do. Tell him Saturday mass was a dirty trick. I would have come tomorrow. I cheered him in public.”
“Public acknowledgement of God’s goodness to us is honorable, Dear. He is proud of you.”
That mollified her a bit, but not her anger stricken mother. I thanked the padre for his homily and walked forward, bumping into someone.
“Well, isn’t this delightful?” a deep female voice said.
Sr. Mary Tamika looked like, to many Caucasians, any other chocolate nun in a habit, one who maybe took her vows and orders a few years prior. To me, she looked like Ebony Ayes. I’d seen her once in street clothes, out of her habit but still in her coif and wimple, at the library. Different things make different people turn to religion. I had to beg for forgiveness after speaking and then asking, “Is your real name Phyllis?” She thought me a riot. My wife thought her a bit too friendly to be a woman of God. My logic? You give up so much to be a nun, why not have some laughs and a great attitude? I’d known nuns who were rumored to be drunks when I was in elementary school. A flirt, in my opinion, was a fair exchange.
Especially when you looked like Ebony Ayes.
“H’lo, sister,” I said, smiling. I caught my wife’s daggers in my back.
"Peace be unto you ALL," Sr. Mary Tamika hummed.
"As salaam alaikum," Scoompi spat.
The nun ignored her. “Doctor, Scooter, young lady,” her voice had a rhythm to it, like she was raised in the islands. “Or,” she said playfully, “shall I call you ‘Scoompi’, my dear?”
My baby drew herself up, squinted like Popeye as she looked upwards, and said, “Naw. Just call me by my government.”
I heard Scooter take in a breath. I saw my daughter’s hands fly to her behind as she shifted her glare from Sr. Mary Tamika to her mother, who was poised to strike again.
“What I do?”
My kids and I had an unwritten agreement. Should discipline be required, verbal or physical, I would wait until we were at home, in private. The exchange there was they then had to deal with whatever levels my wrath had swollen to, but it saved them embarrassment. As I got mad at them about once a year (less with the baby), this was a swell agreement.
One their mother did not honor.
“You were disrespectful, and I’ve had enough of it!”
“I just asked the sister to address me by the name YOU make them call me here, Alexandra Whosis…” she rubbed her bottom. Sr. Mary Tamika bit her lip.
“Apologize,” my wife growled.
“Sorry, Sister,” Scoompi said, still glaring at her mother.
“That’s OK, Scoompi,” Sr. Mary Tamika said.
Now, I caught that, but no one else did but my baby girl. She went from glare to glower.
We chatted briefly, the sister said she’d make an appointment for us regarding the Bad Friday nonsense, and she waved before moving on.
As we headed back to the car, my wife grumbled, “You know she didn’t speak to me.”
Innocently, I asked, “Really?”
“No. And she kept making eyes at you.”
“Thought she was looking at the baby.”
“You know what?”
“Honey,” I whispered. “Don’t get mad at me. You wanted to come to Saturday mass. I backed you up. Let’s go home and celebrate Scooter’s win. And next time, could you try to NOT break my child’s behind?”
“Hush. And drive.”
Scoompi glared at her mother’s back all the way home. Scooter was a happy camper. I tried to remember Ebony Ayes films from my college days. Religion is a good thing.
Scooter was pretty quiet this morning. His bronco team was playing the Cubs, a collection of preteen mediocrities of the lowest level save one: their star pitcher was a kid named Arnold. Arnold was six feet even in sixth grade and threw heat like Satan aiming at his former homies left in heaven. This kid could throw. As a result, no one on Scooter’s team could hit him. So they usually lost. Sadly, Arnold was not only a good pitcher, but a decent kid and a good sport. He seemed genuine when, at the post game lineup, he slapped hands with everyone on Scooter’s team and said, “Good game!”
Scooter had been catching since tee ball, and had a good bat, but hitting Arnold was just something he could not manage. No shame in it. The rest of his team couldn’t manage it, either. Made for a pretty sad afternoon, though.
“Look,” I overheard Scoompi say, “Let’s pray on this. All of this religion has got to be good for something. Let’s give it a try.”
Most parents would welcome their little ones taking the initiative when it came to religion.
I know my kids.
“Dear God,” Scoompi started.
“You mean Jesus?” Big brothers know all.
“I mean God. I don’t do middlemen. I go straight to the top. God SENT Jesus. That mean’s God is in charge. This is a God prayer. When we need for Little Timmy Rawlins to get a hit against a team you usually beat, we’ll call on Jesus. If you wanna beat Arnold, you need God…
“Dear God, Scooter and his team should really win this game today. You’ve already blessed Arnold with a for sure major league career, while my brother and his friends are stuck with limited talent that will assure them futures as accountants, eye doctors, or worse, teachers. Let them have this one win, because life for them in baseball is going to end soon and disappointingly enough. Amen.”
“I’m not saying Amen to that!”
I could almost hear her shrug. “Fine. Then lose.”
“Fine. Amen. Next time we pray to Jesus. And tone it down some. You don’t know none of us are going pro…”
“I know none of you can hit Arnold, and he’s gonna stay in the minors a while…”
“What was that crack about teachers? Daddy’s a teacher.”
“First, Daddy is a professor, and second, Daddy thinks he’s a doggone Indian. Teaching must do bad things to you.”
We walked to the park, the three of us. The missus was going to meet us there. I set up the camp chairs and bought Scoompi a snack. She took up her usual spot, in front of the fence, next to Scooter’s dugout. The boys all greeted her, loudest of all K.O, Scooter’s best friend.
“What’s UP, Scoomp!”
“Sup K.O.”
“We gonna lose.”
“Not today. I prayed for ya’ll.”
“Didn’t Sister Mary Tamika kick you out of religion class? Man, don’t pray for me.”
Scoompi ignored K.O. She had a little girl’s crush on him but had long ago mastered the grown woman’s art of ignoring what men think is logic.
The game started. Arnold came out and whipped three up, three down. Scooter’s team held their own, though. We were scoreless in the sixth when K.O struck out, again. Little Timmy Rawlins stepped to the plate. Timmy was Lilliputian, and I guess it clicked in his head that if he didn’t swing, Arnold’s heat would miss his strike zone. Four pitches later, Timmy was on first, grinning.
“C’mon, God,” I heard Scoompi mutter, “I really never ask for much.”
Little Timmy took off like a bullet for second and made it with time to spare before the Cubs’ lousy pitcher got the ball there. “Bout time,” Scoompi muttered, before looking heavenward and saying, “OK, thanks. But let’s not let them down.” She turned to the dugout and screamed, “Cheer him on you bums! None of ya have even SEEN base this game.”
One of the team mothers leaned over and said, “It’s so precious how passionate she is…”
It was something, but I wasn’t sure just what. My wife came over and sat down.
“Cubs? How bad we losing?”
“We’re tied, actually,” I said.
“Oh, goody! How’s my boy doing?”
“Actually, Timmy Rawlins is on…wow!”
Timmy took third. The Cubs’ third baseman was watching the ball fly over his head when the littlest guy on our team stole home, putting us up by one.
The boys in the dugout were cheering like Timmy was David taking down Goliath. Even Arnold waved and smiled from the mound.
Our next batter struck out, but we held them, and when it was over, our guys were grinning like they’d invented fire on a cold November night. Arnold stopped and gave Timmy a hug. Both sets of coaches were speechless.
Over the din, I heard a high pitched, “Yaaaaaaay! God!”
“What on earth could she mean? You have got to speak to her,” my wife said, but she too was happy with the win.
On the way to the car, the missus said, “Since we are so close, maybe we should do Saturday mass.”
Scoompi spoke up first. “Wuffo?”
“Well, aren’t we thankful the boys won?”
“Very. I gave God his props. Back there, where everyone could hear me, Mama.”
Scooter wanted to go to church like Frosty wanted a Bermuda vacation. I wasn’t dying to go either, but I realized Saturday afternoon mass meant sleeping in Sunday morning. Maybe even a nice cholesterol laden breakfast that I was usually forbidden.
“C’mon, Kids, Mommy has spoken,” I laughed. Scooter didn’t care. He was fresh off the win. Scoompi looked betrayed.
Saturday mass is more lighthearted, and goes by quickly. Scoompi refused to sing and flopped when she knelt and sat, but a couple of evil eyes from her mother stopped that. After mass, Scoompi walked right up to the visiting priest who officiated and pulled his stole.
“Hello, Cutie!”
“Do you talk to God Father?”
“We ALL talk to God, Honey. What’s wrong?”
“Well, because he lets you say mass for him, you probably have a quicker line to him than I do. Tell him Saturday mass was a dirty trick. I would have come tomorrow. I cheered him in public.”
“Public acknowledgement of God’s goodness to us is honorable, Dear. He is proud of you.”
That mollified her a bit, but not her anger stricken mother. I thanked the padre for his homily and walked forward, bumping into someone.
“Well, isn’t this delightful?” a deep female voice said.
Sr. Mary Tamika looked like, to many Caucasians, any other chocolate nun in a habit, one who maybe took her vows and orders a few years prior. To me, she looked like Ebony Ayes. I’d seen her once in street clothes, out of her habit but still in her coif and wimple, at the library. Different things make different people turn to religion. I had to beg for forgiveness after speaking and then asking, “Is your real name Phyllis?” She thought me a riot. My wife thought her a bit too friendly to be a woman of God. My logic? You give up so much to be a nun, why not have some laughs and a great attitude? I’d known nuns who were rumored to be drunks when I was in elementary school. A flirt, in my opinion, was a fair exchange.
Especially when you looked like Ebony Ayes.
“H’lo, sister,” I said, smiling. I caught my wife’s daggers in my back.
"Peace be unto you ALL," Sr. Mary Tamika hummed.
"As salaam alaikum," Scoompi spat.
The nun ignored her. “Doctor, Scooter, young lady,” her voice had a rhythm to it, like she was raised in the islands. “Or,” she said playfully, “shall I call you ‘Scoompi’, my dear?”
My baby drew herself up, squinted like Popeye as she looked upwards, and said, “Naw. Just call me by my government.”
I heard Scooter take in a breath. I saw my daughter’s hands fly to her behind as she shifted her glare from Sr. Mary Tamika to her mother, who was poised to strike again.
“What I do?”
My kids and I had an unwritten agreement. Should discipline be required, verbal or physical, I would wait until we were at home, in private. The exchange there was they then had to deal with whatever levels my wrath had swollen to, but it saved them embarrassment. As I got mad at them about once a year (less with the baby), this was a swell agreement.
One their mother did not honor.
“You were disrespectful, and I’ve had enough of it!”
“I just asked the sister to address me by the name YOU make them call me here, Alexandra Whosis…” she rubbed her bottom. Sr. Mary Tamika bit her lip.
“Apologize,” my wife growled.
“Sorry, Sister,” Scoompi said, still glaring at her mother.
“That’s OK, Scoompi,” Sr. Mary Tamika said.
Now, I caught that, but no one else did but my baby girl. She went from glare to glower.
We chatted briefly, the sister said she’d make an appointment for us regarding the Bad Friday nonsense, and she waved before moving on.
As we headed back to the car, my wife grumbled, “You know she didn’t speak to me.”
Innocently, I asked, “Really?”
“No. And she kept making eyes at you.”
“Thought she was looking at the baby.”
“You know what?”
“Honey,” I whispered. “Don’t get mad at me. You wanted to come to Saturday mass. I backed you up. Let’s go home and celebrate Scooter’s win. And next time, could you try to NOT break my child’s behind?”
“Hush. And drive.”
Scoompi glared at her mother’s back all the way home. Scooter was a happy camper. I tried to remember Ebony Ayes films from my college days. Religion is a good thing.
Monday, July 25, 2011
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN KIDS DON’T LISTEN PART II
I was listening to Wynton’s “Live at Blues Alley” when the kids came home from school. One trudged in, one bounced. My daughter trudged. I looked at her little unhappy face and scooped her in my arms.
“What’s doin’, Pumpkin?””
She twisted in my arms and tried to get down.
“OK, Ok,” I said, “you can get down once I get some sugar. What’s wrong?”
“Today, at school,” she huffed, “my teacher read the story of Gepper, the Friendly Goose. Daddy, why did you kill Gepper’s family?”
Wow.
“Then,” she continued, not giving me a chance to answer, “she went on to explain how it was wrong for people to own powerful weapons that only the army should have, and how all animals are now victims because some people just won’t let them be.”
I did a slow burn.
“Well,” my oldest grinned, “I had some sixth graders…lookit, Daddy…SIXTH graders, offer to buy my lunch. You know why? I was out of respect.”
My son had been present when I was awarded my PhD. There was no such look of pride on his face then. Now, however, I was Bruno the Fowl Slayer and I was a dad worthy of some accolades.
“Your teacher, Baby,” I said to my little girl, “is a godless communist liar and spy. She has no right to tell people what they can or cannot have, and furthermore, I take issue with her provoking you like that.”
I figured such a show of loyalty would send her smile into the stratosphere. The long wail I got in return only got louder as she ran from my lap and headed upstairs to her room.
“So, uh, Daddy?”
“Yeah Man?”
“Why didn’t you tell us you were a gangster? I mean, that is way cooler than being a stupid college teacher. Man. Do you know Al Capone?”
“He’s dead.”
“Tony Montana?”
“He is a figment of someone’s imagination, and you shouldn’t know who he is, either.”
“Can you have people bumped off? My history teacher has gotten a bit lippy lately…”
“Go to your room until supper time,” I said wearily.
He smiled and winked. “I get it. Plausible deniability. Yeah, I won’t be around while you make the call. Remember, Daddy…Paulie HATED conferences. Say what you gotta say in person, man to man. I’ll let my people know Mr. Schrieb will learn to change his tune in the near future.” He bounded upstairs.
I went to the kitchen and examined my choices. I had part of a roast left that I had cooked in the crock pot the day before. I also had some chicken that was thawed out. Chicken was a bird. Too close to goose. That was out. I began slicing the cold beef in then planks, layered them in a skillet, and drenched them in barbecue sauce, and turned the heat on low. My daughter liked asparagus, so I put some on to steam and whipped up some instant cornbread. I flipped on our local news access station to see what was new in the community.
“Reputed mobster…” I looked up and saw another photo of me, this one in a suit prior to last year’s commencement. “…yet to be seriously questioned by authorities, perhaps an indication of just how deep his ties run to local government. As you know, the alleged don was recently accused of massacring an entire flock of geese while demonstrating the capability of his surface to surface missile launcher, possibly for other mob chieftains…”
I reeled and had to sit down. What the hell?
I had neighbors that I knew were members f organized crime. They owned small businesses, coached local sports teams for kids, and generally were nice people, but you knew their houses weren’t paid for by the profits from struggling fencing companies or auto garages. My neighbor Rollo changed my oil for ten bucks a pop but lived in a house twice as big as mine and had all five of his kids in expensive schools. Another neighbor coached my son’s baseball team. He was a hell of a coach, and he played poker with me and Joe, the police chief, on a regular. Jose Gonzales two blocks over hosted a back to school picnic for kids, but he didn’t earn that fleet of Cadillacs in his circular driveway cutting grass.
Do you know how I knew my neighbors were mobsters? Because there was next to no petty crime in our area, and drug dealing was nonexistent. Kids, and adults for that matter, acted like they had some sense in our neighborhood, because real criminals want to live in peace. They will make their money doing dirt but they wanted to live like the other half. We had a good community, in part because we had our share of racketeers living in it. Every good community needs some mob chieftains just to keep things civil.
I was an underpaid college professor and wannabe writer, and somehow Michael Corleone was meeting with me to discuss weaponry.
I clicked off the television before calling the kids down to dinner. I made the boy set the table, and my babygirl poured the drinks.
“Soda?”
“Juice.”
“Why not milk?”
“We’re having beef. It’s bad to mix the two.”
“Daddy?”
“Yes, baby?”
“Are you a bad man?”
“No, Baby. What do you think?”
She hugged my leg.
“No, but I think it was bad for you to kill Gepper.”
This was my chance to get back at her no good pinko teacher.
“I didn’t kill Gepper, baby. I killed his evil cousins, Goon and Goomper. Remember they were chasing you?”
She thought about that, then said, “Yeah…they were gonna bite us!”
“Daddy saved your life, baby,” I said gravely. “Geese are the cobras of the bird world…”
Dinner went better than planned.
I was sitting on the deck later on when Rollo walked up, two cold beers in hand. I waved him inside the deck and took a cold one.
Rollo covered his mouth.
“I heard you got them thangs.”
“Huh?”
He took a long pull on his brew.
“I heard…just heard…you got them thangs…I might know someone innerested if you wanna connect.”
“Rollo?”
“Yeah?”
“This about what was in the paper?”
He shrugged.
“Rollo?”
“Yeah?”
“Anybody ever print false stuff about you?”
He shook his head and sneered. “Fools said I run an ice cream shop. Ice cream? Like I’m some kinda fluff piece. Ice cream, Doc. What the hell? I’ma damned mechanic. I can change oil and e’rythang…So they lied on you, too?”
“Remember my Daddy’s .45?”
“Yeah.”
“Geese were chasing the kids. I stopped them.”
Rollo shook his head.
“Hey guys,” we saw John amble up.
Short, wide, in an ever present baseball cap and clutching three beers, my son’s baseball coach climbed onto the deck and grabbed a chaise, giving each of us a beer.
“Doc, you gotta tell these assholes to lay off. You talked to Joe?”
“He said let it blow over.”
John nodded his head sagely. “That’s wise. All of this shit over some damn birds? I mean, they’re letting them teach our kids about sex in schools, talking about gay marriage and whatnot, and they bother a damn decent guy, a teacher no less, over this? Hey, what’d you do with the flock?”
“Hmm?”
“After you waxed ‘em. If you still got the carcasses, I gotta guy that can dress ‘em out for us. Be some damn good barbecue.”
“Wasn’t a flock. It was two.”
“Your pop’s old service piece?”
“Yep.”
“Din’t leave much bird.”
I took a long swallow.
“OK, Doc, you can’t let this shit get to ya. We know you. We been neighbors for years. We’ll vouch for you.”
There were two things on my mind that I dared not to say: One, these guys vouching for me would be like using gasoline to put out a fire. And two, me getting all of this heat let them fly under the radar.
“Hola, Amigos,” we heard from the bushes. Jose Gonzales stepped into the dim light, six pack in hand.
“Hey man,” we chorused.
“You gotta get this straight,” Jose advised, handing out the beers. “This is bad for the neighborhood. I mean, it looks like we got a hooligan living in our midst…”
The other three nodded their heads sadly.
“…and we can’t have that. This is an upstanding community, and we don’t want no criminal element living here. Think of the example this sets for our kids. I don’t want my kids thinking we live in a neighborhood full of hooligans.”
I almost choked on my beer. Rumor was Jose fed his competitors through his wood chipper, and people only whispered about John, and even then, not too loudly.
We finished our beer and discussed the baseball team’s chances of making the playoffs that season. John’s fencing company always sponsored us for uniforms, etc., and John had a farm about a mile from his house where he had a diamond all carved out for the boys to practice. At one point, we heard geese honking, and Rollo sat up sharply.
“You shoulda whacked all a dem out,” John said.
They got up to leave.
“Say,” said John, “what caused alla this anyway?”
“Kids wouldn’t listen,” I said, clearing away the bottles. “Told ‘em to leave the geese alone. Geese chased them.”
“Geez,” said Jose. “They never lissen. Lookit all the trouble they cause.”
“It’s OK, Doc,” said John, extending his hand. “If nobody else believes it, we know you ain’t no mob boss.”
How comforting.
“What’s doin’, Pumpkin?””
She twisted in my arms and tried to get down.
“OK, Ok,” I said, “you can get down once I get some sugar. What’s wrong?”
“Today, at school,” she huffed, “my teacher read the story of Gepper, the Friendly Goose. Daddy, why did you kill Gepper’s family?”
Wow.
“Then,” she continued, not giving me a chance to answer, “she went on to explain how it was wrong for people to own powerful weapons that only the army should have, and how all animals are now victims because some people just won’t let them be.”
I did a slow burn.
“Well,” my oldest grinned, “I had some sixth graders…lookit, Daddy…SIXTH graders, offer to buy my lunch. You know why? I was out of respect.”
My son had been present when I was awarded my PhD. There was no such look of pride on his face then. Now, however, I was Bruno the Fowl Slayer and I was a dad worthy of some accolades.
“Your teacher, Baby,” I said to my little girl, “is a godless communist liar and spy. She has no right to tell people what they can or cannot have, and furthermore, I take issue with her provoking you like that.”
I figured such a show of loyalty would send her smile into the stratosphere. The long wail I got in return only got louder as she ran from my lap and headed upstairs to her room.
“So, uh, Daddy?”
“Yeah Man?”
“Why didn’t you tell us you were a gangster? I mean, that is way cooler than being a stupid college teacher. Man. Do you know Al Capone?”
“He’s dead.”
“Tony Montana?”
“He is a figment of someone’s imagination, and you shouldn’t know who he is, either.”
“Can you have people bumped off? My history teacher has gotten a bit lippy lately…”
“Go to your room until supper time,” I said wearily.
He smiled and winked. “I get it. Plausible deniability. Yeah, I won’t be around while you make the call. Remember, Daddy…Paulie HATED conferences. Say what you gotta say in person, man to man. I’ll let my people know Mr. Schrieb will learn to change his tune in the near future.” He bounded upstairs.
I went to the kitchen and examined my choices. I had part of a roast left that I had cooked in the crock pot the day before. I also had some chicken that was thawed out. Chicken was a bird. Too close to goose. That was out. I began slicing the cold beef in then planks, layered them in a skillet, and drenched them in barbecue sauce, and turned the heat on low. My daughter liked asparagus, so I put some on to steam and whipped up some instant cornbread. I flipped on our local news access station to see what was new in the community.
“Reputed mobster…” I looked up and saw another photo of me, this one in a suit prior to last year’s commencement. “…yet to be seriously questioned by authorities, perhaps an indication of just how deep his ties run to local government. As you know, the alleged don was recently accused of massacring an entire flock of geese while demonstrating the capability of his surface to surface missile launcher, possibly for other mob chieftains…”
I reeled and had to sit down. What the hell?
I had neighbors that I knew were members f organized crime. They owned small businesses, coached local sports teams for kids, and generally were nice people, but you knew their houses weren’t paid for by the profits from struggling fencing companies or auto garages. My neighbor Rollo changed my oil for ten bucks a pop but lived in a house twice as big as mine and had all five of his kids in expensive schools. Another neighbor coached my son’s baseball team. He was a hell of a coach, and he played poker with me and Joe, the police chief, on a regular. Jose Gonzales two blocks over hosted a back to school picnic for kids, but he didn’t earn that fleet of Cadillacs in his circular driveway cutting grass.
Do you know how I knew my neighbors were mobsters? Because there was next to no petty crime in our area, and drug dealing was nonexistent. Kids, and adults for that matter, acted like they had some sense in our neighborhood, because real criminals want to live in peace. They will make their money doing dirt but they wanted to live like the other half. We had a good community, in part because we had our share of racketeers living in it. Every good community needs some mob chieftains just to keep things civil.
I was an underpaid college professor and wannabe writer, and somehow Michael Corleone was meeting with me to discuss weaponry.
I clicked off the television before calling the kids down to dinner. I made the boy set the table, and my babygirl poured the drinks.
“Soda?”
“Juice.”
“Why not milk?”
“We’re having beef. It’s bad to mix the two.”
“Daddy?”
“Yes, baby?”
“Are you a bad man?”
“No, Baby. What do you think?”
She hugged my leg.
“No, but I think it was bad for you to kill Gepper.”
This was my chance to get back at her no good pinko teacher.
“I didn’t kill Gepper, baby. I killed his evil cousins, Goon and Goomper. Remember they were chasing you?”
She thought about that, then said, “Yeah…they were gonna bite us!”
“Daddy saved your life, baby,” I said gravely. “Geese are the cobras of the bird world…”
Dinner went better than planned.
I was sitting on the deck later on when Rollo walked up, two cold beers in hand. I waved him inside the deck and took a cold one.
Rollo covered his mouth.
“I heard you got them thangs.”
“Huh?”
He took a long pull on his brew.
“I heard…just heard…you got them thangs…I might know someone innerested if you wanna connect.”
“Rollo?”
“Yeah?”
“This about what was in the paper?”
He shrugged.
“Rollo?”
“Yeah?”
“Anybody ever print false stuff about you?”
He shook his head and sneered. “Fools said I run an ice cream shop. Ice cream? Like I’m some kinda fluff piece. Ice cream, Doc. What the hell? I’ma damned mechanic. I can change oil and e’rythang…So they lied on you, too?”
“Remember my Daddy’s .45?”
“Yeah.”
“Geese were chasing the kids. I stopped them.”
Rollo shook his head.
“Hey guys,” we saw John amble up.
Short, wide, in an ever present baseball cap and clutching three beers, my son’s baseball coach climbed onto the deck and grabbed a chaise, giving each of us a beer.
“Doc, you gotta tell these assholes to lay off. You talked to Joe?”
“He said let it blow over.”
John nodded his head sagely. “That’s wise. All of this shit over some damn birds? I mean, they’re letting them teach our kids about sex in schools, talking about gay marriage and whatnot, and they bother a damn decent guy, a teacher no less, over this? Hey, what’d you do with the flock?”
“Hmm?”
“After you waxed ‘em. If you still got the carcasses, I gotta guy that can dress ‘em out for us. Be some damn good barbecue.”
“Wasn’t a flock. It was two.”
“Your pop’s old service piece?”
“Yep.”
“Din’t leave much bird.”
I took a long swallow.
“OK, Doc, you can’t let this shit get to ya. We know you. We been neighbors for years. We’ll vouch for you.”
There were two things on my mind that I dared not to say: One, these guys vouching for me would be like using gasoline to put out a fire. And two, me getting all of this heat let them fly under the radar.
“Hola, Amigos,” we heard from the bushes. Jose Gonzales stepped into the dim light, six pack in hand.
“Hey man,” we chorused.
“You gotta get this straight,” Jose advised, handing out the beers. “This is bad for the neighborhood. I mean, it looks like we got a hooligan living in our midst…”
The other three nodded their heads sadly.
“…and we can’t have that. This is an upstanding community, and we don’t want no criminal element living here. Think of the example this sets for our kids. I don’t want my kids thinking we live in a neighborhood full of hooligans.”
I almost choked on my beer. Rumor was Jose fed his competitors through his wood chipper, and people only whispered about John, and even then, not too loudly.
We finished our beer and discussed the baseball team’s chances of making the playoffs that season. John’s fencing company always sponsored us for uniforms, etc., and John had a farm about a mile from his house where he had a diamond all carved out for the boys to practice. At one point, we heard geese honking, and Rollo sat up sharply.
“You shoulda whacked all a dem out,” John said.
They got up to leave.
“Say,” said John, “what caused alla this anyway?”
“Kids wouldn’t listen,” I said, clearing away the bottles. “Told ‘em to leave the geese alone. Geese chased them.”
“Geez,” said Jose. “They never lissen. Lookit all the trouble they cause.”
“It’s OK, Doc,” said John, extending his hand. “If nobody else believes it, we know you ain’t no mob boss.”
How comforting.
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
What Happens When Kids Don't Listen Pt. 1
As a rule, children do not listen.
Generally, more butt warmings have occurred when children have not listened than when they have tortured small animals, stolen cars or attempted to immolate themselves. Adults, you see, are not devoid of emotion. The aft mentioned misdemeanors imply something is wrong with a child, and that wrong requires more help than a parent alone can offer.
Unless one is born deaf, however, every child with two ears affixed to its head can hear and comprehend. The fact that they do so selectively drives parents, even the best of us, to temporarily lose control and bear no responsibility for our actions.
Usually, children listen to men more than women. As a rule, men are more violent, and as they have never carried another living being in their bodies (save parasites), men are fuzzy when it comes to the idea that striking that which annoys you is a bad idea if it is your own. Just the opposite. Striking that which annoys you, for me, is the safest release possible, provided it is your own. No self respecting man kicks a dog. No self respecting man owns a dog that would shy from retaliation if kicked. Children, on the other hand, are fair game. If they do not listen.
Most adult headaches are derived from children who do not listen.
“Do not go near those geese,” I answered my children when they requested to go outside and play. I live in a suburban area that is really a lot of undeveloped farmland left over by bankrupt developers. Suburbs have hubs of retail and business activity. I have grass, lots of it, and the kind of animals that keep vermin in check through natural, predatory selection. I live not in a suburb but in moderately civilized woods, dotted by libraries, restaurants, and fields like the one across the street from my house.
“So, we can go?” my son asked.
“Leave those geese alone,” I repeated, then went back to my drink and tattered copy of Pudd’nhead Wilson.
They said “Okay” and left, to join their friends. I went back to reading.
In America, a man, or a woman, can do what they please in their own home, and have little explaining or justifying to do. When you leave your home, however, everyone else takes your affair to be their affair.
So a man like me can sit back, have a cocktail, smoke a cigar and relax in an old pair of suit pants and a t-shirt. Reading Twain and every now and then remembering he has to clean the old M1911 left he inherited. Nobody cares. Outside of the home? Alcohol, firearms and tobacco combined make for a federal law enforcement agency. Regardless of what you are reading.
I was almost done with Puddn’head when I heard kids screaming. You have kids, you hear screams. They are all loud, but they differ. Some screams are screams of excitement. Some are “Please let the neighbors hear how loud you’re whooping me so you stop.”
Some are screams of terror.
Fathers really have one job: protection. That whole providing thing falls under protection. You go out and get a job so your wife doesn’t have to enter the sex industry and your kids aren’t hired out to assemble sneakers just to eat. Society usually looks the other way if a father has to do something incredible stupid if it can legitimately be filed under “protecting my family.” Usually.
I heard the screams again. I looked through my sliding door and saw my daughter running pell mell towards the house, followed by her older brother and friends, who were stopping and throwing things.
I groaned, hauled myself out of my chair and started out the door. Usually a big man in a t-shirt is enough to scare neighborhood teens.
I grabbed the Colt just because it was there.
“What the hell?” I bellowed as I strode outside, barefoot, crunching over asphalt and onto the grass. The kids kept running. I was glowering.
“What’s with all of this noise? Can’t you see I’m trying to…”
What? Drink? Can’t say that one, I thought.
My daughter ran into me, bounced off and pointed.
Then I heard the honking.
About seven birds were racing across the field, basically in pursuit of the kids.
Great. Geese are mean. They are also protective. These kids probably just got too close to their babies…natural instinct.
Logic, however, does not prevail when my children are being threatened. If the goose daddy’s way of protecting his young is to attack mine, well, life isn’t fair.
“Get down!” I hollered.
A shot in the air? That’s good sense. Geese are mean but they have a bad history with armed humans. Geese are edible, and they know it.
The kids didn’t listen. They ran for me, and the geese changed tracks, honking, flapping and defecating all the while.
Something I heard in a sermon once came back to me. Geese are really supportive of each other, but the guy in the front? He’s the lead.
The kids ran past me. So much for loyalty. I reached in my pocket, unlatched the safety, pulled back the slide and took aim.
The leader became a puff of feathers. I took aim again, hollering for the kids to get in the house, and watched the big shell turn another goose into so much protoplasm.
Geese are tough. Geese have loyalty. Geese, like everything else, fear disintegration.
“Daddy! Stop it! You’re killing them!” She was beating her little hands across my thigh.
I made sure the other geese had scattered, ejected the magazine, grabbed her by her waist and ran into the house.
The other kids were seated in my living room, looking out the window. The little girls looked at me in horror. My son’s friends looked on in envy.
I went upstairs and locked the big, flat pistol back in its case. Maybe it didn’t need much cleaning after all.
When I got downstairs, two of my daughter’s friends were crying. The boys were trying to get back outside to see what, if anything, remained of their would be attackers.
“Didn’t I tell you all not to bother those geese?”
“You did?”
“I did. Right before you went outside.”
There was a knock at the door. There were flashing lights outside.
I knew the cop at the door. He was one of my night students.
“Hey, Doc, we got word of some shots in the area? Could be kids setting off fireworks…”
“No, it was me,” I said.
“Um…”
“Kids were in the field. Got chased by geese. Birds wouldn’t let up and came close to getting them. I fired to keep the kids from being attacked.”
He nodded. “They’re meaner than ever this time of year. Them and the raccoons. Nasty bites. Um, can I come in?”
I gestured inside. He left his cruiser idling in my driveway.
“Hold up a minute,” I said. I went upstairs, grabbed the gun case and my registration permit.
“Weapon in question,” I said, handing him the case. He opened it and whistled softly.
“Not gonna leave much goose, izzit?”
“Don’t know. Trying to get the kids in the house. I told them to leave the geese alone. Figure they stumbled on a nest and poked at the babies.”
He closed the case, made some notes from my permit, and gave them both back to me.
“There’s no crime here,” he said. “I’d clean that piece, though.”
“I will. Thanks for stopping by.”
“Animal control will get the body, but you know what? Local animals will get to it first. I’d leave the kids in for a day or two, or at least out of the field, or they may run across something not as slow as a goose and twice as hungry.”
“Thanks again.”
He left. I walked outside and waved as he got in his car.
The kids drifted home, one by one, and I made supper. We ate, watched TV, and otherwise had an uneventful night.
When I stepped out to get my paper in the morning, all was quiet. I made coffee and scanned the headlines.
“Local Thug Murders Innocent Wildlife”.
There was a picture of me waving. Looking like a Black Tony Soprano in my t-shirt and old dress pants. Who took that damn picture?
“A local man bent on changing our ecology murdered two geese in cold blood yesterday, police reports show. This man,” well, they spelled my name right, I grimaced, “fired on innocent geese yesterday afternoon. The birds were nesting in the field across from his home when he went on a rampage, killing two of the animals with an assault rifle. Animal activists have complained to the county, which owns the field where the geese both lived and were assassinated, to press charges. Gun control advocates are pushing for a ban on the Teflon coated “Chainsaw” ammunition experts claimed the man used on the innocent, unsuspecting fowl. The shells reportedly decapitated the birds and incinerated them whole in a matter of seconds. Area police have investigated and made it clear the use of assault rifles on unarmed birds is unsporting...”
This is what happens when kids do not listen.
I called the police station and asked for the chief, a neighbor. Where had he been last night? Probably sitting in his favorite chair enjoying a drink and reading. His kids probably listened.
“Hey Doc, you’re famous!”
“Joe? What the hell? Very little in that article is factual.”
“Oh, Doc, it’s a newspaper. They never get it right, first go round.”
“Joe? I don’t own a freaking assault rifle.”
“Shoot, I read the report Matthews took. Old .45 automatic. Two shells spent. Hell that “chainsaw” ammunition don’t even exist, in real life. Trust me, if it did, we’d have some here. Bet your shell didn’t leave much bird, though.”
“Am I going to be arrested?”
“For what? Some animals attacked your kids. You put a stop to it. Your weapon is registered and licensed. You were doing your job. Take it in stride.”
“This paints me to be some type of…organized crime figure with a yen for killing animals.”
“I wouldn’t worry about it, Doc. This’ll all blow over in a day or so. The papers do this whenever there is a slow news day. They’ll print a retraction somewhere over the next month, in back by the classifieds for Oriental massages. We’ll all have a good laugh. ‘Local Professor is Not a Thug’. Priceless!”
I sighed.
“A word of advice, Doc? Whatever you do? Don’t push it. This is like a bug bite. Ignore it, it goes away. Push it, it gets ugly.”
Generally, more butt warmings have occurred when children have not listened than when they have tortured small animals, stolen cars or attempted to immolate themselves. Adults, you see, are not devoid of emotion. The aft mentioned misdemeanors imply something is wrong with a child, and that wrong requires more help than a parent alone can offer.
Unless one is born deaf, however, every child with two ears affixed to its head can hear and comprehend. The fact that they do so selectively drives parents, even the best of us, to temporarily lose control and bear no responsibility for our actions.
Usually, children listen to men more than women. As a rule, men are more violent, and as they have never carried another living being in their bodies (save parasites), men are fuzzy when it comes to the idea that striking that which annoys you is a bad idea if it is your own. Just the opposite. Striking that which annoys you, for me, is the safest release possible, provided it is your own. No self respecting man kicks a dog. No self respecting man owns a dog that would shy from retaliation if kicked. Children, on the other hand, are fair game. If they do not listen.
Most adult headaches are derived from children who do not listen.
“Do not go near those geese,” I answered my children when they requested to go outside and play. I live in a suburban area that is really a lot of undeveloped farmland left over by bankrupt developers. Suburbs have hubs of retail and business activity. I have grass, lots of it, and the kind of animals that keep vermin in check through natural, predatory selection. I live not in a suburb but in moderately civilized woods, dotted by libraries, restaurants, and fields like the one across the street from my house.
“So, we can go?” my son asked.
“Leave those geese alone,” I repeated, then went back to my drink and tattered copy of Pudd’nhead Wilson.
They said “Okay” and left, to join their friends. I went back to reading.
In America, a man, or a woman, can do what they please in their own home, and have little explaining or justifying to do. When you leave your home, however, everyone else takes your affair to be their affair.
So a man like me can sit back, have a cocktail, smoke a cigar and relax in an old pair of suit pants and a t-shirt. Reading Twain and every now and then remembering he has to clean the old M1911 left he inherited. Nobody cares. Outside of the home? Alcohol, firearms and tobacco combined make for a federal law enforcement agency. Regardless of what you are reading.
I was almost done with Puddn’head when I heard kids screaming. You have kids, you hear screams. They are all loud, but they differ. Some screams are screams of excitement. Some are “Please let the neighbors hear how loud you’re whooping me so you stop.”
Some are screams of terror.
Fathers really have one job: protection. That whole providing thing falls under protection. You go out and get a job so your wife doesn’t have to enter the sex industry and your kids aren’t hired out to assemble sneakers just to eat. Society usually looks the other way if a father has to do something incredible stupid if it can legitimately be filed under “protecting my family.” Usually.
I heard the screams again. I looked through my sliding door and saw my daughter running pell mell towards the house, followed by her older brother and friends, who were stopping and throwing things.
I groaned, hauled myself out of my chair and started out the door. Usually a big man in a t-shirt is enough to scare neighborhood teens.
I grabbed the Colt just because it was there.
“What the hell?” I bellowed as I strode outside, barefoot, crunching over asphalt and onto the grass. The kids kept running. I was glowering.
“What’s with all of this noise? Can’t you see I’m trying to…”
What? Drink? Can’t say that one, I thought.
My daughter ran into me, bounced off and pointed.
Then I heard the honking.
About seven birds were racing across the field, basically in pursuit of the kids.
Great. Geese are mean. They are also protective. These kids probably just got too close to their babies…natural instinct.
Logic, however, does not prevail when my children are being threatened. If the goose daddy’s way of protecting his young is to attack mine, well, life isn’t fair.
“Get down!” I hollered.
A shot in the air? That’s good sense. Geese are mean but they have a bad history with armed humans. Geese are edible, and they know it.
The kids didn’t listen. They ran for me, and the geese changed tracks, honking, flapping and defecating all the while.
Something I heard in a sermon once came back to me. Geese are really supportive of each other, but the guy in the front? He’s the lead.
The kids ran past me. So much for loyalty. I reached in my pocket, unlatched the safety, pulled back the slide and took aim.
The leader became a puff of feathers. I took aim again, hollering for the kids to get in the house, and watched the big shell turn another goose into so much protoplasm.
Geese are tough. Geese have loyalty. Geese, like everything else, fear disintegration.
“Daddy! Stop it! You’re killing them!” She was beating her little hands across my thigh.
I made sure the other geese had scattered, ejected the magazine, grabbed her by her waist and ran into the house.
The other kids were seated in my living room, looking out the window. The little girls looked at me in horror. My son’s friends looked on in envy.
I went upstairs and locked the big, flat pistol back in its case. Maybe it didn’t need much cleaning after all.
When I got downstairs, two of my daughter’s friends were crying. The boys were trying to get back outside to see what, if anything, remained of their would be attackers.
“Didn’t I tell you all not to bother those geese?”
“You did?”
“I did. Right before you went outside.”
There was a knock at the door. There were flashing lights outside.
I knew the cop at the door. He was one of my night students.
“Hey, Doc, we got word of some shots in the area? Could be kids setting off fireworks…”
“No, it was me,” I said.
“Um…”
“Kids were in the field. Got chased by geese. Birds wouldn’t let up and came close to getting them. I fired to keep the kids from being attacked.”
He nodded. “They’re meaner than ever this time of year. Them and the raccoons. Nasty bites. Um, can I come in?”
I gestured inside. He left his cruiser idling in my driveway.
“Hold up a minute,” I said. I went upstairs, grabbed the gun case and my registration permit.
“Weapon in question,” I said, handing him the case. He opened it and whistled softly.
“Not gonna leave much goose, izzit?”
“Don’t know. Trying to get the kids in the house. I told them to leave the geese alone. Figure they stumbled on a nest and poked at the babies.”
He closed the case, made some notes from my permit, and gave them both back to me.
“There’s no crime here,” he said. “I’d clean that piece, though.”
“I will. Thanks for stopping by.”
“Animal control will get the body, but you know what? Local animals will get to it first. I’d leave the kids in for a day or two, or at least out of the field, or they may run across something not as slow as a goose and twice as hungry.”
“Thanks again.”
He left. I walked outside and waved as he got in his car.
The kids drifted home, one by one, and I made supper. We ate, watched TV, and otherwise had an uneventful night.
When I stepped out to get my paper in the morning, all was quiet. I made coffee and scanned the headlines.
“Local Thug Murders Innocent Wildlife”.
There was a picture of me waving. Looking like a Black Tony Soprano in my t-shirt and old dress pants. Who took that damn picture?
“A local man bent on changing our ecology murdered two geese in cold blood yesterday, police reports show. This man,” well, they spelled my name right, I grimaced, “fired on innocent geese yesterday afternoon. The birds were nesting in the field across from his home when he went on a rampage, killing two of the animals with an assault rifle. Animal activists have complained to the county, which owns the field where the geese both lived and were assassinated, to press charges. Gun control advocates are pushing for a ban on the Teflon coated “Chainsaw” ammunition experts claimed the man used on the innocent, unsuspecting fowl. The shells reportedly decapitated the birds and incinerated them whole in a matter of seconds. Area police have investigated and made it clear the use of assault rifles on unarmed birds is unsporting...”
This is what happens when kids do not listen.
I called the police station and asked for the chief, a neighbor. Where had he been last night? Probably sitting in his favorite chair enjoying a drink and reading. His kids probably listened.
“Hey Doc, you’re famous!”
“Joe? What the hell? Very little in that article is factual.”
“Oh, Doc, it’s a newspaper. They never get it right, first go round.”
“Joe? I don’t own a freaking assault rifle.”
“Shoot, I read the report Matthews took. Old .45 automatic. Two shells spent. Hell that “chainsaw” ammunition don’t even exist, in real life. Trust me, if it did, we’d have some here. Bet your shell didn’t leave much bird, though.”
“Am I going to be arrested?”
“For what? Some animals attacked your kids. You put a stop to it. Your weapon is registered and licensed. You were doing your job. Take it in stride.”
“This paints me to be some type of…organized crime figure with a yen for killing animals.”
“I wouldn’t worry about it, Doc. This’ll all blow over in a day or so. The papers do this whenever there is a slow news day. They’ll print a retraction somewhere over the next month, in back by the classifieds for Oriental massages. We’ll all have a good laugh. ‘Local Professor is Not a Thug’. Priceless!”
I sighed.
“A word of advice, Doc? Whatever you do? Don’t push it. This is like a bug bite. Ignore it, it goes away. Push it, it gets ugly.”
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Little Fire Eating TroubleMaker
III
“When you get home, you need to talk to your child.”
I never asked which child. Scooter seldom got in trouble, and the only time I was encouraged to talk to my children was when they had problems. Apparently, my regular conversations with them prompted one to have a bleak outlook on life and the other to get her little mouth washed out with soap.
“What’s Scoompi done?”
“I’ll let you talk to her. It’s about school. I think perhaps your outlook on things has gone a bit far.”
Uh oh.
I took my time getting home, because when Scoompi got in trouble, usually, I was in trouble too.
I walked in, spoke to everyone, and pulled Scoompi to the side. My wife joined us. This was not going to be good. Scooter pretended to rummage around for a Gatorade in the fridge.
“What happened, Baby?”
“No,” my wife started. “That’s part of the problem. You’re already on her side. You don’t start a punitive conversation with ‘Baby’!”
“Oh,” I said, calmly, having already picked Scoompi up like a puppy. She giggled. “No ‘Baby’ mental note. I’ll remember that. Gotta put you down, Scoomp.”
“It’s OK,” she said.
My wife shook her head. Scooter was rummaging much slower.
“Read this to him,” my wife handed a carbon to her. Scoompi’s eyes set hard.
“Student’s name: Alexandra McCarthy. Grade: Three. Date,” she read the date. “Infra…infrared…interact…”
“Infraction,” my wife snapped.
“Yeah, that,” her little voice had an edge to it.
“Be easy, Baby,” I said sternly. “That’s your momma.”
“But I’m trying to read, she interrupting me!”
“Just read it, Scoomp…I mean Alexandra…”
“My name is Scoompi,” she said defiantly. “SHE named me Alexandra.” Little girls and their mothers. “Infraction,” she glared at her mother. “Blasphemy and defiantly pursuing an argument with religious authority.”
“You read all that but missed ‘infraction’?” I was impressed.
“Sister Mary Tamika repeated it several times,” Scoompi explained.
“Oh.”
“This is serious,” my better half started. “Tell him what you said.”
Her little face went hard. “We were supposed to point out a holiday that interested us.”
“OK.”
“I chose Good Friday. Christmas is about gifts. Easter is boring. The other religious holidays are just excuses to make us go to mass.”
Scooter had stopped rummaging.
“We send you to a Catholic school,” the missus said, “so you can learn about religion as well as learn your lessons.”
“I know it’s just…” her eyes watered.
“What is it Scoompi?” Ever understanding Daddy.
“This is all so…fake.”
“No religion is fake, young lady!”
“No,” I countered, “some are just more self serving than others. Did you tell Sister Mary Tamika something was fake?”
Her little head bobbed. “Yes. Good Friday is a fake.”
“The concept of Christianity is the idea that Jesus died on the cross for your sins young lady. Then he rose from the dead.”
“Your parents don’t believe that,” Scoompi said, “they believe he was a prophet.”
“But we, Alexandra, believe he is the son of God.”
“Whoa, ladies,” I interrupted. “Baby, let the baby finish.”
“She’s not a baby, part of the problem…”
“Scoompi?”
“Good Friday is a joke. It is a fake.”
“OK, Baby, you denying he dies on the cross that day?”
“No,” she said, face all scrunched up. “He died. But the Church is lying to us. It was NOT Good Friday. It was BAD Friday. They assassinated him! His own people sold him out and the government KILLED him! That’s as bad as what happened to the Indians! He was nice and tried to help people and they killed him. Then they try to sell it to us that it was a GOOD Friday? ‘Hey, you’re gonna die later today.’ ‘In my sleep?” “Naw, fool. We’re gonna nail you to a tree and let you hang there, and then poke you with a spear. Oh, by the way, it’s Good Friday.’ ‘Maybe for you. You probably getting paid today. Me? I gotta die on a tree. That’s pretty bad on the list of things that I’ve done. Water to wine? Good. Walk on water? Good. Help blind people see? Good. Oh. Nailed to a tree on a hot day and left to die? BAD.’”
Scoompi was animated as all get out. My wife was glaring at me. Scooter had closed the refrigerator door and was making huffing sounds.
I was trying really hard not to laugh.
“She’s got a point,” I said weakly.
“All I said,” Scoompi had calmed down now, “was that people have been oppressed forever…”
“You said ‘oppressed’?”
“Yes, Daddy, please don’t interrupt…”
“It was a BAD day for Jesus. And I got wrote up for that. Lookit, I could’ve been like little Ade Olafatoke and just said I like Christmas for gifts. I did my best on the assignment, and I got in trouble.” She shook her head. “Always trying to keep a Black girl down.”
“Baby, Sister Mary Tamika is Black…”
“She’s outta touch. Confused nun.”
Wow. I was in so much trouble.
“Honey? How much of this has to do with the casino thing?”
“I dunno,” she studied her fingertips. “I told Sister Mary Tamika yesterday that if we had to study American history, why come we can’t really talk about how the Pilgrims did the Indians dirt? I keep you from starving, you steal my house?”
Uh oh.
“We’ll go talk to Sister Mary Tamika,” I said. “I’ll sign your form here but leave her a note saying that I want to meet on this. Go wash up for dinner.”
“Kah. But Daddy?”
“Yeah, Baby?”
“Bring Mommy. Because Sister Mary Tamika likes you, which she shouldn’t her being a nun and all? She always makes goo goo eyes at you when you talk to my class, and won’t shut up about you when you leave. Plus, she got a weave under that head thing.”
“Wash Scoomp.”
“Kah.”
She ran upstairs. I pretended to study the mail.
“C’mon out, Scooter,” I said.
He emerged from the kitchen, Gatorade in his hand. Gotta hand it to him. Kid dotted his “I”s and crossed his “t”s.
“What do you think?”
“She shouldn’t have been written up,” he said slowly. “That was her opinion. She did the assignment. Teachers have too much power.”
“Go wash up honey,” my wife said to him.
“This is going too far.”
“What? Honey, the child gave her opinion. When I was a child, we were asked our opinions, not to tow the party line.”
“You didn’t find what she said disrespectful?”
“No I was pretty impressed. That’s solid insight for a seven year old.”
“She disrespected her teacher?”
“By disagreeing with her? I agree with Scooter. What are teachers? Bullying losers with degrees who get off picking on kids.”
“Um, and how do you earn your living?”
“My line of education requires discourse, analysis, and tolerance. Way more give and take.”
“Of all but conservative points of view…”
“This is not about me. A seven year old was asked an opinion, and she offered one backed up by evidence and logic. Seven year old logic, but logic nonetheless. Nothing she did was wrong. What? The pope is gonna excommunicate a seven year old? He may wanna be careful. She looks like she could turn the Holy See on its ear.”
“You know she got more heated with her teacher than she did with us.”
“Passion is lacking in today’s classrooms.”
“This all started because of that casino thing.”
“I’ll fix it. But be honest: if I was so off base, then why is Scooter in agreement?”
She was quiet on that one.
“I’ll go with you to the meeting.”
“Bet you will. Wonder if that really is a weave she wears?”
“Shut up.”
“When you get home, you need to talk to your child.”
I never asked which child. Scooter seldom got in trouble, and the only time I was encouraged to talk to my children was when they had problems. Apparently, my regular conversations with them prompted one to have a bleak outlook on life and the other to get her little mouth washed out with soap.
“What’s Scoompi done?”
“I’ll let you talk to her. It’s about school. I think perhaps your outlook on things has gone a bit far.”
Uh oh.
I took my time getting home, because when Scoompi got in trouble, usually, I was in trouble too.
I walked in, spoke to everyone, and pulled Scoompi to the side. My wife joined us. This was not going to be good. Scooter pretended to rummage around for a Gatorade in the fridge.
“What happened, Baby?”
“No,” my wife started. “That’s part of the problem. You’re already on her side. You don’t start a punitive conversation with ‘Baby’!”
“Oh,” I said, calmly, having already picked Scoompi up like a puppy. She giggled. “No ‘Baby’ mental note. I’ll remember that. Gotta put you down, Scoomp.”
“It’s OK,” she said.
My wife shook her head. Scooter was rummaging much slower.
“Read this to him,” my wife handed a carbon to her. Scoompi’s eyes set hard.
“Student’s name: Alexandra McCarthy. Grade: Three. Date,” she read the date. “Infra…infrared…interact…”
“Infraction,” my wife snapped.
“Yeah, that,” her little voice had an edge to it.
“Be easy, Baby,” I said sternly. “That’s your momma.”
“But I’m trying to read, she interrupting me!”
“Just read it, Scoomp…I mean Alexandra…”
“My name is Scoompi,” she said defiantly. “SHE named me Alexandra.” Little girls and their mothers. “Infraction,” she glared at her mother. “Blasphemy and defiantly pursuing an argument with religious authority.”
“You read all that but missed ‘infraction’?” I was impressed.
“Sister Mary Tamika repeated it several times,” Scoompi explained.
“Oh.”
“This is serious,” my better half started. “Tell him what you said.”
Her little face went hard. “We were supposed to point out a holiday that interested us.”
“OK.”
“I chose Good Friday. Christmas is about gifts. Easter is boring. The other religious holidays are just excuses to make us go to mass.”
Scooter had stopped rummaging.
“We send you to a Catholic school,” the missus said, “so you can learn about religion as well as learn your lessons.”
“I know it’s just…” her eyes watered.
“What is it Scoompi?” Ever understanding Daddy.
“This is all so…fake.”
“No religion is fake, young lady!”
“No,” I countered, “some are just more self serving than others. Did you tell Sister Mary Tamika something was fake?”
Her little head bobbed. “Yes. Good Friday is a fake.”
“The concept of Christianity is the idea that Jesus died on the cross for your sins young lady. Then he rose from the dead.”
“Your parents don’t believe that,” Scoompi said, “they believe he was a prophet.”
“But we, Alexandra, believe he is the son of God.”
“Whoa, ladies,” I interrupted. “Baby, let the baby finish.”
“She’s not a baby, part of the problem…”
“Scoompi?”
“Good Friday is a joke. It is a fake.”
“OK, Baby, you denying he dies on the cross that day?”
“No,” she said, face all scrunched up. “He died. But the Church is lying to us. It was NOT Good Friday. It was BAD Friday. They assassinated him! His own people sold him out and the government KILLED him! That’s as bad as what happened to the Indians! He was nice and tried to help people and they killed him. Then they try to sell it to us that it was a GOOD Friday? ‘Hey, you’re gonna die later today.’ ‘In my sleep?” “Naw, fool. We’re gonna nail you to a tree and let you hang there, and then poke you with a spear. Oh, by the way, it’s Good Friday.’ ‘Maybe for you. You probably getting paid today. Me? I gotta die on a tree. That’s pretty bad on the list of things that I’ve done. Water to wine? Good. Walk on water? Good. Help blind people see? Good. Oh. Nailed to a tree on a hot day and left to die? BAD.’”
Scoompi was animated as all get out. My wife was glaring at me. Scooter had closed the refrigerator door and was making huffing sounds.
I was trying really hard not to laugh.
“She’s got a point,” I said weakly.
“All I said,” Scoompi had calmed down now, “was that people have been oppressed forever…”
“You said ‘oppressed’?”
“Yes, Daddy, please don’t interrupt…”
“It was a BAD day for Jesus. And I got wrote up for that. Lookit, I could’ve been like little Ade Olafatoke and just said I like Christmas for gifts. I did my best on the assignment, and I got in trouble.” She shook her head. “Always trying to keep a Black girl down.”
“Baby, Sister Mary Tamika is Black…”
“She’s outta touch. Confused nun.”
Wow. I was in so much trouble.
“Honey? How much of this has to do with the casino thing?”
“I dunno,” she studied her fingertips. “I told Sister Mary Tamika yesterday that if we had to study American history, why come we can’t really talk about how the Pilgrims did the Indians dirt? I keep you from starving, you steal my house?”
Uh oh.
“We’ll go talk to Sister Mary Tamika,” I said. “I’ll sign your form here but leave her a note saying that I want to meet on this. Go wash up for dinner.”
“Kah. But Daddy?”
“Yeah, Baby?”
“Bring Mommy. Because Sister Mary Tamika likes you, which she shouldn’t her being a nun and all? She always makes goo goo eyes at you when you talk to my class, and won’t shut up about you when you leave. Plus, she got a weave under that head thing.”
“Wash Scoomp.”
“Kah.”
She ran upstairs. I pretended to study the mail.
“C’mon out, Scooter,” I said.
He emerged from the kitchen, Gatorade in his hand. Gotta hand it to him. Kid dotted his “I”s and crossed his “t”s.
“What do you think?”
“She shouldn’t have been written up,” he said slowly. “That was her opinion. She did the assignment. Teachers have too much power.”
“Go wash up honey,” my wife said to him.
“This is going too far.”
“What? Honey, the child gave her opinion. When I was a child, we were asked our opinions, not to tow the party line.”
“You didn’t find what she said disrespectful?”
“No I was pretty impressed. That’s solid insight for a seven year old.”
“She disrespected her teacher?”
“By disagreeing with her? I agree with Scooter. What are teachers? Bullying losers with degrees who get off picking on kids.”
“Um, and how do you earn your living?”
“My line of education requires discourse, analysis, and tolerance. Way more give and take.”
“Of all but conservative points of view…”
“This is not about me. A seven year old was asked an opinion, and she offered one backed up by evidence and logic. Seven year old logic, but logic nonetheless. Nothing she did was wrong. What? The pope is gonna excommunicate a seven year old? He may wanna be careful. She looks like she could turn the Holy See on its ear.”
“You know she got more heated with her teacher than she did with us.”
“Passion is lacking in today’s classrooms.”
“This all started because of that casino thing.”
“I’ll fix it. But be honest: if I was so off base, then why is Scooter in agreement?”
She was quiet on that one.
“I’ll go with you to the meeting.”
“Bet you will. Wonder if that really is a weave she wears?”
“Shut up.”
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Ethics and Business? Please
II
I called Fred bright and early with exciting news. “OK, Chippewa seems the best route to go. They got the most Casinos. The Apaches ain’t got shit. Granted, they fought back the most. You get more flies with honey...”
I got an unexpected response.
“I'm done with you. That's why people look at us with the side-eye now; I mean us, Black folk as a whole. We are willing to exploit anyone and everyone to get what we want. It doesn't matter if they did anything to us or not. I can't exploit the red man like the palefaces did.”
Well, that rankled me some. “I'm not exploiting the red man. I am exploiting the paleface system that believed you cure centuries of Native oppression with a few business opportunities.” Self righteousness was always strength of mine.
There was actual sadness in his voice. “But in turn you are exploiting them too, because that was laid out for them. You… you're going to try to exercise a ridiculous loophole to get paid.”
I changed tracks. I kinda needed him to work this with me. “ Hmmm...Never thought of it that way. Is it the double dip, Casinos AND reparations that's the overkill?”
“You’re fucking kidding me. Nope. The overkill is that you're taking advantage of a benefit that was not meant for you, redfoot.”
“That's PROUD BLACKFOOT, Gut Crusher. Bearing in mind: people are going to look at us how they look at us. I can ignore it with expensive enough sunglasses purchased to view the desert sands of my new casino... That’s Black folks’ problem. We spend a whole lot of time worrying how we are perceived, and believe me, other people have made billions off of our perception issues. We need to get over that. I don’t care if white people or anyone else looks at me as some conniving whatever…please. The business history books are filled with ‘em, and those are the successes. The good guys? No one mentions them.”
Now he switched tracks. “How would you like it if the government announced reparations and you had to be 1/8 black to get them, so when you go to get in line there are these WASP republican types in line around the block because their great-great grandfathers had children out of wedlock because they went creeping in the middle of the night to the slave house? But that makes them 1/8 black and the blond-haired blue-eyed devils are standing in line to get YOUR money...Doesn't sit too well with you, now does it. That would be just one more way that the white man screwed us.”
I laughed. “Wouldn’t bother me one bit. If they are one eighth Black, according to laws still on the books in this fine republic, they Black. If they chose to pass for a number of years and then come out for their share of the pie, well, hell. Sounds American to me. No no no. Black folk keep getting shit on because we are ALWAYS fair, ALWAYS trying to do the right thing. We gotta play the game like everyone else did. Do whatever to get ahead, save our money, and move to the suburbs. Actually, that's what's happening. I have yet to see real Native Americans own these places, and I bet the boards don’t live on reservations.”
I could hear Fred throwing up his hands. “So why would you want to be one of them? I thought we had to be better than that?”
“Man, this is America. Land of the loophole. Why is it the people who could benefit from loopholes spend time pontificating about why they shouldn’t. Then they get on Black radio and bitch about the fact they don’t have what the loophole exploiters have. That’s crazy. One good thing about reparations is it would expose all of the Negroes that have been passing for the last 50 years. I wanna know.”
“But this is for THEM!”
“If genealogy says I am one of THEM how am I wrong? Dude, there is a lot of shared history between our peoples. The non reservation boarding schools alone are a blot on history that would make any decent person cringe. You are going to correct that by allowing gaming? These people went to lengths to “Americanize” them that were inhumane. Perhaps if people of color, Africans, Native Americans and whomever else, stopped being so damned concerned with ‘fair’ and ‘right’ and learned to do unto others as they do unto us, or before they do unto us, we’d be better off. Sorry. I can benefit my people more by generating funding and using it to help folk who look like me than by sitting around lamenting what’s ‘right’.”
“Is this about helping your people?”
“Sure. Starting with those whom share my last name. Which includes you.”
The line went dead.
I spent the better part of the afternoon digging through the Native American Rights Fund website, along with any of the other research I had piled high on my desk. I had some understanding of Native American history. Mostly the bad. I remember a colleague once telling me about how bad the reservations were. She told me a story of how some native came into a bar where she and her friends were drinking, slit a man’s throat, and walked out. She explained that because the bars were on Indian land and the victim was an outsider, there was noting that could be done.
“I mean, these were our bars, bars owned by white people,” she explained, “but we had no power there.”
I was not listening so intently that I was against reminding her that I, in fact, was not white. Nowhere near it. I was tempted, however, to taunt her with the fact the natives had probably felt that way about Caucasians for a long time. Hell, I thought. Was it justified?
The schools natives had been sent to at the turn of the century were an even worse tale. Tribesmen were sent to these boarding schools that basically attempted to beat the “savagery” out of them. Really? The Native Americans may not have been perfect, but could leaving them alone have been that bad of an idea? How did their savagery compare to that of the Europeans who supplanted them? I’m no romanticist. When my own people try to sell me on the innate humaneness of Africans, and how if we were left alone, we’d never fight, I have to look at the Derg, Rwandan genocide, Mobutu and Idi Amin to counter that. Actually, I have to look no further than the neighborhoods of my native Chicago to dispel that nonsense. People, I believe, are always trying to rule other people. The easiest and most sure way to do that is through violence. Whenever folk want to argue that I tell them to go learn elementary school history over again and then come see me.
In exchange for a lot of headache, heartache and outright abuse, was financial compensation really enough? And would it work for Black folk? That was the biggest argument against reparations. You can’t just issue a group of people checks. You can, but every group has its haves and have snots, and the haves are usually much better with money. That’s probably why they are the haves. They’ll invest theirs and find ways to profit from the one group that will quickly do business with them, no questions asked: the have nots. Eventually you have a Black upper class and lower class, and the lower class has accumulated a lot of temporary assets. Cars, consumer goods, and what not. In many cases, they may spend what they get trying to survive and never think about the long haul because life for generations has been about survival, and happy times have been about finding ways to forget that you are just surviving. What happens when their money is gone? Folk may riot. Hell, people riot when athletic teams win championships. This could cause the apocalypse.
So the Native American solution might work, with one caveat. It was easier for the government to grant certain land and business rights to the natives, because technically, they were already on what’s considered their sovereign land. What an irony that is. We stole the country from you and wanted to make you like us, but we’ll allow you to have certain rights on land that we tell you is really yours. Crazy as it was, however, it was working. But how?
That said, I was realizing I would probably have to do some research on a reservation before moving forward with my plan. This was not going to go over well with the missus, who last night gave me a tongue lashing for having the kids do the feathers and photos thing. She practically washed out poor Scoompi’s mouth with soap for using the term “Indian.” Scooter, who knows where he gets his bread and butter, had no problem letting the “freedom, justice and equality” thing slip.
My wife was raised a Black Muslim. I got none last night.
Oh, well, I thought, fighting off the nagging feeling that a vodka tonic was just what I needed right now, a new casino, they’ll love me in the morning.
There was a knock on my office door. “Doc? Can we talk about my paper?”
I put my research aside. Andy Chen was one of my best students, proudly living up to that stereotype.
“Dunno, Andy,” I said, glancing at my calendar. “Think I used up all of my Asian time this week.”
“Work it out,” he laughed, pulling up a chair, “you people are bad with time anyway.”
“Touché,” I said, offering him a 7-up out of my fridge. “Now, here was my issue. Your thesis was solid, but you and I both know with just a little more digging…”
Casinos would have to wait.
I called Fred bright and early with exciting news. “OK, Chippewa seems the best route to go. They got the most Casinos. The Apaches ain’t got shit. Granted, they fought back the most. You get more flies with honey...”
I got an unexpected response.
“I'm done with you. That's why people look at us with the side-eye now; I mean us, Black folk as a whole. We are willing to exploit anyone and everyone to get what we want. It doesn't matter if they did anything to us or not. I can't exploit the red man like the palefaces did.”
Well, that rankled me some. “I'm not exploiting the red man. I am exploiting the paleface system that believed you cure centuries of Native oppression with a few business opportunities.” Self righteousness was always strength of mine.
There was actual sadness in his voice. “But in turn you are exploiting them too, because that was laid out for them. You… you're going to try to exercise a ridiculous loophole to get paid.”
I changed tracks. I kinda needed him to work this with me. “ Hmmm...Never thought of it that way. Is it the double dip, Casinos AND reparations that's the overkill?”
“You’re fucking kidding me. Nope. The overkill is that you're taking advantage of a benefit that was not meant for you, redfoot.”
“That's PROUD BLACKFOOT, Gut Crusher. Bearing in mind: people are going to look at us how they look at us. I can ignore it with expensive enough sunglasses purchased to view the desert sands of my new casino... That’s Black folks’ problem. We spend a whole lot of time worrying how we are perceived, and believe me, other people have made billions off of our perception issues. We need to get over that. I don’t care if white people or anyone else looks at me as some conniving whatever…please. The business history books are filled with ‘em, and those are the successes. The good guys? No one mentions them.”
Now he switched tracks. “How would you like it if the government announced reparations and you had to be 1/8 black to get them, so when you go to get in line there are these WASP republican types in line around the block because their great-great grandfathers had children out of wedlock because they went creeping in the middle of the night to the slave house? But that makes them 1/8 black and the blond-haired blue-eyed devils are standing in line to get YOUR money...Doesn't sit too well with you, now does it. That would be just one more way that the white man screwed us.”
I laughed. “Wouldn’t bother me one bit. If they are one eighth Black, according to laws still on the books in this fine republic, they Black. If they chose to pass for a number of years and then come out for their share of the pie, well, hell. Sounds American to me. No no no. Black folk keep getting shit on because we are ALWAYS fair, ALWAYS trying to do the right thing. We gotta play the game like everyone else did. Do whatever to get ahead, save our money, and move to the suburbs. Actually, that's what's happening. I have yet to see real Native Americans own these places, and I bet the boards don’t live on reservations.”
I could hear Fred throwing up his hands. “So why would you want to be one of them? I thought we had to be better than that?”
“Man, this is America. Land of the loophole. Why is it the people who could benefit from loopholes spend time pontificating about why they shouldn’t. Then they get on Black radio and bitch about the fact they don’t have what the loophole exploiters have. That’s crazy. One good thing about reparations is it would expose all of the Negroes that have been passing for the last 50 years. I wanna know.”
“But this is for THEM!”
“If genealogy says I am one of THEM how am I wrong? Dude, there is a lot of shared history between our peoples. The non reservation boarding schools alone are a blot on history that would make any decent person cringe. You are going to correct that by allowing gaming? These people went to lengths to “Americanize” them that were inhumane. Perhaps if people of color, Africans, Native Americans and whomever else, stopped being so damned concerned with ‘fair’ and ‘right’ and learned to do unto others as they do unto us, or before they do unto us, we’d be better off. Sorry. I can benefit my people more by generating funding and using it to help folk who look like me than by sitting around lamenting what’s ‘right’.”
“Is this about helping your people?”
“Sure. Starting with those whom share my last name. Which includes you.”
The line went dead.
I spent the better part of the afternoon digging through the Native American Rights Fund website, along with any of the other research I had piled high on my desk. I had some understanding of Native American history. Mostly the bad. I remember a colleague once telling me about how bad the reservations were. She told me a story of how some native came into a bar where she and her friends were drinking, slit a man’s throat, and walked out. She explained that because the bars were on Indian land and the victim was an outsider, there was noting that could be done.
“I mean, these were our bars, bars owned by white people,” she explained, “but we had no power there.”
I was not listening so intently that I was against reminding her that I, in fact, was not white. Nowhere near it. I was tempted, however, to taunt her with the fact the natives had probably felt that way about Caucasians for a long time. Hell, I thought. Was it justified?
The schools natives had been sent to at the turn of the century were an even worse tale. Tribesmen were sent to these boarding schools that basically attempted to beat the “savagery” out of them. Really? The Native Americans may not have been perfect, but could leaving them alone have been that bad of an idea? How did their savagery compare to that of the Europeans who supplanted them? I’m no romanticist. When my own people try to sell me on the innate humaneness of Africans, and how if we were left alone, we’d never fight, I have to look at the Derg, Rwandan genocide, Mobutu and Idi Amin to counter that. Actually, I have to look no further than the neighborhoods of my native Chicago to dispel that nonsense. People, I believe, are always trying to rule other people. The easiest and most sure way to do that is through violence. Whenever folk want to argue that I tell them to go learn elementary school history over again and then come see me.
In exchange for a lot of headache, heartache and outright abuse, was financial compensation really enough? And would it work for Black folk? That was the biggest argument against reparations. You can’t just issue a group of people checks. You can, but every group has its haves and have snots, and the haves are usually much better with money. That’s probably why they are the haves. They’ll invest theirs and find ways to profit from the one group that will quickly do business with them, no questions asked: the have nots. Eventually you have a Black upper class and lower class, and the lower class has accumulated a lot of temporary assets. Cars, consumer goods, and what not. In many cases, they may spend what they get trying to survive and never think about the long haul because life for generations has been about survival, and happy times have been about finding ways to forget that you are just surviving. What happens when their money is gone? Folk may riot. Hell, people riot when athletic teams win championships. This could cause the apocalypse.
So the Native American solution might work, with one caveat. It was easier for the government to grant certain land and business rights to the natives, because technically, they were already on what’s considered their sovereign land. What an irony that is. We stole the country from you and wanted to make you like us, but we’ll allow you to have certain rights on land that we tell you is really yours. Crazy as it was, however, it was working. But how?
That said, I was realizing I would probably have to do some research on a reservation before moving forward with my plan. This was not going to go over well with the missus, who last night gave me a tongue lashing for having the kids do the feathers and photos thing. She practically washed out poor Scoompi’s mouth with soap for using the term “Indian.” Scooter, who knows where he gets his bread and butter, had no problem letting the “freedom, justice and equality” thing slip.
My wife was raised a Black Muslim. I got none last night.
Oh, well, I thought, fighting off the nagging feeling that a vodka tonic was just what I needed right now, a new casino, they’ll love me in the morning.
There was a knock on my office door. “Doc? Can we talk about my paper?”
I put my research aside. Andy Chen was one of my best students, proudly living up to that stereotype.
“Dunno, Andy,” I said, glancing at my calendar. “Think I used up all of my Asian time this week.”
“Work it out,” he laughed, pulling up a chair, “you people are bad with time anyway.”
“Touché,” I said, offering him a 7-up out of my fridge. “Now, here was my issue. Your thesis was solid, but you and I both know with just a little more digging…”
Casinos would have to wait.
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Only In America
“This is the stupidest thing he has come up with in a long time,” Scooter muttered, “and I oughta know. Nothing rivals this for sheer stupidity and embarrassment.”
“Shaddup,” I snapped through clenched teeth. “And don’t smile. We are a proud people, angry that we have lost our land and heritage. Adjust your feather.”
“I’m not sure about this, Daddy,” Scoompi whispered. “I’m too bright to be an Indian.”
The flash popped.
It all started after sex one morning.
We were both lying there, fan blowing, blinds barely blocking out the sun, fatigued but not quite sleepy. Actually, I was thirsty.
“You know,” I said, “people have something to say about every group of women but Native American women. Black women have attitudes, Latin women are hot tempered, Jewish women are domineering, and European women are wild…”
“What about Asian women? I never hear anything about them,” she said as she snuggled against me.
I sniffed. “Every man knows that one. They are submissive. And popularly so.”
“Oh really?”
“Look, to quote Alexyss K. Tylor…”
“Get back to your point about Native American women.”
“Have you ever seen a real Native American?” I was up on an elbow now. She snagged what cover I lost.
“No, well…”
“I mean, every person I know who swears they are Indian looks white. I see guys who look like Brad Pitt with last names like “Frazier” talking about they are Native Americans. I mean, I have yet to see any Native Americans. If you look up “Famous Native Americans” on the web, they give you Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull and that guy that played Tonto fifty years ago.”
She was half asleep, but drawled, “You know, I have seen a real one. She used to work at the phone company with me, in Michigan. We had a lot of them there, you know. The first casinos for them, well, some of the first, were in Michigan.”
“Really?”
“So, I knew this one woman who worked with me. She was very pretty. Just…you ever look at someone and not be certain of their ethnicity? You knew she wasn’t Black, or from the Middle East or Asia, but, she was kind of a mixture of them all. She was pretty. Married a Black guy, had two kids. Her little boys were adorable. But we’d look, like, is she Mexican? South American?””
“Well, the Latinas as we know them are a mix of indigenous people, Mediterranean Spaniards, and in South America, Black folk. Shoot. Most of the slaves went south of the Equator, Hon. Ya’ll still friends?”
“We worked together. She didn’t talk much.”
“Shoot. Can you blame her? Check out their history. Talking to folk lost tem an entire country. I mean, no one has been shit on like the Indians. Black folk even had it a bit better.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yeah. Black folk were brought here in ships, but history points to other Black folk selling them for guns and whatnot. I mean, so at least some Black people, the ones that got to stay in Africa, got something they wanted out of the deal. Guns to win more wars and enslave more Africans for more guns. The Native American trusted white people, fed them, kept them from starving, and got nothing in return. Did you read what JD wrote about the first Thanksgiving? ‘Hey, what’s the gunpowder for?’ ‘We’ll figure something out.’”
“Make your point, Honey.” Yawn. “And please. Stop quoting these obscure Internet personalities. No one reads JD McCallum and no one watches that Alexyss Whosis, but you.”
“Tylor. Bet if the Indians had her, they’d still own Manhattan.”
“Anyway, Maria, that’s her name, did open up towards the end. She was leaving the phone company because she was voted to some position on her tribal council. They like, gave her a two hundred fifty thousand dollar house…”
“In Michigan? That’s like a million dollar pad anywhere else…”
“Shut up. Yeah. They put her through school, everything. You know, in many native communities, alcoholism runs rampant, and they face the other social problems we all do…”
“Yeah, but they are justified. I mean, it’s one thing to have a fight and lost some stuff, but the Native American people…they fought back, they got tricked, they just got screwed. I mean, I honestly think they got a worse shake than Negros did. This country’s history on dealing with people of color in general sucks, but its abuse of the Native American is horrible. Whenever these anti reparations guys argue about welfare and whatnot, when did they use that argument with the Indians? And they screwed them royally. Again, it’s one thing to be taken from your house. But to have people come in and take over your house? It’s been yours all this time, you be nice to them, and look-they leave you on the worst parts after they carve up the rest? Of your own pad? After all you did for them? Shit. I’d drink, too. They got the shaft.”
“Well, now they got casinos.”
“This is enough to make one seriously consider the argument for reparations. Seriously? That argument that no Blacks now are slaves? So what? None of the Indians alive now walked the Trail of Tears. I think Black folk get played because they complain a lot, but in the end, everyone knows Black fell for that phony boat trip number, and people have looked at them as dummies ever since. Yeah, I remember reading where they were pretty liberal with the terms of who was a native. If you had like, an eighth of Indian blood…”
“That’s right…”
“My Grandaddy’s momma was Cherokee…”
She snuggled under the covers. “Don’t you have to teach today? I’m going back to sleep. Been nice discussing American history with you. Wake me if you want to go for another round, but otherwise, I’m no longer interested in a conversation that began with female stereotypes.”
So she was listening.
Contrary to her belief, I wasn’t teaching, but did have office hours. I half closed my door, put my feet up on my desk, wished I had some Jack Daniels and called my brother Fred. I had an idea.
“Hey man. I got an idea. Gotta see what percentage of Native American I got in me. I want an in on the casino deal, plus I'll retain Black status so I can get reparations too.”
All Fred said was, “Wow.”
“What?”
“Something is seriously wrong with you. But that’s fine. I am claiming the Fuzzhead Jenkins name and working on a blues album with a friend of mine.”
“Dude, you can’t. Fuzzhead is me, and as I am now Native American, so is he.”
Fred snorted. “Cool. Gives me more material. The Ballad of Confused Crazy Horse. Nice ring to it.”
I shook my head, as if Fred could see me. “No no no. I will remain Fuzzhead. I want to increase my Native American fan base and get some casino loot. I am having my kids find feathers outside our house so they can pose for family photos dressed in our native garb this evening. Yeah, Baby! REPARATIONS NOW! Once I get my casino.”
A real tone of concern crept into Fred’s voice. “Ah... did you start drinking again?”
“Nope. Actually, been feeling good to be booze free. WAY more oxygen to da brain. You wanna be Indian, too? I can get you a cool name.”
Fred learned long ago to humor me. “I like ‘Big Chief GutCrusher.’”
“It's yours. But like the dictator thing, I'ma need your help. This is easier. It requires NO moving abroad. We can do it all here.”
Fred sighed resignedly. I had him. “It would be harder here. Security is tight. We gonna wind up in Gitmo dancin’ around with our drawers on our head.”
“No no no. Gitmo is for those OTHER Indians. Or people that kinda look like them,” I protested.
Fred sighed again. “You vacillate between brilliant and intolerant to a point that is absolutely moronic. What did they hire you to teach again?”
“It don’t matter. Tenure, Baby. Let’s go get us a casino. Hey? You think Alexyss might be Native American? I hope so. I no longer want to date outside of our tribe.”
Fred snapped, “Dummy. You married. I did the ceremony. Shut up.” And he rang off.
I did some research later. It was a lot of paperwork, so I put on my glasses and dug in. Around lunch time I was going to knock off for a swift pint, but settled for a salad with chicken instead.
When I arrived home, I shared part of my plan with the kids, just telling them the end goal was “heritage and diversity.” Scoompi went for it. She’s the loving type. Scooter smelled a rat.
“And why are you suddenly so interested in being a Native American?” he said, with a hint of suspicion.
“It’s gonna be fun!” Scoompi danced around. I nodded, trying to rig the timer on my wife’s DSLR.
We took several photos, with the kids wearing headdresses with single feathers. Luckily, Scooter’s foul mood helped. His glowering fit the mold. Since I obviously had been estranged from my tribe, I decided to forgo a full headdress in favor of three feathers and a hard, yet peaceful look.
“What are those for?” Scooter all but growled, gesturing at my head.
“They stand for freedom, justice and equality,” I replied humbly. He muttered and shook his head, something about “blasphemy.”
Since Sitting Bull and I share similar physiques, I took several photos of myself in dignified, Bull like poses.
“Why are you looking at the camera like that?”
I really needed to belt that kid one. He was a kill joy.
“I am grieving. The loss of my land and heritage. Like Sitting Bull.”
“This is bull, alright, but I’m not sure about sitting.”
My lovely wife bounced through the front door. For the first time, I realized her Creole and Latin heritage gave her a decided reddish cast…and those cheekbones…
“Why are you looking at me like that?” she exclaimed.
Scoompi burst in the living room, feather still affixed to the shoe polish darkened headband.
“What’s this, Baby?”
“I’m an Indian, Mommy! Yay!”
Scooter muttered, “We are so going to hell for this one,” and shook his head.
She looked at me. “We have to talk.”
“Shaddup,” I snapped through clenched teeth. “And don’t smile. We are a proud people, angry that we have lost our land and heritage. Adjust your feather.”
“I’m not sure about this, Daddy,” Scoompi whispered. “I’m too bright to be an Indian.”
The flash popped.
It all started after sex one morning.
We were both lying there, fan blowing, blinds barely blocking out the sun, fatigued but not quite sleepy. Actually, I was thirsty.
“You know,” I said, “people have something to say about every group of women but Native American women. Black women have attitudes, Latin women are hot tempered, Jewish women are domineering, and European women are wild…”
“What about Asian women? I never hear anything about them,” she said as she snuggled against me.
I sniffed. “Every man knows that one. They are submissive. And popularly so.”
“Oh really?”
“Look, to quote Alexyss K. Tylor…”
“Get back to your point about Native American women.”
“Have you ever seen a real Native American?” I was up on an elbow now. She snagged what cover I lost.
“No, well…”
“I mean, every person I know who swears they are Indian looks white. I see guys who look like Brad Pitt with last names like “Frazier” talking about they are Native Americans. I mean, I have yet to see any Native Americans. If you look up “Famous Native Americans” on the web, they give you Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull and that guy that played Tonto fifty years ago.”
She was half asleep, but drawled, “You know, I have seen a real one. She used to work at the phone company with me, in Michigan. We had a lot of them there, you know. The first casinos for them, well, some of the first, were in Michigan.”
“Really?”
“So, I knew this one woman who worked with me. She was very pretty. Just…you ever look at someone and not be certain of their ethnicity? You knew she wasn’t Black, or from the Middle East or Asia, but, she was kind of a mixture of them all. She was pretty. Married a Black guy, had two kids. Her little boys were adorable. But we’d look, like, is she Mexican? South American?””
“Well, the Latinas as we know them are a mix of indigenous people, Mediterranean Spaniards, and in South America, Black folk. Shoot. Most of the slaves went south of the Equator, Hon. Ya’ll still friends?”
“We worked together. She didn’t talk much.”
“Shoot. Can you blame her? Check out their history. Talking to folk lost tem an entire country. I mean, no one has been shit on like the Indians. Black folk even had it a bit better.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yeah. Black folk were brought here in ships, but history points to other Black folk selling them for guns and whatnot. I mean, so at least some Black people, the ones that got to stay in Africa, got something they wanted out of the deal. Guns to win more wars and enslave more Africans for more guns. The Native American trusted white people, fed them, kept them from starving, and got nothing in return. Did you read what JD wrote about the first Thanksgiving? ‘Hey, what’s the gunpowder for?’ ‘We’ll figure something out.’”
“Make your point, Honey.” Yawn. “And please. Stop quoting these obscure Internet personalities. No one reads JD McCallum and no one watches that Alexyss Whosis, but you.”
“Tylor. Bet if the Indians had her, they’d still own Manhattan.”
“Anyway, Maria, that’s her name, did open up towards the end. She was leaving the phone company because she was voted to some position on her tribal council. They like, gave her a two hundred fifty thousand dollar house…”
“In Michigan? That’s like a million dollar pad anywhere else…”
“Shut up. Yeah. They put her through school, everything. You know, in many native communities, alcoholism runs rampant, and they face the other social problems we all do…”
“Yeah, but they are justified. I mean, it’s one thing to have a fight and lost some stuff, but the Native American people…they fought back, they got tricked, they just got screwed. I mean, I honestly think they got a worse shake than Negros did. This country’s history on dealing with people of color in general sucks, but its abuse of the Native American is horrible. Whenever these anti reparations guys argue about welfare and whatnot, when did they use that argument with the Indians? And they screwed them royally. Again, it’s one thing to be taken from your house. But to have people come in and take over your house? It’s been yours all this time, you be nice to them, and look-they leave you on the worst parts after they carve up the rest? Of your own pad? After all you did for them? Shit. I’d drink, too. They got the shaft.”
“Well, now they got casinos.”
“This is enough to make one seriously consider the argument for reparations. Seriously? That argument that no Blacks now are slaves? So what? None of the Indians alive now walked the Trail of Tears. I think Black folk get played because they complain a lot, but in the end, everyone knows Black fell for that phony boat trip number, and people have looked at them as dummies ever since. Yeah, I remember reading where they were pretty liberal with the terms of who was a native. If you had like, an eighth of Indian blood…”
“That’s right…”
“My Grandaddy’s momma was Cherokee…”
She snuggled under the covers. “Don’t you have to teach today? I’m going back to sleep. Been nice discussing American history with you. Wake me if you want to go for another round, but otherwise, I’m no longer interested in a conversation that began with female stereotypes.”
So she was listening.
Contrary to her belief, I wasn’t teaching, but did have office hours. I half closed my door, put my feet up on my desk, wished I had some Jack Daniels and called my brother Fred. I had an idea.
“Hey man. I got an idea. Gotta see what percentage of Native American I got in me. I want an in on the casino deal, plus I'll retain Black status so I can get reparations too.”
All Fred said was, “Wow.”
“What?”
“Something is seriously wrong with you. But that’s fine. I am claiming the Fuzzhead Jenkins name and working on a blues album with a friend of mine.”
“Dude, you can’t. Fuzzhead is me, and as I am now Native American, so is he.”
Fred snorted. “Cool. Gives me more material. The Ballad of Confused Crazy Horse. Nice ring to it.”
I shook my head, as if Fred could see me. “No no no. I will remain Fuzzhead. I want to increase my Native American fan base and get some casino loot. I am having my kids find feathers outside our house so they can pose for family photos dressed in our native garb this evening. Yeah, Baby! REPARATIONS NOW! Once I get my casino.”
A real tone of concern crept into Fred’s voice. “Ah... did you start drinking again?”
“Nope. Actually, been feeling good to be booze free. WAY more oxygen to da brain. You wanna be Indian, too? I can get you a cool name.”
Fred learned long ago to humor me. “I like ‘Big Chief GutCrusher.’”
“It's yours. But like the dictator thing, I'ma need your help. This is easier. It requires NO moving abroad. We can do it all here.”
Fred sighed resignedly. I had him. “It would be harder here. Security is tight. We gonna wind up in Gitmo dancin’ around with our drawers on our head.”
“No no no. Gitmo is for those OTHER Indians. Or people that kinda look like them,” I protested.
Fred sighed again. “You vacillate between brilliant and intolerant to a point that is absolutely moronic. What did they hire you to teach again?”
“It don’t matter. Tenure, Baby. Let’s go get us a casino. Hey? You think Alexyss might be Native American? I hope so. I no longer want to date outside of our tribe.”
Fred snapped, “Dummy. You married. I did the ceremony. Shut up.” And he rang off.
I did some research later. It was a lot of paperwork, so I put on my glasses and dug in. Around lunch time I was going to knock off for a swift pint, but settled for a salad with chicken instead.
When I arrived home, I shared part of my plan with the kids, just telling them the end goal was “heritage and diversity.” Scoompi went for it. She’s the loving type. Scooter smelled a rat.
“And why are you suddenly so interested in being a Native American?” he said, with a hint of suspicion.
“It’s gonna be fun!” Scoompi danced around. I nodded, trying to rig the timer on my wife’s DSLR.
We took several photos, with the kids wearing headdresses with single feathers. Luckily, Scooter’s foul mood helped. His glowering fit the mold. Since I obviously had been estranged from my tribe, I decided to forgo a full headdress in favor of three feathers and a hard, yet peaceful look.
“What are those for?” Scooter all but growled, gesturing at my head.
“They stand for freedom, justice and equality,” I replied humbly. He muttered and shook his head, something about “blasphemy.”
Since Sitting Bull and I share similar physiques, I took several photos of myself in dignified, Bull like poses.
“Why are you looking at the camera like that?”
I really needed to belt that kid one. He was a kill joy.
“I am grieving. The loss of my land and heritage. Like Sitting Bull.”
“This is bull, alright, but I’m not sure about sitting.”
My lovely wife bounced through the front door. For the first time, I realized her Creole and Latin heritage gave her a decided reddish cast…and those cheekbones…
“Why are you looking at me like that?” she exclaimed.
Scoompi burst in the living room, feather still affixed to the shoe polish darkened headband.
“What’s this, Baby?”
“I’m an Indian, Mommy! Yay!”
Scooter muttered, “We are so going to hell for this one,” and shook his head.
She looked at me. “We have to talk.”
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Uncertainty
“So, when it all boils down,” Muhammad said, wheeling the high performance Cadillac north on Western Avenue, “you know your son was seeing the princess. You know who the princess was, in terms of her family. You know their relationship was serious, and you had extra security watching them both. But you know nothing else?”
From the passenger seat, Summers spread his hands and said, “Nothing.”
“Bullshit,” Akbar grunted. Muhammad grinned.
“Is he always this politically correct?” Summers grinned as well.
“I’m the diplomat,” Muhammad explained. “Major Akbar is a soldier. In his line of work, knowing bullshit when you see it is, well, part of your work. Although, sir, I do agree. Something about your story seems…absent.”
“I have business associates, friendly and…otherwise,” Summers began. “This isn’t their type of move. They too would have done some research and figured who this young lady was. The child of a local, um, entrepreneur? Fair game for kidnapping. You have to understand, however, in my world? International incidents can be very bad for business. Do you have any idea what happens when a royal goes missing? Embassies, the Feds, folk such as yourselves. No,” Summers shook his head again. “Very bad for business. Whoever is involved in this, if there is a this, is not from my world. Profit above all else, and this will eventually interrupt profit.”
Muhammad turned right onto Vincennes Avenue and headed east.
“So what are we facing?”
Summers shook his head. “I don’t know.”
Akbar’s mobile rang. He grunted after answering it, and then snapped it shut. “Turn on the radio,” he ordered. Muhammad complied. “No,” Akbar said, shaking his head in disgust at the music that came through the speakers. Find me a news channel…”
Summers tuned the dial to an AM station, where they heard announced, “there are no further details regarding the coup, but stay tuned as we will update you on this swift change in government, and how economists feel it will affect the international value of copper, gypsum, uranium and oil.”
Summers looked blank.
Muhammad said, “Find the major,” and sped the vehicle in the direction of Summers’ home.
Akbar was already punching numbers, his jacket unbuttoned.
“Does that mean what I think it does?” Summers asked.
“The media usually gets it wrong, but we can’t take chances,” Muhammad replied tersely.
“Where is she?” Summers asked softly.
“In good hands,” Akbar retorted sarcastically. Muhammad was on his mobile, calmly instructing someone to alert the local police.
“Waste of time,” Akbar said when the other man rang off. “The way the State Department has been on us, they know. The embassy is probably already surrounded by federal police.”
Summers looked at both men. “Did you ever stop to think, this may have nothing to do with me? Or my boy? This may be about things on your side of the water.”
“Possible,” Muhammad said, braking in front of Summers’ home. “Your State Department has been privy to worse info and sat on it.”
“My State Department,” Summers answered wearily, “is no different than any other. We are all bad men in bad businesses, gentlemen. Try not to paint yours as any better because the people whom you do business for have their faces on currency in your homeland.” He alighted from the car, holding the front passenger door for Akbar to change places with him. Muhammad saw the hulking security man open the door for Summers, and then he roared off.
“Where are they?”
“Don’t know,” Akbar grunted. “They were going downtown to shop, but I haven’t had a check in for hours.”
“Shop?” Akbar asked cheekily. “Is that a euphemism for…”
“Keep a civil tongue in your head,” Akbar said tightly. “This is our sovereign of whom you speak.”
One of Muhammad’s hands left the speeding car’s steering wheel. “The story is out there, Major. I am just asking if it is true.”
“If it is, it is none of our business,” was the reply the smaller man got.
“And if you know, you aren’t telling?”
“Muhammad,” Akbar began, “there are loyalties one must have. To their crown. To their duty. To their fellow officers, to their men. Soldiering is different from the diplomatic corps. They tell us whom to shoot, we shoot, and we keep going. We know whose side we re on, even if we are not sure of the cause which we have been ordered to fight. The rule is simple: WIN. To win, you have to be able to count on your chain of command, to inspire and believe in the ability of your men. It is that simple.”
“You keep each others’ secrets?”
“Two places in a man’s life inspire absolute loyalty: the battlefield, and the prison cell.”
“Major Makenju is quite familiar with both.”
“Let it go, Son,” Akbar pulled his weapon from under his shoulder and put it on the seat in front of him. “Some things are not germane to our mission.”
“Which is?”
“To secure Her Majesty as promptly as possible.”
The mobile stirred. Makenju awoke instantly.
“Yes?”
His feet swung over the bedside. He took care not to disturb the lump snoring gently next to him.
“I am not sure this line is secure. I will telephone you from a land line momentarily.”
He shrugged into his shirt and pulled on his pants, stopping only to grab the big automatic on the night table.
The covers stirred.
“What’s wrong, Ibrahim?”
“Majesty, I must leave you here, alone, momentarily. You must get dressed immediately. I will lock you in. Grab your things, leave the lights off, and dress in the bathroom. Stay in there until I return. Open the door for no one.”
“Ibrahim? What has happened?”
“Do as I ask, Ma’am. Your safety depends on it.”
Makenju opened the door cautiously, peered outside, and began to plod down the hall to the hotel office, praying Theo Morgan was still in for the day.
Muhammad caught pieces of Akbar’s conversation with Makenju, including the name of a city thirty mile south of Chicago.
“I know where it is,” he muttered, and swung the car onto Interstate 57 south, accelerating rapidly.
“What happened?”
“They ditched some State Department folk and came to some hotel out south.”
Muhammad kept his thoughts to himself.
“Hurry, Muhammad! The Major must not be thinking clearly. Although he used a land line, he still called my mobile. There is no way of knowing if that call was intercepted.”
“Shall I phone ahead for local law enforcement to secure this, ah, hotel?”
“Negative. I’ll call the embassy and have them contact the State authorities regarding our speed and urgency. This requires as little attention as possible, and small town folk love gawking where there are a lot of lights.”
“Yessir.”
“Look smart when we arrive, Muhammad. Safety off and round up the spout, ready to go.”
“Do you really think it’ll go there, Major Akbar?”
“I have learned it is better to be prepared than otherwise.” Akbar switched on the satellite radio and found the BBC. Moments later, there was a report on the coup in their homeland.
“Colonel Mbakwe? Is that who they said has claimed he now controls the government?”
Akbar shook his head. “I served under him. Good soldier. Good officer. Too bad he is an oath breaking sack of shit.”
“What will happen to him…”
“Once the forces topple him? The penalty for high treason is simple. Execution.”
“But Major Makenju is still alive…”
Akbar shook his head with emotion. “The Major never committed treason. His only crime was not knowing his place.”
Muhammad looked to press, but Akbar shook his head.
Akbar continued. “Mbakwe will have to fight off the loyalist forces. It doesn’t say which divisions are with him.”
“The Vice Admiral? Will he fight?”
“He is honor bound to, but his titles are ceremonial. He was a good enough sailor in his day, but something like this requires men who are used to bullets and issuing battlefield orders under fire. He has spent the last twenty one years, to his chagrin, being a hand holder at dignified functions. Know, in the interest of him being the spouse of a royal? They need to get him out of the country and let the real fighters fight. He would just be in the way and a morale killer if captured.”
“Will he run?”
Akbar shot Muhammad a sideways glance. “He is not a coward…but he is not an active military man. He is wise enough to follow the instructions of his security team and remove himself from harm’s way.”
The Cadillac took the exit at 75 miles an hour.
“There’s the place,” Akbar pointed. The sign was clearly visible from the expressway.
Muhammad nodded. He ran the red light, made a quick left, and pulled into the circular drive. Slamming the shifter into park, he pulled a heavy automatic from under his shoulder, pulled the slider, and nodded. Akbar’s huge 357 was in one hand, his other was on the door release.
“Let’s go. Look alive, soldier.”
From the passenger seat, Summers spread his hands and said, “Nothing.”
“Bullshit,” Akbar grunted. Muhammad grinned.
“Is he always this politically correct?” Summers grinned as well.
“I’m the diplomat,” Muhammad explained. “Major Akbar is a soldier. In his line of work, knowing bullshit when you see it is, well, part of your work. Although, sir, I do agree. Something about your story seems…absent.”
“I have business associates, friendly and…otherwise,” Summers began. “This isn’t their type of move. They too would have done some research and figured who this young lady was. The child of a local, um, entrepreneur? Fair game for kidnapping. You have to understand, however, in my world? International incidents can be very bad for business. Do you have any idea what happens when a royal goes missing? Embassies, the Feds, folk such as yourselves. No,” Summers shook his head again. “Very bad for business. Whoever is involved in this, if there is a this, is not from my world. Profit above all else, and this will eventually interrupt profit.”
Muhammad turned right onto Vincennes Avenue and headed east.
“So what are we facing?”
Summers shook his head. “I don’t know.”
Akbar’s mobile rang. He grunted after answering it, and then snapped it shut. “Turn on the radio,” he ordered. Muhammad complied. “No,” Akbar said, shaking his head in disgust at the music that came through the speakers. Find me a news channel…”
Summers tuned the dial to an AM station, where they heard announced, “there are no further details regarding the coup, but stay tuned as we will update you on this swift change in government, and how economists feel it will affect the international value of copper, gypsum, uranium and oil.”
Summers looked blank.
Muhammad said, “Find the major,” and sped the vehicle in the direction of Summers’ home.
Akbar was already punching numbers, his jacket unbuttoned.
“Does that mean what I think it does?” Summers asked.
“The media usually gets it wrong, but we can’t take chances,” Muhammad replied tersely.
“Where is she?” Summers asked softly.
“In good hands,” Akbar retorted sarcastically. Muhammad was on his mobile, calmly instructing someone to alert the local police.
“Waste of time,” Akbar said when the other man rang off. “The way the State Department has been on us, they know. The embassy is probably already surrounded by federal police.”
Summers looked at both men. “Did you ever stop to think, this may have nothing to do with me? Or my boy? This may be about things on your side of the water.”
“Possible,” Muhammad said, braking in front of Summers’ home. “Your State Department has been privy to worse info and sat on it.”
“My State Department,” Summers answered wearily, “is no different than any other. We are all bad men in bad businesses, gentlemen. Try not to paint yours as any better because the people whom you do business for have their faces on currency in your homeland.” He alighted from the car, holding the front passenger door for Akbar to change places with him. Muhammad saw the hulking security man open the door for Summers, and then he roared off.
“Where are they?”
“Don’t know,” Akbar grunted. “They were going downtown to shop, but I haven’t had a check in for hours.”
“Shop?” Akbar asked cheekily. “Is that a euphemism for…”
“Keep a civil tongue in your head,” Akbar said tightly. “This is our sovereign of whom you speak.”
One of Muhammad’s hands left the speeding car’s steering wheel. “The story is out there, Major. I am just asking if it is true.”
“If it is, it is none of our business,” was the reply the smaller man got.
“And if you know, you aren’t telling?”
“Muhammad,” Akbar began, “there are loyalties one must have. To their crown. To their duty. To their fellow officers, to their men. Soldiering is different from the diplomatic corps. They tell us whom to shoot, we shoot, and we keep going. We know whose side we re on, even if we are not sure of the cause which we have been ordered to fight. The rule is simple: WIN. To win, you have to be able to count on your chain of command, to inspire and believe in the ability of your men. It is that simple.”
“You keep each others’ secrets?”
“Two places in a man’s life inspire absolute loyalty: the battlefield, and the prison cell.”
“Major Makenju is quite familiar with both.”
“Let it go, Son,” Akbar pulled his weapon from under his shoulder and put it on the seat in front of him. “Some things are not germane to our mission.”
“Which is?”
“To secure Her Majesty as promptly as possible.”
The mobile stirred. Makenju awoke instantly.
“Yes?”
His feet swung over the bedside. He took care not to disturb the lump snoring gently next to him.
“I am not sure this line is secure. I will telephone you from a land line momentarily.”
He shrugged into his shirt and pulled on his pants, stopping only to grab the big automatic on the night table.
The covers stirred.
“What’s wrong, Ibrahim?”
“Majesty, I must leave you here, alone, momentarily. You must get dressed immediately. I will lock you in. Grab your things, leave the lights off, and dress in the bathroom. Stay in there until I return. Open the door for no one.”
“Ibrahim? What has happened?”
“Do as I ask, Ma’am. Your safety depends on it.”
Makenju opened the door cautiously, peered outside, and began to plod down the hall to the hotel office, praying Theo Morgan was still in for the day.
Muhammad caught pieces of Akbar’s conversation with Makenju, including the name of a city thirty mile south of Chicago.
“I know where it is,” he muttered, and swung the car onto Interstate 57 south, accelerating rapidly.
“What happened?”
“They ditched some State Department folk and came to some hotel out south.”
Muhammad kept his thoughts to himself.
“Hurry, Muhammad! The Major must not be thinking clearly. Although he used a land line, he still called my mobile. There is no way of knowing if that call was intercepted.”
“Shall I phone ahead for local law enforcement to secure this, ah, hotel?”
“Negative. I’ll call the embassy and have them contact the State authorities regarding our speed and urgency. This requires as little attention as possible, and small town folk love gawking where there are a lot of lights.”
“Yessir.”
“Look smart when we arrive, Muhammad. Safety off and round up the spout, ready to go.”
“Do you really think it’ll go there, Major Akbar?”
“I have learned it is better to be prepared than otherwise.” Akbar switched on the satellite radio and found the BBC. Moments later, there was a report on the coup in their homeland.
“Colonel Mbakwe? Is that who they said has claimed he now controls the government?”
Akbar shook his head. “I served under him. Good soldier. Good officer. Too bad he is an oath breaking sack of shit.”
“What will happen to him…”
“Once the forces topple him? The penalty for high treason is simple. Execution.”
“But Major Makenju is still alive…”
Akbar shook his head with emotion. “The Major never committed treason. His only crime was not knowing his place.”
Muhammad looked to press, but Akbar shook his head.
Akbar continued. “Mbakwe will have to fight off the loyalist forces. It doesn’t say which divisions are with him.”
“The Vice Admiral? Will he fight?”
“He is honor bound to, but his titles are ceremonial. He was a good enough sailor in his day, but something like this requires men who are used to bullets and issuing battlefield orders under fire. He has spent the last twenty one years, to his chagrin, being a hand holder at dignified functions. Know, in the interest of him being the spouse of a royal? They need to get him out of the country and let the real fighters fight. He would just be in the way and a morale killer if captured.”
“Will he run?”
Akbar shot Muhammad a sideways glance. “He is not a coward…but he is not an active military man. He is wise enough to follow the instructions of his security team and remove himself from harm’s way.”
The Cadillac took the exit at 75 miles an hour.
“There’s the place,” Akbar pointed. The sign was clearly visible from the expressway.
Muhammad nodded. He ran the red light, made a quick left, and pulled into the circular drive. Slamming the shifter into park, he pulled a heavy automatic from under his shoulder, pulled the slider, and nodded. Akbar’s huge 357 was in one hand, his other was on the door release.
“Let’s go. Look alive, soldier.”
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