Reflecting on a hot summer night

July 18th, 2018. 

It's been a week like no other!

I've learned that my mom is exhibiting signs of dementia and that her grasp of reality is quickly deteriorating. She's always been a little goofy, but her goofiness was endearing when I was a kid, except when it was embarrassing.

She was fearless in her convictions to be kind towards animals and strays no matter the species. I remember how she helped me free a water snake who had gotten stuck in my fish trap when other parents would have either run for their lives or killed the snake in fear. 

Once, on our voyage from Florida to Alaska to serve our three-year station there with the US Air Force, we heard a commotion outside a truck stop diner off the ALCAN Highway. A young boy was crying because his dog, a husky mix, had been attacked by a defensive porcupine. More likely, the dog had attacked the porcupine and received a mouthful of pain for his troubles. The boy's mom, a waitress or maybe even the owner of the diner, seemed too flustered to deal with the dog until my mom, hearing the situation, left her place at the table and ordered the boy's mom to secure a rag and a pair of pliers. My mom, knowing no hesitation when recognizing the pain of one of God's creatures, calmly straddled the snarling and yelping dog's shoulders, and began the arduous task of removing quills from the slobber-wet whiskers of the beast whose pale blue eyes expressed all the fear and wildness of a wolf as this small woman from Texas began her operation.

"Lady, he'll bite you!" the other mom protested, but my mom shrugged her shoulders as if to say that she wouldn't take it personal if the dog did her harm, but the quills had to come out.

I often found myself sighing in exasperation over my mom's failure to appreciate the boundaries others put up in polite society. I remember reading the note my high school girlfriend wrote me in which she explained why her mom no longer approved of my dating her. My mom had somehow managed to share her whole life's story over coffee with my girlfriend's mom, including her marital woes being married to the man who had served as my dad, and the level of candor my mom exhibited was just too much for my girlfriend's mom, who operated under more conventional modes of social discourse. Years later, while attending a workshop about how to work with underprivileged children, I learned that it was common for people who have grown up in poverty to know no personal boundaries when meeting others in a social setting. According to Ruby Payne's materials, I had grown up with all the earmarks of someone lacking social privilege. We could never save money because if you have cash in hand, you need to enjoy it since tomorrow is really not guaranteed to anyone. Generosity came easy because we could empathize with those who did not have enough...

She was 17 when I was born. And over the years, I learned that I would never know my biological father. The man she married was often miserable and mom would share his misery, rejecting my youthful advice that she develop a hobby or join a club. "I have to take care of things at home...I have to take care of your father..." she would say. When we were stationed in Alaska, I remember rolling my eyes at my mom and our neighbors because they would meet at least once a week over coffee and gossip. I heard things that I should have forgotten, but I was glad that my mom and these other women could laugh together and support one another. 

Last week, I took my mom to visit our local Mental Health Services office because I had noticed some alarming changes. She was forgetting things, and remembering things that had not really happened. She told me that my sister, who now lives in Colorado somewhere, had stolen her car keys and had been colluding with my step dad who had disappeared one day. He suffers from diabetes and blindness, and I had noticed that things seemed tense between them as my mom struggled to care for his needs while also struggling to take care of her house. Then, one day, he walked away, she said. "Mom? How could he just walk away?" She replied, "Oh he's got another woman and they hang out with people who are not so good. I think they're smoking that weed." Each time I quizzed her about him, I'd get different parts of the story. His daughter cursed my mom over the phone because my mom mentioned not being able to pay the bills and wondering what she was supposed to do with her husband just leaving like that. Another time, mom told me that she had spoken with a doctor about him, and that he was getting treatment at some hospital rehab center somewhere.

So when I took her to the Mental Health office, the intake counselor asked my mom a litany of questions. He sat on his side of the desk with sloped shoulders, and a small round head that balanced upon a pear shaped body, and his accent was definitely African or maybe from some Island where tropical fruits fall from trees. I googled his last name while he questioned my mom, hoping to find out what nationality he was. Each time he asked her a question, he would listen to her response and then type an answer on his keyboard, pecking away with only his two index fingers, their nails pail against his jet black skin. I wanted to ask about his life, because I was curious and I could tell, that despite the personal and embarrassing nature of the questions he asked, my mom was also curious to know more about him. His fingers hit that keyboard with such force, I wondered how many times his IT guys had to replace equipment for him. 

"Do you attend church or religious services?" he asked, sounding like a character from a Chinua Achebe novel. My mom, smiling politely but answering like a child who's being questioned about the disappearance of the last cupcake in the cupboard, "well, not now, but Ive been meaning to ..."

"Do you spend time with any friends?"

"Do you have any friends with which to share your experiences...."

"Are you losing your mind because you've already lost everything else in your pathetic life?"

He of course did not ask all of those questions, but the meaning seemed implicit....as I watched my mom grow sad at the reflection that she had lost all of the people she cared about...her first husband who had suffered a headache almost every day for the 18 years they were married.......her daughter who took and took from her, and who abused her, and used her birthday calls to hurl insults...her second husband, whom she married twice despite knowing that people don't really change all that much....her son, who though he was here in this office, and was pledging to help sort things out, had taken every opportunity to distance himself from the stresses of being a part of this family...

And I began to think that how I deal with my mom now, makes all the difference in the way we spend the rest of our time on this planet. As I listened, I began to think about my own relationships with my sons, and my ex wife, and my girlfriend, and those people I think of as friends, even though I know that our connections are tenuous at best...because I'm a product of this woman and some man out there, some abusive beast of a man, and all I want to do is to help my mom find a joyful reason to move forward. I'm not ready to be the caretaker of an Alzheimer's patient, but I wasn't ready to be a dad when my boys were born, either. 

Soon, I'll be visiting with my apartment manager to find out if I can break my lease. Soon, I'll be writing a check to cover my mom's mortgage payment, a traffic citation she earned by driving a car with expired tags, her water bill, and we will try to sort through the stack of creditors who mail her letters once a month asking for the impossible. Soon, summer vacation will be spent, and it'll be back to school, but I wonder what the impending changes are going to do for our relationship, and for my relationship with my boys. Soon, I hope we will find the cause of her dementia, and I hope that we can find a treatment that works for her. 

Skating Past Middle Age

I am 45 years old and I love few activities more than I love to skate longboards.

I know some young folks think that only wannabes and girls ride longboards, but honestly, I've reached an age that insulates me from the barbed wit of those pimply-faced nuts who think that their bones will knit back together when their stair-jumping kickflips go awry.

Truth be told, I love wasting time with my sons, watching skate videos. My sons have introduced me to the Braille army, and I introduced them to the old Dog Town and Z Boys, and together, we've been studying the history of skateboarding through the narratives of old skating legends and young YouTube stars.

My first introduction to skateboarding was back in the late 70's or early 80's, but the metal-wheeled monstrosity I first tried felt like some medieval punishment so I gave it up in favor of my purple banana-seated bicycle which I rode religiously until it was stolen by the local bully. Later, I would construct ramps and jump cheap bmx bikes with my buddies, and we learned to bunny hop and do wheelies like all good, red-blooded American kids.

One day after school, a recently transplanted Yankee boy from Maine invited me to try out the half-pipe that he and his brother had constructed from plywood lifted from a local construction site. Somehow, they convinced me to try to drop in on one of their skateboards, and when I crashed at the bottom of the ramp, I said "goodbye" to skateboards for the next 25 years.

In my thirties, I had begun riding bicycles with friends, and had made cycling to work a priority. One Christmas, my son Dylan asked for a rip stick, a wild invention using two caster wheels and a pivoting deck that required riders to mimic the tick-tack movements of old-school skaters. It was awkward learning to ride it, but I soon found that coasting around the cul-de-sac on my son's Christmas present made me envious of those who were cool enough to know how to skate and surf.

I began researching longboards, thinking that their larger, more flexible construction would allow me the sensation of surfing while I try to keep up with my kids. When I learned that one of my cycling buddies actually owned several boards, I dared to ask him if I could try one out.

My first attempt at longboarding was a brief coast down a street in the historic Fairmount neighborhood of Fort Worth, TX. I may have ditched the board to avoid being hit by a harried Honda driver, and the board may or may not have dented a neighbor's catalytic converter when I launched it under their parked car, but nevertheless, I was hooked immediately. I loved the smooth sensation of rolling on over-sized poly wheels, and the board felt nothing like the shaky little skateboards of death that the young punks use to grind rails and ollie over curbs and scrape the paint off of public buildings.

My first board was a sweet set-up that my ex wife bought me as a Father's Day surprise.  It was a used board set up as a downhill racer. Concave, stiff, and supported by heavy duty trucks, the board was super smooth, but not the flexible board made for carving and coasting like the pintails and bamboo boards I had watched countless riders use in the YouTube videos I had been watching for inspiration and tutorials.

I built skate gloves for me and my boys, using plastic circles I had cut from a cutting board which I then glued to old work gloves with strips of Velcro. These allowed us to learn how to slow down by turning our hands into brake pads, and from there, we could learn to do Coleman and Pendy slides, where our boards would drift around pivoting points where our plastic-lined hands hit the pavement. Our wheels would make absurd screeching sounds much to the admiration of the neighborhood kids who watched us learn on the slight incline of the parking lot of the local playground.

Over the past few years, as my knees have grown sore from cycling, I have turned more and more to the boards as my way to decompress and destress after work. For me, it's not about looking cool or learning the latest trick; gravity and old age are not in my favor, but it's more about the sensation of carving down gentle hills, the exhilaration of a swift decent, and the spirituality of being in motion without pollution, of exercising out in the natural world rather than inside a foul-smelling gym. I'd rather sidewalk surf on one of my boards for miles than spend an hour watching millionaires play sports on TV, and skating has continued to grow as a great bonding activity for me and my boys.

If only I had a dollar for every time someone my age has seen my surf by and said, "Man! If I tried that I'd break my neck!" The reality is that skating longboards is only visually like skating regular boards. It isn't for everyone, but there are many ways to skate longboards. I make a point of skating no faster than I think I might be able to run, hoping that if I had to hop off in an emergency, I'd at least have a chance of recovering by transitioning from Old Man Hurtling Through Space, to Old Man Going for Quick Sprint. I've been injured a few times, but not badly enough to scare me away from the adrenaline rush of occasionally going too fast, nor the serenity of finding the perfect rhythm and speed to help me imagine that I'm gliding smoothly down a glassy wave and not rocketing down a gravely hill of concrete. And remember, like most things these days, YouTube is a great teacher if you're curious about how to get started.

Clear Fork Fishing.

Largemouth on Clear Fork of the Trinity

Saturday, I worked from 9 am until nearly 8 pm at the Bike Share, so Sunday, I decided it was time to get my canoe on the water. I had tied it to my Jeep days ago, but had not been able to get out when I first planned because my mom's car had broken down.

So Sunday comes along, and I may have been suffering the after effects of my friend's farewell party the night before, so I was slow-moving and my stomach was unhappy with me, and it was hot, and Sunday Fun Day was going on at the Panther Island Pavilion, so I drove around, checking out all the possible places I've used to launch my canoe downtown. River levels have dropped, so the grassy banks are high, and mud still makes things slippery and treacherous for a simple bank launch. I'm not scared to drop in, but Sunday morning joggers might see me if I capsize, and frankly, I'm not in the mood this morning to entertain. 

I end up at the 183 crossing, south of town. I guess it's technically Benbrook at this point on the map. I unload the canoe, then carry it a hundred yards or so to a clearing on the bank where the mud is negotiable, and I leave it to gather up my fishing gear, water, paddles, and life vests. It has been a habit to carry extra vests and paddles in preparation for emergencies, but sometimes, my proclivity for preparedness is a pain. I hate walking. 

I load everything in the canoe, push her to the water's edge, leaving enough of her hull high on the bank so that I may use her as a bridge over the mud... my weight, as I near the stern, will help me clear the mud and vegetation, and soon, I'm freely drifting, the sun high overhead, my palmetto straw cowboy hat dripping sweat...it's Texas in August, don't you know?

Near the confluence of St Mary's Creek and The Clear Fork of the Trinity

I take a few casts in the open water near the Trinity Trail, fishing the edge of the vegetation, but get no strikes, so I head under the bridge, seeking shade and structure. On the upstream side of the bridge, there are log jams and fallen trees, the result of our recent flooding. I get a few hits near a tree, and decide to keep going...

The river forks here. Having not really studied this area on the map, I think I'm heading up Mary's Creek when I veer left and paddle into clear, deep water. In fact, I am on the Clear Fork of the Trinity, according to my later searches on Google Maps. Immediately, I'm impressed by the natural beauty of this area. The oppressive sunlight, when filtered through the canopy of sycamores, cottonwoods, pecans, and ashes, is softened, and bounces back to underlight the bare trunks of heavy trees, giving the atmosphere of some tropical river. It's as if, five minutes from the bridge, I've wound up in the Orinoco or the headwaters of some Amazonian tributary...Except for the occasional backyard patio I spy, precariously leaning over the edge of a storm-washed bank. More than once, I found the after-effects of storm waters' wrath: trees, centuries-old, lying in the water with roots leaving behind a vertical crater of caved-in bank earth. And, again, I'm reminded of the need for greenbelts. Every creek and stream and river should have a safe greenbelt corridor...a place where the riparian habitat is left undisturbed. How many times do we have to watch the news and see some wealthy landowner complaining about the damage done as a floodwaters erode their backyard paradise? 

We know better. Rivers flood. Trees fall down. We should allow the acres bordering creeks and rivers to remain unscathed by development, so that the trees and grasses may do their work of filtering the water, and providing habitat for those creatures who depend on that delicate zone between the water and its flood stage...

Every place where I found a fallen tree, I also caught a bass. I lost count of how many fish I caught, but I think 30 is a fair estimate. Creek fishing has always been my favorite. I detest sitting still, and to be able to move along a creek bank, seeking out structure and discovering new opportunities around every bend...it makes fishing more like the prehistoric hunting I imagine my ancestors doing. It's active. It's explorative. At times, I stand in my canoe, my calves bracing against the thwarts for balance, and I see the perspective change and see to the bottom of the river and see that I am surrounded by spawning sunfish and I know that if I hunger, I may find what I need in the river.

A shaka in Panther City

It's been a long day, and I'm going to blog to unwind. Is it the norm to blog when you've nothing to say?

It's been a full day, working two shifts for the Fort Worth Bike Share program. Sweaty and grimy, I feel the gentle calm that comes from having worked all day in the sun...the fatigue works as a sedative, my body is relaxed and I feel at ease in the breeze of my fan while I nurse my last glass of Bockslider, a beer named in honor of the Texas band, The Toadies, who have performed at Martin House Brewery more than once...

One of the best moments today was in answering tourist questions about the Tarrant County Courthouse, and then seeing the elderly visitors study the panther sculpture that lies in respite across the street.

       "Do you know the story about the panther?" I asked as they took pictures with their phones.
       "No, tell us!" their enthusiasm was as genuine as my youngest son's when he is studying dinosaurs and caterpillars.
       "Well, the story goes that a reporter from Dallas, in the late 1800's, claimed that Fort Worth was such a sleepy, laid-back town that a panther could be seen napping on the steps of the court house...well, Fort Worth considered the intended insult as something to be proud of, and so folks began calling Fort Worth "Panther City."

They laughed, took more pictures, and thanked me for the story. Then I proceeded to drive off, leaving the company bicycle pump and a bag of tools used for bike maintenance under an oak tree on Main Street. I drove back to the shop, dropped off a couple of wounded bikes, drove across town to add a couple of bikes to an empty station, and then I listened to a customer who explained that his bike wasn't shifting. I answered some questions about the pricing structure of the bike share, took his bike to the truck, and reached for the tools...

I may have said an ugly word or two when I realized that my tool bag was probably being pawned in Haltom City. I lashed the broken bike to the trailer, jumped in and took off...I started estimating the replacement cost of the missing tools, then started figuring out how many hours I had lost as a result of having to replace them...

As I negotiated the heavy, leisurely paced traffic, I kept repeating one or two of those ugly words until I turned the corner from 3rd onto Main, and saw the yellow shaft of the air pump and the bag of tools resting as I had left them, chilling in the shade.

Faith in humanity restored.

The rest of the day went by with no drama...just constant movement, watching the computer to make sure stations getting full of bikes were relieved of a bike or two so that customers could park without fear of paying overage fees. Sundays are fun days, with groups checking out bikes together, because there really is no better way to see our city. Friends, riding fast enough to feel a breeze, socializing, exercising, getting fresh air, laughing...

A few weeks ago, a man pulled his car over to yell at me..."That right there is one of the biggest God Damned wastes of taxpayers' money I ever saw!"

    "Excuse me, sir?" I was used to people stopping to say "Thank you for doing this, this bike thing is such a service to our city, keep it up!" Occasionally, I hear people say things like, "I wish I had thought of this!" or "Y'all must be making a killing of that little piece of real estate!" as they look at the plot of land occupied by the Bcycle kiosk. There are a number of people who think the bike share program is Mayor Betsy Price's pet project, but I usually get to say something positive, and then explain that it is a private nonprofit organization. Yes, federal grant money was used to buy capital, but the running costs are met by donations, sponsorships, annual memberships, advertising, late fees...etc. Not taxed money.

This guy wanted none of that. "I know that you get subsidized..." and then he drove off. Due to traffic, I ended up behind him, and he lifted his hand high and gave me the finger until he drove past a pair of cops and then he changed his California howdy into a Hawaiian shaka sign that surfers use to send love. Ass hat. If only he could see the smiles on people's faces and hear how many are using the bikes to commute, each trip leaving a car parking space available for ass hats like him to use.

I'm not an evangelist for the cycling lifestyle the way many of my friends are. Lately, I choose to surf around on my long board rather than get the bike of the rack. I think it feels frivolous and free to skate around town like I do. I'm not getting any younger, so I want to do what I can to enjoy what I've got. It's more than that, though; it's like zen...when I find a good rhythm and gentle hill, and I'm coasting and carving, I can imagine riding a glassy wave, in tune with the natural forces at work in this world, until a wheel finds a piece of gravel, and then my old friend Gravity and his sister, Inertia remind me of my age.

Teaching Ollie to Ride

My ex wife and my oldest son went to New York City on a school field trip this week, so I have had the pleasure of taking care of Ollie, my 7 year old son.

When his brother, Dylan, learned to ride bikes, we had the whole family support group together...though I was largely responsible for teaching Dylan, I knew that if he ended up with skinned knees, his mom was home, able to help with first aid and cookies, if need be. It seems like I remember that Dylan learned pretty quickly, suffered a few set backs, including more than one episode with wasps stinging him while on rides, but eventually, he became quite able to ride. By the time he was 10 years old, he even joined me on a Critical Mass ride around Fort Worth, and a ride from downtown Fort Worth to Prairie Fest, out at the Tandy Hills Nature Area.

Oliver, on the other hand, has the same family members supporting his efforts to learn how to ride, but his support group is divided by divorce. Two different homes. Two different bikes.

I started trying to teach him a couple of years ago. Before the divorce, I bought a knock-off strider bike, a bike with no pedals, designed to teach kids to balance without training wheels. I saw videos of kids doing all kinds of amazing tricks, off-roading and coasting with these things. Ollie seemed too tall for the one I found, so his use of the bike was never as graceful as the videos I found.

In the months of separation and divorce, teaching Ollie to ride became a back burner issue. He outgrew the baby bikes we had been given by friends or found in thrift stores, so I took the pedals off of Dylans Specialized kids bike and let Ollie practice coasting on it. The wheels and pedal cranks look a bit big, but with the seat in the lowest position, Ollie could easily manage to push the bike with just his feet, so in between long boarding lessons and checkers and legos, we occasionally tried balancing on the bike, coasting up and down the sidewalk.

Yesterday, after spending the day at the Fort Worth Zoo, I suggested it was time to take the bike out again. Still without pedals, needing air in its tires, I set it up, inflated the tires, and set Ollie to work. He immediately made it look easy, so I asked him if he wanted pedals.

"Yep, I'm ready," he answered cheefully.

I had a pair of aluminum platform pedals with harsh looking studs that I feared would skin his shins, but I put them on anyway, and instructed him to put his feet on the pedals while I pushed.

"Just use them to balance at first, buddy." I guided him, one hand under the saddle and one hand on the left side of his handle bars. We coasted awkwardly down the sidewalk while I tried to feel that moment when I knew he was balancing on his own.

I'm sure someone has written poetry about this parental task...teaching a kid to ride. It's ripe for metaphor: supporting, guiding, with the ultimate goal of letting the child go, autonomously into the dangerous world, without our protective power. If I do it right, I give Ollie the ability to leave me. If I do it wrong, he will be bound to the sidewalk, dependent upon others for transportation.

I suggested we try to get to the park over on 5th, thinking that he might be able to ride in the open field. Slowly but surely, we labored down Allen and took a left on 5th, just past the Arts Center. As we made our way down the sidewalk, I notice a couple of boys sitting at a picnic table in the park.

"Hey! You trying to teach him to ride?" One yells, even before I we are across the street.

"Yep."

"You should teach him the Mexican way," he suggests.

I'm closer now, so I ask, "yeah? What's the Mexican way?"

"You take him to a hill, and the gravity keeps him rolling until he learns to keep going...he has no choice but to ride!" As I listen I grin, shaking my head. Imagining the skinned knees and elbows and possible medical bills....

"That's not a bad idea, but I'm gonna keep trying this first..." I started pushing Ollie in the grass, running with him as he began to pedal. Almost immediately, he was riding, though slowed by the thick grass. The louder of the two boys kept offering advice and suggestions...I took out my phone and made video clips of Ollie's successes. His failures were minor, and he seemed to feel safe enough to risk riding faster. He faltered when I tried to get him to ride on the park sidewalk, but I was still happy with the success we had experienced in the grass.

As we worked, the boys, who had started playing catch with a football, started yelling offensive curses to each other.

"Come on guys. Watch that language, I've got a little one here!" I used my teacher voice, slightly stern, but with a calm though plaintive quality that I could quickly transform into the voice of authority if need be.

As Ollie and I tried to leave, the loud one punted his ball so that it landed close enough to me that I was able to grab it and send it back in a forceful spiral, albeit a bit low to be a good pass.

"Hey!" He threw it back. I caught it and returned it in a high spiral arc.

Once more, then another....then, Ollie and I headed back down 5th towards Allen.

"Have a good one, guys!" As I guided Ollie back home, I smiled knowing that kids really haven't changed that much. I was in Ollie's shoes once...relying on my mom to guide me into the realm of self-supported cycling...I was like those kids in the park, testing newly found autonomy, challenging the world with words, testing my place in the hierarchy of things.

June 18, 2015

As I sit comfortably, even if a bit sweaty, in my humble bachelor's pad in the Fairmount neighborhood of Fort Worth, watching my youngest son play Xbox without a concern in the world, I feel a weight of sadness, knowing that tonight people mourn loved ones lost to a senseless act of hatred and violence.

Back when I was about six years old, a year younger than my youngest is now, I became the victim of racial hatred. I was playing in the yard of our Denver apartment building when a black child who must have been 12 years old or so, found me alone and attacked me, calling me words I had never heard before, words I later learned all too well. I remember how it felt when he managed to kick me in my arm pit and how shocked I was to be receiving a beating from someone I had never seen before. I don't remember much about the aftermath, just the indignation of having been hated because I was white. In the years following the attack,  my family lived mostly on Air Force bases, and no matter what negative associations I might have with those places, I can remember that they were racially diverse communities where housewives often joined one another for coffee and gossip, and where race was seldom a reason to prevent someone from playing pick up games of football in the nearest field. My parents never used racial epithets around me, and never did we talk about the attack I had suffered as being a reason to cast dispersion on anyone of color.

Visiting my family in North Carolina, however, I learned that race was still very much an issue. The first time I remember hearing the "n word," was in the small community where my dad had been raised. Years later, when my father married my stepmom, an African American woman, I learned that even though most of the people I knew there would never condone lynching, they seemed quite certain by their responses that marrying outside of one's race was a cardinal sin. I remember thinking that, as much as I love living in the South, I wouldn't want to raise my children in a community that openly belittles others because of their skin color, or because of behavior that developed as a natural result of years of oppression. I remember being in my 20s, and feeling embarrassed by the shows of deference given me by elderly black folks working in service occupations. "Please ma'am, you don't need to call me 'sir,'" I remember saying to the elderly black lady who used to sweep my classroom floor with her God-awful dust mop that carried the mustiness of million passes across the elementary school floors.

Worse yet, I remember my own carelessness with words when I insulted a man I deeply respected, believing that because everyone knew I wasn't a racist, I could say anything and it would still be funny. Sorry, but being friends with someone for a semester does not allow me insensitivity towards his personal experience of being black.

Then, today, I read a comment Father Nathan Monk had made about his outrage that Dylan Roof, the white shooter of the black church members, was able to be arrested without violence, yet police had to brutalize poor black teens at a McKinney pool party, as though the two incidents occurring separately, thousands of miles apart, were evidence of a systemic problem with policing in America. Even though I am inclined to agree with that notion, to some extent, I chose to speak up, suggesting that at the moment when a suspect is being arrested, violence can be avoided, regardless of race:  "At the time of interaction with police, no matter the crime, the arrestee's attitude can affect the officer's behavior. Someone openly defying authorities is going to be taken down. It's ugly and sometimes brutal, but people can, except in those atrocious cases of abuse, avoid violence."

The OP then replied with a hashtag: "#victimblaming."

What followed was a series of posts and replies between me and Father Nathan Monk and those who agreed with me and those who took issue with Monk's comparisons between today's arrests and other instances of police excessive use of power when confronting black victims. 

It became clear that my view was being dismissed because I dared to suggest that some victims of police brutality could have avoided their fates if they had learned to respect authority. Sadly, there have been many well-documented cases where this was not the case. What seems to happen more and more today, through the posting and tweeting on social media, is that extreme viewpoints get all the attention, and those in the middle are thrust to one side or the other. The moral middle ground has become untenable in many instances.

For the record, I am glad to hear that the Texas Rangers are investigating what happened when the infamous McKinney cop tripped over a root and started pointing his gun at people. I am glad that Dylan Roof was arrested and will stand trial. I am glad that people are empowered to challenge authorities when authorities mess up. I am not glad that many people feel empowered to blame the cops for violence when I see children being brought up without guidance or expectations of respect for authority. 

In today's online debate, I dared to suggest that some of my students listen to rappers such as Chief Keef, and that they hear more from those who make millions promoting hate and criminal behavior than they do from elders who want them to become respectable citizens. A mother responded, saying that her son listens to all kinds of "ratchet" music and he stills loves his family and respects his elders. It is good that she is able to teach him to differentiate between music and the real world, because there are plenty of kids for whom no acceptable role model can be found. When there is no one to help shape our young people into citizens, what are we to expect of our law enforcement officers when push comes to shove?

Every institution in America needs improvement, no doubt. As I tuck my child into bed tonight, kiss his forehead and tell him that I love him, I know that the change needed in America is not the abolition of our law enforcement agencies. It may sound idealistic, and for students who suffered in my classes, repetitive, but the greatest change we need is empathy on all levels.

Imagine how much change could be effected if children were taught that empathy really mattered. When I taught English, I always emphasized the need for empathy in being an effective communicator and reader. The same applies for interacting with those who are different. Imagine if police officers learned to connect better with those they deal with, seeing perps as human beings, not just the offenses they commit...and those children being raised to understand one another and to see officers as human beings, not just symbols of authority to thwart...

Victimblaming

There's a game that some play better than others, from which few can abstain...

Some play it forcefully, full tilt, pedal to the metal, their mettle tested

Others play passively, observing from the shadows, wall flowers, flowing with the go

     never seeming to commit, always aware,

but beware these players, 

     passive aggressively throwing their slugs,

     "yes sir, no ma'am, I'll do as you suggest sir,"

     They smile and look you in the eye, and they will comply if the cuffs come to shove

and their lawyers will post bail and they will survive and their charges will flutter unfettered to the floor.

Indignant, 

righteously so,

the forceful will glare in the face of their oppressors,

and they will sound their barbaric yaups

and be cut down in the street 

as their mother's weeping plays 

in the clips on the six o'clock news, 

and edited, 

they will stream in the minds of the armchair anarchists who wait their turn to play,

their ammo boxes bulging with brass casings.

And what the world needs now is love,

the halftime show begins calling upon providence and justice

and jesters sneer, mocking the causes and players of the game,

and prophets predict doom, looking to the dusty volumes of archaic wisdom,

and I'm the man in the middle of the field, trying to forfeit the game altogether,

but by some obscurity of the rules, conscientious objectors find no sanctuary, and we must choose sides, even when truth lies somewhere in the gray areas of the game.