Just got back from a vacation to visit S's family in Columbia, South Carolina. Here's what happened the first four days.
Monday, November 21
I only have one regular meeting at work I absolutely need to attend: Monday, 2:00 pm. It's amazing how often this day and time can impede travel plans. In this case, I have to wait until after the meeting before I can leave. S and Lil' S have been in SC since last Wednesday, and I'm joining them there tomorrow. Tonight I'm staying in Blacksburg, VA with my friends E and F and their two-year-old son Lil' E. Because I don't leave until 3:00 pm traffic is rough out of DC. It takes me over two hours drive the first 45 miles of the trip. I don't get in to Blacksburg until 8:30.
Upon arrival, E greets me: "F is in the hospital. Lil' E is downstairs with the neighbors. Let's go get a beer." Apparently, F had to have surgery to remove her gall bladder three weeks ago, and in doing a follow up procedure, they injected some dye into her pancreas, and her body had an adverse reaction to it. This made her feel very sick, and they rushed her to the doctor this afternoon. Ultimately she is/will be fine, but they want to keep her in the hospital as a precaution. E has been overworked lately trying to keep up with his (and her) job (they're both instructors, and he's been covering a class for her) and care for her and Lil' E, so she instructed him to take Lil' E to the neighbors and take me out for a beer and some dinner -- so that's what he did.
[I learned the full name is Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State College.]
Tuesday, November 22
Lil' E gets us up pretty early because that's what two-year-olds do. He's a little unsure of me at first, but I get on his good side over a bowl of cheerios while E showers. At one point I fart, and he points towards the chair and says "noise", which I find hysterical. We take him to daycare, and then E and I get breakfast, and then we visit F in the hospital for a few minutes. I hit the road again after that, and get into Columbia around 2:30. There's no traffic the entire way. It's times like this you question whether or not living in a big city is really the way to go.
Lil' S is napping when I arrive, but he's super happy to see me when he gets up. He says, "Daddy!", and then runs over and climbs up on my lap and keeps smiling and hugging me, which elates me to no end. We don't do much for the rest of the night, but eat and sit around (a true vacation). S's sister is in town as well. Than around 10:30 pm, S's cousin arrives from Jacksonville with his wife and their two daughters (ages 5ish and 10ish).
At night, I stay up on late (S's mom gets up with Lil' S, so I can sleep in -- arguably the best part about my vacation) and read articles about the Ferguson Grand Jury's decision to not indict Darren Wilson. I feel the same way about it as I felt about the Trayvon Martin tragedy, which is that Officer Wilson didn't do the right thing, but within a strictly legal framework, he probably (key word, here, as we don't know what actually happened) didn't commit a crime. As I understand things, officers in Missouri have tremendous leeway in using lethal force if they are involved in a scuffle and feel their life is threatened.
The two big questions that came to my mind in reading this are: a) Is it a good thing that police officers have an almost carte blanche license to kill? b) Why did Wilson feel his life was in danger in an encounter with an unarmed man? I'll answer the former in a word: no. On the latter, if you honestly think his race played no part in it (as I've heard many contend), then you are a fool. If Michael Brown had been my idiot (white) friend from high school, who once tried to punch a cop, he would have been subdued with non-lethal force (don't officers carry mace, anymore?) and eventually given a plea deal to a misdemeanor. But, as I've said before, white people are irrationally afraid of black people. So just existing as a large black teenager (admittedly one who just committed a strong-arm petty theft) is a threatening offense to many people.
One bit of evidence I found very damning for Wilson was his hyperbolic testimony of the encounter. When you use words like "demon" and "it" and ascribe superhuman properties to the victim (Hulk Hogan against a child), then it says to me that you don't have a firm grasp on reality. And perhaps your opinion about what constitutes a legitimate threat to your life shouldn't be the final word. I saw a video recently of a black man being shot by a white officer at a gas station for getting his ID out of his van. This is literally what happened without an iota of exaggeration. (You can Google it. I don't want to link to it because it bums me out.) Now, suppose the man had been killed -- very possible, he was shot after all -- and further suppose there wasn't a camera around to capture it all. You don't think the office would have been saying his life felt threatened? That the man dove into his car and pulled out something that looked like a gun? Who could say any different?
[A little lake near S's parents house.]
Wednesday, November 23
The big event for the day is a trip to Chuck E. Cheese's (which, by the way, I just learned has a possessive 'S' on the end; I always said "Chuck E. Cheese"). I haven't been there in about 30 years, and it is not how I remember it all. I remember it being fun and nice, not headache-inducing and seedy. It's like being in a run-down casino only instead of degenerate gamblers, booze, slot machines, and has-been lounge acts, it's hyperactive little kids, sugar, video games, and an ear-splitting animatronic band that sings mostly about pizza.
But the kids love it. (There are four kids and five adults, and the ratio is barely adequate.) Lil' S is super funny. He climbs up on one of the rides, puts the token in the slot, rides the ride stoically, not so much as a semblance of a smile, and then puts his hand out for another token as soon as it's over. He's serious about having fun! He also gets up into the "tubes" they have on the ceiling because of course he does. He's too short to climb the steps that take you up there, so instead he goes up the slide when S turns her back. (Luckily no little kid is coming down at the time.) It actually really makes me nervous because you can't see where he is, and it would be extremely difficult for me to get up there if anything should happen to him. Eventually he comes down, but he gets back up again, this time by soliciting a boost up the stairs from an older little girl. ("He'p me! He'p me!") Hey, at least he's resourceful.
Oh, and also, I set the pop-a-shot record.
After Chuck E. Cheese's, we stop at Baskin-Robbins because pizza and soda and french fries wasn't enough junk food, we need something from the dessert group. I get a scoop of chocolate and peanut butter that I split with Lil' S. I feel like chocolate and peanut butter doesn't get its just due as a delicious ice cream flavor. I put it right up there with cookies n' cream and mint chip -- probably even a bit ahead. (Yes, you read that correctly.) By the way, does anything make you desire water more than Baskin-Robbins ice cream. For me, I could run wind sprints in Death Valley and still not be as thirsty as I am after I finish a cone at Baskin-Robbins. I don't know why that is.
Thursday, November 24
Thanksgiving! On Thanksgiving, some families eat turkey, drink booze, and watch football. Others eat Rice Krispies sauteed with peanuts in chili powder, drink coffee, and watch Frozen. At my in-laws it's the latter -- although, truth be told, I'm able to put the football games on the big screen in the background. I get to watch the Seahawks lay waste to the 49ers in San Francisco, which is pretty awesome.
After everybody goes to sleep, I stay up late again and read more articles about Ferguson. The rioting is horrific, but I agree with the people who say focusing on the rioting is missing the point. People are rioting in response to the Darren Wilson decision the same way a firecracker explodes in response to a flame. It's the catalyst, but it only happens because of tremendous volatility below the surface. If gunpowder isn't packed tightly into a little package, lighting a wick does nothing. Similarly if black citizens didn't feel oppressed by a police force that is supposed to be working for them, not against them, the response to the Michael Brown killing would have been very different and much less destructive.
Also, all the commentary suggesting that the rioting somehow negates the larger point (an unarmed black man was killed by a white police officer) reveals a big double standard when it comes to rioting. When I was in grad school, I inadvertently got swept up in a riot on the UMD campus (I quickly extricated myself and went home). Students were lighting sofas and benches on fire and disobeying orders to disperse, while the police marched in formation, many on horses, and fired rubber bullets and pepper spray into the crowds. It went on all night, several students were expelled and/or arrested, and it created a large amount of lingering tension between the police, the student body, local business, and the UMD administration. The "reason" for the riot: Maryland beat Duke in a regular season basketball game. Seriously, that's it. And nobody suggested that the riot somehow negated the victory, and nobody suggested it was a systemic problem with (mostly white) college students. Rioting isn't a racial thing, and it's usually not a response to any one particular thing. It's a misguided and dangerous human expression of community.
Another trope we've all been hearing ad nauseam: the vast majority of violent crimes against African-Americans are carried out by other African-Americans. My response to this is, "yeah, so?" Are we not allowed to talk about a problem (police brutality, particularly against minorities), because there is another tangentially related problem (gang violence) with a larger body count? This is a very bizarre line of thinking. As Mike Pesca of The Gist podcast pointed out, it's like saying we can't discuss ISIS because more Americans kill Americans than Arab terrorists kill Americans. Like I said, it's bizarre, or at least it should be bizarre. Unfortunately, with today's right-wing at it's right-wingiest this type of tortured logic is all too commonplace.
Anyway, when I finally fell sleep tonight, I had a very uncomfortable dream that had nothing to do with Ferguson or anything else in the news. I had the old panicky back-in-school dream, but with a twist. Instead of forgetting to study for a test or walking the halls in my underwear, the source of my consternation is that I am back living in shithole house. In the dream, I come home and my roommates (who in real life are two of my roommates from undergrad) are sitting down in a pile of trash watching TV. I sit down next to them in a tattered chair and pick up nachos off the ground and start eating them. I look in my bedroom and see a pile of soiled clothes covering the bed. I'm disgusted and depressed, and I wonder why I went back to get another master's degree when I already have a Ph.D. (apparently that's the pretext for me being back in school). Why don't I just get a real job? I take a hit off a warm beer that was sitting in an empty plant pot.
Then I wake up and have the glorious realization that it was all just a dream. I don't live like a slob in a shitty college house anymore. I live in a nice house with my wife and son. My bed isn't a hand-me-down twin mattress on the floor. I can turn on the heat, if I get cold. The dishes aren't growing mold in the sink. I did get a job after I got my degree. Real life is pretty good after all. It's a very fitting dream for Thanksgiving.
OK, that's all for tonight. I have a rule here at Crocodile DG: as soon as I start writing about my dreams, it's time to go. So go I shall. I'll put out Part II later this week.
Until next time ...
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