I was totally wiped out the day after my day trip to the
Underground Railroad on Tuesday. And that wouldn’t do. I still had places
to go and things to do the rest of the week before I could hang up my walking
shoes. Wednesday my Red Hat Society Chapter went to the small town I'd like to move to someday where we had lunch and went shopping at a consignment mall. I didn’t find a
single thing I wanted to buy---thank goodness---but a few others did. One
sister can always be counted on to buy a purse at these places and she lived up
to her reputation this week. Me, I hate the hassle of changing purses and I
only do it for motor coach trips like I did on Tuesday. Then, I use a light
weight purse that I can hang around my neck and be hands-free for disembarking
and boarding the bus. I strip down on what I carry in that purse to: an ID
card, money, comb, lipstick, emery board, Kleenex, my cell phone and a nylon
bag that opens up big in case I buy things along the way. My every day purse
has everything in it but the proverbial kitchen sink. If logic played a bigger
part in my purse choices I’d reverse my options and carry my Healthy Back Bag on trips and the
stripped-down purse in town where I can always buzz home, if needed. I have so
many things in the ‘back bag’ that I could defuse a bomb or sterilize a
port-a-potty. Slight exaggeration, but I
could replace a screw in my eyeglasses, change the batteries in my hearing aids, and apply emergency first aid to someone who just lost a finger---assuming I won’t pass out at the first sight of blood.
Thursday I was on the go again. I went to a lecture titled Detroit: City of Champions about the 1935-36
seasons of the Detroit Tigers, Red Wings and the Lions in which they all won their
1st Championships. The lecturer/author (Charles Avison) was intensely
energetic, funny and fun to listen to. I’ve never played sports, don’t follow
sports and I was always grateful that my
husband and I shared the same level of disinterest. Okay, let’s be brutally honest
here; one of my deepest fears is one day I’ll end up in a nursing home with a roommate
who follows all the games and she’ll has control of the TV remote. And I’ll be catatonic and unable to scream, “Turn that damn thing down!” That’s how
much I dislike hearing games playing in the background. So why did I sign up
for this lecture? If you’re guessing I
was trolling for old dudes with thinning hair and pants pulled far up above
their belly buttons you’d be wrong. I viewed the lecture as social history and it
never hurts to learn something about the hobbies and passions that other people
enjoy.
I got to this lecture twenty minutes early so with coffee
and brownie in hand, I sat down a few rows in front of a couple other women who’d
just struck up a conversation. Yes, I admit to being an eavesdropper. It wasn’t
long before the Woman A asks, “Do you believe in the Lord?”
“Yes,” answers Woman B and while I’m trying to figure out
how I would answer that question in a place where I was not the only
eavesdropper in range, Woman A replies, “He’s coming back to earth soon.”
“I know,” says Woman B.
“I can hardly watch the news anymore,” adds Woman A, “Not
since the White House got infested.” I see that phrase often on the website
where I go to debate politics and in case you don’t recognize it, that’s code
for ‘since a black man got elected.’ In my world you don’t talk that way if you respect the Office of the Presidency. Like Obama or not, like his politics or
not, the First Family aren’t roaches that need to be “exterminated from those
hallowed halls,” as people like Woman A believe.
Sensing she may have overstepped a boundary with the
stranger she was talking with, Woman A abruptly switched topics to a few years
ago when her house burned down and she walked out with just her beloved Bible
in hand. “The fire,” she cooed, “was the Lord’s work. Now I have an old lady
friendly house that I love.”
I couldn’t process that her Lord would make a family go
through a fire just to give them a new house. My brain was still back on the
“infestation at the White House” and I was wondering how someone so pious could
be so unaware of her own Sin of Prejudice. To paraphrase the great
Sojourner Truth, “Was not the God that made her skin white the same God that
made other people’s skin black? Does it not cast a reproach on our Maker to
despise part of His children, because He has been pleased to give them black
skin?”
I turned around in my seat to take a good look at Woman A. I wanted to memorize every detail of her face, to make sure I never, ever sit next to her on a day trip or at a luncheon or anywhere else that would cause her to ask me, “Do you believe in the Lord?” ©
I turned around in my seat to take a good look at Woman A. I wanted to memorize every detail of her face, to make sure I never, ever sit next to her on a day trip or at a luncheon or anywhere else that would cause her to ask me, “Do you believe in the Lord?” ©
