What follows will make more sense in you read parts one and two.
'Tis the fall of 1966 and our unsophisticated little inner-city refugee finds himself in a suburban school. He is, to put it mildly, pleasantly surprised.
Being a relatively normal 13-year old hormone saturated male with relatively normal teenage insecurities I had picked up on the fact, within about two seconds, that this sea of strangers I had just been introduced to all seemed to be better coiffed and clothed than I was. Not good.
However, a kid named Ed, whose desk was next to the one I had been assigned to had, without prompting from our nun/teacher, or any other grup for that matter, had appointed himself my guide to all things eighth grade, smart class. There was ample time for information exchange as we were assigned our textbooks (and this years catechism text) and briefed on the policies and procedures of my new school in general, this class in particular.
He was handsome, perfectly coiffed blond, and fit. He wore a bright red, crushed velvet, v-necked pullover shirt with leather laces in the V. I would describe this particular shirt as tacky and pretentious if I saw it today, but hey, it was the sixties. I was a, um, not handsome, slightly portly, product of the working class with a "regular boys haircut" from the Sou-side barber school. You know, the one up the street from Antknees fodder's shoe repair shop. I had a lazy eye. He treated me as though I was as pretty as he was.
Sister whatever her name was (sorry s'ter) sent us outside at midmorning for recess. No carefully engineered for safety, lawyer resistant playground equipment. No equipment at all, just a grass covered field. This was a nicer, and larger, version of the tiny, asphalt coated, no equipment schoolyard I was used to. The only equipment we had, in either case, was our imaginations. Of course, grass stains were preferable to road rash, but mum wouldn't have any grass stains to deal with, well, not from school anyway (I wasn't a total nerd). In either case, when it was too cold, or the schoolyard was covered with snow, we spent recess in the same classroom we were caged in, with the exception of lunchtime, for the rest of the day. No gym, but no obesity epidemic either, go figure...
At this point, Ed introduced me to various fellow classmates, all of whom, every single one of them, had divided into a handful of groups that were standing around talking to each other. Not a single one was playing at something. Several had remained inside. Some were already studying, some were reading novels, some were just talking, as we who liked to get out of the building were. I didn't have to engage in various games that held no interest for me to prove my manhood? I could, instead, just stand around, talking, or participate in a group walk around the block, while talking? This was quite popular for some reason though there were no vaguely sleazy hangouts with pinball machines in the back room to visit, just suburban homes.
What was all the talking about? The war (Vietnam), folk masses, Bob Dylan, the war, was it true that the rock group called the Monkees had been created out of thin air (sacrilege!) just to make money by evil corporate types? the war, hippies, the pill, the civil rights movement, the war, the meaning of the lyrics of the song "Mellow Yellow," the war, the Beetles, who was "going" with whom, singles (99 cents), albums ($2.99), groups (rock artists) and their songs...on and on and on. There was a soft revolution going on and the goal was nothing short of utopia. There was surprisingly little talk about sex, but this was a much more innocent time, at least for young Catholics raised to believe any form of sex outside of marriage was likely to get you sent to hell. Getting pregnant was a disgrace and got you sent to a facility for fallen girls so the world didn't have to deal with you. Divorce was the exception, not the rule. And for some reason, Agatha Christie mystery novels were all the rage in the smart eighth grade and paperbacks were traded like playing cards. And talked about of course.
By a decade or so later, everything had turned to crap. Disco was here, AIDS was just around the corner, and no shortage of pop culture icons were addicted, dead, or debased.
What happened?
While attempting to build a utopia, with an unrealistic timetable and poorly drawn blueprints, we tipped over the melting pot and set the consensus on fire.
The fire, fueled by hubris, historically unprecedented prosperity, the birth of the information age, mind-expanding drugs, and the manic pace of modern life, science and technology, that continues apace -- didn't destroy the consensus, it reduced it down to it's component parts. We became the culture of unbalanced factions James Madison warned us about.
The USA was carefully crafted to be a democratic republic, a representative form of gubmint, ruled by law -- as opposed to a democracy, a direct form of gubmint, ruled by the majority. This was because it was/is/should be obvious, that in a democracy, well-meaning/not so well-meaning (and no shortage of freaking crazy) people can band together and 51% of the folks can legally decide to behead the other 49%.
Or, decide that free speech is not permitted when a given majority decides that the words of a given minority constitute a microaggression, are politically/morally/intellectually/_______ly incorrect, or even just cause a severe case of the vapors.
Houston, we have a problem.
Have an OK day.
©Mark Mehlmauer 2015
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Saturday, December 5, 2015
Saturday, November 28, 2015
Melting Pot, Part Two
What follows will make more sense if you read part one.
On the first day of eighth grade, I was randomly assigned to the smart class. Had I been placed in the dumb class (which we weren't supposed to call the dumb class), as I should have, I would've probably had a whole different life. While the smart class was indeed made up of smart kids, the dumb class was just everyone else, the ordinary kids -- with the exception of a few aggressively-stupid boys. Testosterone poisoning + stupidity = aggressively-stupid.
When I was 13 I thought this phenomenon was limited to boys. Turns out that girls are so much smarter than boys -- and women so much smarter than men -- that boys and men are often too stupid to spot an aggressively-stupid female. Men should be grateful that the feminist movement has made it socially acceptable for women to openly be as aggressively-stupid as men -- if they choose to reveal it to us. Makes 'em slightly less dangerous.
So, it's the first day of school, eighth grade, and I show up as required. I'm not a happy camper. I'm introverted, somewhat shy, and this is a new school. I don't know anyone, and though I love to read -- I'm willing to check out anything and everything for at least a minute -- I'm no scholar. I'm living in suburbia for the first time in my life and the school building seems huge.
Interesting paradox in that the densely packed, densely Catholic inner city neighborhood I came from had small Catholic grade schools, several of them. My new school drew from a much larger geographic area that wasn't nearly as densely populated and a given family was just as likely to be Protestant (or Satanists for all I knew at the time) as Catholic. Where I came from there were (mostly) Catholics, Protestants, and heathens. We Catholics were right, and assured a place in heaven, as long we followed all the rules. The many, many rules. Everyone else was wrong and probably going to hell, but it wasn't polite to tell them. We loved them anyway, and that's why one of our seemingly endless fund-raising drives each year was devoted to saving Pagan Babies.
Many of the many, many rules have radically changed, or vanished, since I was a kid. I can't help but wonder if there's a get out of hell free card available for anyone that died in sin before a priest could get there to punch their ticket to paradise.
Now, though it may seem as though I'm digressing my butt off what I'm actually doing is trying to paint a picture with words, to contrast my life before eighth grade with what came next. Though officially a typical, conservative Catholic grade school, run by a nun that had the sensibilities of a USMC Drill Instructor, there was music in the cafes (church social hall) at night and revolution in the air. And I was randomly placed in the "smart" class of eighth graders because though I had been properly registered by my mum, no one had decided which eighth grade I should be in and added my name to the appropriate list. Instead, two nuns had a brief conversation and it was decided on the spot to put me in with the smart kids and see what happened. They could always dumb me down later if necessary.
Well, I managed to hold my own, in spite of Algebra. For the first time in my life, I had more than one teacher for the entire day. We didn't change classes, we changed teachers. We had a very cool nun come in to teach us Algebra, which took the edge off of that particular nightmare. We had a male lay teacher come in for Science, my first experience with a teacher that wasn't a woman. He wasn't nearly as cool as our Algebra nun, but the girls thought he was a cutie. Curiously, I can't remember either of their names or the name of the nun we had for all of our other classes. I can recall the names of almost all the other nuns and teachers I had up until this point, and most of my high school teachers as well. This puzzles me because it was the best year of school I ever had. I can't remember the name of the nun I had in first grade, but I've probably blocked it out because I was so traumatized (GRIN). There's a vicious rumor that claims one of my older sisters once had to unclench my fists from a wrought iron fence that I had latched onto in a futile attempt to keep from going to school that I refuse to either confirm or deny. However, it serves as a perfect illustration of how I felt about formal schooling as a child.
Returning to the fall of '66...it was the kids that made eighth grade my favorite school year. I was triply disadvantaged because they were, first, as a group, much more worldly, sophisticated and downright cooler than I was. They had older siblings in high school and college that were in the thick of the late sixties. My older sibs were out of high school and living, working and making babies in the real world. Not a one of them even lived in a commune. Also, many had parents that were professionals of some sort that made a lot more money than my blue collar dad and stay at home mom. And most of them were smarter than me. But I got lucky.
They were nice. They liked me. I liked them. They, the Algebra nun, a rebellious young priest, and my mum, who had subscriptions to Look, Life, and The Saturday Evening Post, opened my eyes to a whole new world. And next week I will finally explain what all this has to do with melting pots and mosaics.
Have an OK day.
©Mark Mehlmauer 2015
If you wish to like, react, leave a comment or share -- please scroll down.
Mobile gentlereaders, if I've pleased you, there's additional content to be found via laptop and desktop.
On the first day of eighth grade, I was randomly assigned to the smart class. Had I been placed in the dumb class (which we weren't supposed to call the dumb class), as I should have, I would've probably had a whole different life. While the smart class was indeed made up of smart kids, the dumb class was just everyone else, the ordinary kids -- with the exception of a few aggressively-stupid boys. Testosterone poisoning + stupidity = aggressively-stupid.
When I was 13 I thought this phenomenon was limited to boys. Turns out that girls are so much smarter than boys -- and women so much smarter than men -- that boys and men are often too stupid to spot an aggressively-stupid female. Men should be grateful that the feminist movement has made it socially acceptable for women to openly be as aggressively-stupid as men -- if they choose to reveal it to us. Makes 'em slightly less dangerous.
So, it's the first day of school, eighth grade, and I show up as required. I'm not a happy camper. I'm introverted, somewhat shy, and this is a new school. I don't know anyone, and though I love to read -- I'm willing to check out anything and everything for at least a minute -- I'm no scholar. I'm living in suburbia for the first time in my life and the school building seems huge.
Interesting paradox in that the densely packed, densely Catholic inner city neighborhood I came from had small Catholic grade schools, several of them. My new school drew from a much larger geographic area that wasn't nearly as densely populated and a given family was just as likely to be Protestant (or Satanists for all I knew at the time) as Catholic. Where I came from there were (mostly) Catholics, Protestants, and heathens. We Catholics were right, and assured a place in heaven, as long we followed all the rules. The many, many rules. Everyone else was wrong and probably going to hell, but it wasn't polite to tell them. We loved them anyway, and that's why one of our seemingly endless fund-raising drives each year was devoted to saving Pagan Babies.
Many of the many, many rules have radically changed, or vanished, since I was a kid. I can't help but wonder if there's a get out of hell free card available for anyone that died in sin before a priest could get there to punch their ticket to paradise.
Now, though it may seem as though I'm digressing my butt off what I'm actually doing is trying to paint a picture with words, to contrast my life before eighth grade with what came next. Though officially a typical, conservative Catholic grade school, run by a nun that had the sensibilities of a USMC Drill Instructor, there was music in the cafes (church social hall) at night and revolution in the air. And I was randomly placed in the "smart" class of eighth graders because though I had been properly registered by my mum, no one had decided which eighth grade I should be in and added my name to the appropriate list. Instead, two nuns had a brief conversation and it was decided on the spot to put me in with the smart kids and see what happened. They could always dumb me down later if necessary.
Well, I managed to hold my own, in spite of Algebra. For the first time in my life, I had more than one teacher for the entire day. We didn't change classes, we changed teachers. We had a very cool nun come in to teach us Algebra, which took the edge off of that particular nightmare. We had a male lay teacher come in for Science, my first experience with a teacher that wasn't a woman. He wasn't nearly as cool as our Algebra nun, but the girls thought he was a cutie. Curiously, I can't remember either of their names or the name of the nun we had for all of our other classes. I can recall the names of almost all the other nuns and teachers I had up until this point, and most of my high school teachers as well. This puzzles me because it was the best year of school I ever had. I can't remember the name of the nun I had in first grade, but I've probably blocked it out because I was so traumatized (GRIN). There's a vicious rumor that claims one of my older sisters once had to unclench my fists from a wrought iron fence that I had latched onto in a futile attempt to keep from going to school that I refuse to either confirm or deny. However, it serves as a perfect illustration of how I felt about formal schooling as a child.
Returning to the fall of '66...it was the kids that made eighth grade my favorite school year. I was triply disadvantaged because they were, first, as a group, much more worldly, sophisticated and downright cooler than I was. They had older siblings in high school and college that were in the thick of the late sixties. My older sibs were out of high school and living, working and making babies in the real world. Not a one of them even lived in a commune. Also, many had parents that were professionals of some sort that made a lot more money than my blue collar dad and stay at home mom. And most of them were smarter than me. But I got lucky.
They were nice. They liked me. I liked them. They, the Algebra nun, a rebellious young priest, and my mum, who had subscriptions to Look, Life, and The Saturday Evening Post, opened my eyes to a whole new world. And next week I will finally explain what all this has to do with melting pots and mosaics.
Have an OK day.
©Mark Mehlmauer 2015
If you wish to like, react, leave a comment or share -- please scroll down.
Mobile gentlereaders, if I've pleased you, there's additional content to be found via laptop and desktop.
Saturday, November 21, 2015
Melting Pot (Part One)
I don't remember what grade I was in or which nun it was, but I have this specific memory of being told that the concept of America as a melting pot was wrong, that a more accurate way to describe it was as a mosaic. I've encountered this particular refinement to this particular metaphor many times since, but this was the first time. Sorta/kinda missing the point (hey, I was a kid) I decided that I liked the melting pot analogy better because it conjured up a vivid image of a huge cauldron, boiling and bubbling, powered by an intense fire, flames licking up the sides. A melting pot, or at least what I thought a melting pot should look like, having never actually encountered one. And no, my imagination didn't include people being tossed into the pot. You've clearly watched too many horror movies.
I didn't care for mosaics, as an art form I mean. I still don't, but considering my extremely limited knowledge of the visual arts, about which I'm going to do something one of these days (I've been getting psyched up for this project for better than forty years, so I'm ready), I feel obliged to throw in a buhwhaddle I know?
I say sorta/kinda because I knew what she meant. She explained that what she was talking about was that while there was truth to be discerned in the melting pot meme, in her opinion, America was more like a mosaic because while we held certain truths to be self-evident and that there was such a thing as American culture, we could all fit into the big picture without having to give up what it was that made us different from each other. Well, mostly.
But I took that for granted. Not intellectually, but intuitively. Within the bubble of my childhood, which, being a kid, I thought included everyone else, this was the way of the world, well, the way of the USA anyway. I'd been made aware that the Godless Commies of the countries behind the Iron Curtain (BOING! another vivid image) didn't see things that way.
See, I somehow managed to get through my preschool years and then grade school, until the eighth grade, with kids from all sorts of ethnic backgrounds (in the early 1960s) without having a clue that various groups were locked in power struggles with each other, like the ones you see in the movies. Not even black folks (they were called negroes at the time), though admittedly, there were not a lot of black people in my bubble.
This was in spite of the fact these were politically incorrect times and we thought it normal to use words like dago, pollock, mick and the like. I didn't hear the n-word very often, but that was only because, as I mentioned above, I didn't have much contact with African-Americans. I had no idea, at the time, that this was because of segregation. The various Sisters of Charity that were in charge of my intellectual and moral development certainly made us aware of the civil rights movement. But that was something that was going on down South, wherever that was. That was about mean-spirited, narrow-minded rednecks that never got over having their butts kicked in the Civil war. President Kennedy and Martin Luther King were going to get that fixed. Then we would all be one big happy family, and did you know that George Washington Carver was a great scientist?
It was a very strong bubble. I remember, in the second grade, that when we got this new kid, the first black kid in our class, that we were fascinated by the novelty of it. He taught us to stick out our hands, palm up, and say, "Gimmie me five" and then you turn your palm to the ground and say, "On the n-word side." We loved it. It was almost as cool as the time Mrs. Barrett broke her dreaded yardstick (I had a lay teacher that year) over his ass and he shed not a single tear. Our hero!
In the summer of 1966, we moved from the inner city to the suburbs. As far as I know, it was primarily so my dad could be closer to work. If it was about "escaping the inner city," this was completely lost on me. I don't recall feeling like I had escaped from anything. But things sure were different.
We moved into what was probably the most humble section of a fairly affluent community and I had my last year of Catholic education, eighth grade; my parents couldn't afford to send me to a Catholic high school, and I was in the process of rejecting Catholicism anyway.
Ironically, it was a handful of prosperous little all-white suburbanites that introduced me to the societal upheaval that changed everything and has ever since simply been called the sixties. This was exciting stuff, we were going to change everything and save the world! I took to it like a duck to water. Fortunately, I had no access to recreational pharmaceuticals. Nobody under the age of 18 should, 25 would be better. I never cared much for alcohol, or cigarettes for that matter, which were available. Drugs were just starting to trickle down to the high school level, in my world at least, towards the end of my sentence there. But that's a subject for another post, and it will be.
Two quick items that have virtually nothing to do with this post but are vitally important. One: Yes I graduated, smart ass. As a matter of fact, I also have 39 officially certified college credits. Also, in case I should drop dead before I get around to expounding on the secret of life, here it is.
The secret of life: So-called real life is just high school with money.
Anyways...somebody tipped over the melting pot and set the world on fire. Some of it was for the good, but a good deal of it wasn't. We've definitely got ourselves a mosaic now buddy.
To be continued...
Have an OK day.
©Mark Mehlmauer 2015
If you wish to like, react, leave a comment or share -- please scroll down.
Mobile gentlereaders, if I've pleased you, there's additional content to be found via laptop and desktop.
I didn't care for mosaics, as an art form I mean. I still don't, but considering my extremely limited knowledge of the visual arts, about which I'm going to do something one of these days (I've been getting psyched up for this project for better than forty years, so I'm ready), I feel obliged to throw in a buhwhaddle I know?
I say sorta/kinda because I knew what she meant. She explained that what she was talking about was that while there was truth to be discerned in the melting pot meme, in her opinion, America was more like a mosaic because while we held certain truths to be self-evident and that there was such a thing as American culture, we could all fit into the big picture without having to give up what it was that made us different from each other. Well, mostly.
But I took that for granted. Not intellectually, but intuitively. Within the bubble of my childhood, which, being a kid, I thought included everyone else, this was the way of the world, well, the way of the USA anyway. I'd been made aware that the Godless Commies of the countries behind the Iron Curtain (BOING! another vivid image) didn't see things that way.
See, I somehow managed to get through my preschool years and then grade school, until the eighth grade, with kids from all sorts of ethnic backgrounds (in the early 1960s) without having a clue that various groups were locked in power struggles with each other, like the ones you see in the movies. Not even black folks (they were called negroes at the time), though admittedly, there were not a lot of black people in my bubble.
This was in spite of the fact these were politically incorrect times and we thought it normal to use words like dago, pollock, mick and the like. I didn't hear the n-word very often, but that was only because, as I mentioned above, I didn't have much contact with African-Americans. I had no idea, at the time, that this was because of segregation. The various Sisters of Charity that were in charge of my intellectual and moral development certainly made us aware of the civil rights movement. But that was something that was going on down South, wherever that was. That was about mean-spirited, narrow-minded rednecks that never got over having their butts kicked in the Civil war. President Kennedy and Martin Luther King were going to get that fixed. Then we would all be one big happy family, and did you know that George Washington Carver was a great scientist?
It was a very strong bubble. I remember, in the second grade, that when we got this new kid, the first black kid in our class, that we were fascinated by the novelty of it. He taught us to stick out our hands, palm up, and say, "Gimmie me five" and then you turn your palm to the ground and say, "On the n-word side." We loved it. It was almost as cool as the time Mrs. Barrett broke her dreaded yardstick (I had a lay teacher that year) over his ass and he shed not a single tear. Our hero!
In the summer of 1966, we moved from the inner city to the suburbs. As far as I know, it was primarily so my dad could be closer to work. If it was about "escaping the inner city," this was completely lost on me. I don't recall feeling like I had escaped from anything. But things sure were different.
We moved into what was probably the most humble section of a fairly affluent community and I had my last year of Catholic education, eighth grade; my parents couldn't afford to send me to a Catholic high school, and I was in the process of rejecting Catholicism anyway.
Ironically, it was a handful of prosperous little all-white suburbanites that introduced me to the societal upheaval that changed everything and has ever since simply been called the sixties. This was exciting stuff, we were going to change everything and save the world! I took to it like a duck to water. Fortunately, I had no access to recreational pharmaceuticals. Nobody under the age of 18 should, 25 would be better. I never cared much for alcohol, or cigarettes for that matter, which were available. Drugs were just starting to trickle down to the high school level, in my world at least, towards the end of my sentence there. But that's a subject for another post, and it will be.
Two quick items that have virtually nothing to do with this post but are vitally important. One: Yes I graduated, smart ass. As a matter of fact, I also have 39 officially certified college credits. Also, in case I should drop dead before I get around to expounding on the secret of life, here it is.
The secret of life: So-called real life is just high school with money.
Anyways...somebody tipped over the melting pot and set the world on fire. Some of it was for the good, but a good deal of it wasn't. We've definitely got ourselves a mosaic now buddy.
To be continued...
Have an OK day.
©Mark Mehlmauer 2015
If you wish to like, react, leave a comment or share -- please scroll down.
Mobile gentlereaders, if I've pleased you, there's additional content to be found via laptop and desktop.
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