Enjoy seeing what I am lucky enough to see every day. - Oi, Gerbs
Note: So right after I said I was not going to write alot...I wrote alot... The follow is a rant, but I think a meaningful one.
I remember reading Nate Johnson's Blog from his time here at CLM, and I remember thinking how distant and alien these kids felt to me... It was like watching a sci-fi movie with giant spiders and waterfalls and kids reproducing every time they get wet (5 points if you got the Gremlins reference). The thing I cannot stress to all of you is just how like us and our kids, grandkids, nephews, and nieces everyone here is...
A local business man had a BBQ for the kids today - complete with mechanical bull, trampoline, and ball pit. It was a wild day and about 3 a clock, I ran into the kitchen to grab some coffee (so my sugar level matched that of the sugar monsters bouncing outside) - As I sipped my coffee, I listened to the mash-up of conversations, laughter, and yelling that floated in through the window, and suddenly it hit me...I could NOT hear the language difference. I could make the adults chatting on the sidewalk. I could hear (very obviously) the boys' attempts to conquer the mechanical bull. I could hear the screams of the girls bouncing each other higher, and muito alto. And all of these sounds were the same sounds I hear when my nieces play outside, when my parents chat with their friends, or when I play soccer with the High School soccer team.
The reason I couldn't connect with Nate's experience then and why I am preaching this message of unity so fiercely now is because I am pretty damn sure I was brain washed as a child. We were all brain washed by commercials of African kids with flies on them standing in a streams of dirty water and images of war zones on CNN and Old Navy advertising, where all the smiling, clean kids are white and then by the news story that Old Navy cloths (or some brand, any brand, maybe all brands - who the f@$# knows)... that our cloths are made by starving, abused kids in sweat shops and we should feel bad about that and do something about it - as long as, that something doesn't require us to stop shopping or to actually find these kids and touch them. All this psychological bashing taught me subconsciencely about the (lucky) US and (unlucky) them mentality....of the primal beast like existence of the third world and the civilized, righteous existence of the USofA.
Well, here's some truth I have found. (hear me now, believe me later). Their is no us and them. And this is not philosophical Bullshit or an olympics commercial...This is me saying these people - my new familia, my family back home, my friends, my high school class mates, even that weird exchange student from high school (you know you had one - and you know you thought he was weird.) These people are the US (not the United States, but the US - as in we - as in you'all and I). And I'm pretty damn sure that no matter who I meet next - a terrorist, a muslim (there's difference, kids), a rabbi, a paraplegic, a golf pro, a transvestite, a priest, a mother, a father, a son, or a daughter they will be part of my US (our we) too.
What I beg of you is that when you see these pictures... don't go looking for the figurative 'flies buzzing around the kids' or the poverty or the orphan, but look at these pictures and see your kids. Because these kids are (just like) your beautiful, happy kids. They just live down the street - so to speak.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment