Easter Bunny Throw Down

Do you know what I’ve discovered?   Easter bunnies take their lives really seriously and the competition among them to be the Queen Pooh-Bah of Bunnies on Easter is something else.  You’d never know that Easter was supposed to be the celebration about the death and resurrection of the son of the Christian God who came to redeem us from horrendous choices (both ours and others) and teach us how to live on Earth together in love, peace, and joy both here and beyond.  To hear the bunnies talk, Easter is ALL about them, the colorful eggs, and the baskets filled with chocolate Cadbury candy.   I caught wind of this fierce competition recently when the Miss Easter Bunny Pageant of 2012 was held in a copycat Beatrix Potter world up in a small town in New Hampshire like the Hill Top Farm in the village of Sawrey, Cumbria, Lake District that Ms. Potter loved so much.

“Friends” Pinterest image

I went “undercover” as Big Mama for my “Big Mama Speaks” column this week to participate as the Master of Ceremonies of the anthropomorphic bunnies and “bunny wannabe’s” who were competing for the title of Miss Easter Bunny 2012.  Below is a segment of the question and answer session for some of the lucky finalists.

BIG MAMA:  “Our first contestant is Black Bunny Rollin’ from the Southside of Chicago.   I ain’t gonna’ lie—glad to see one of my ‘peeps’ trying for the gold ring.  Ms. Rollin’, since the Trayvon Martin murder, our country has been on edge racially.   56% of Whites think we should move on to other subjects and drop this distasteful matter, while 90% of Black people think we should hold the Sanford police department’s feet to the fire until justice is done.  How would you use your Easter Bunny title to heal race relations amongst the citizens of Sanford and foster brotherhood and love throughout the nation?”

Bunny Wallpaper/Google Image

BLACK BUNNY ROLLIN’:  “Hey, Big Mama.  How YOU doin’?  I am so glad you asked me that very sensitive and important question because I’ve been thinkin’ about this very thing for a long, long time.  I would flood the land with Easter baskets filled with hollow chocolate bunnies and “marsmellowey Peeps” to show that we are all one and the same under the skin or coating, as it may be, so why don’t we just ‘chill’ and follow the great Rodney King and ‘just all get along!’”

(AUDIBLE GROWN IS HEARD FROM THE BUNNY AUDIENCE)

BIG MAMA:  “Thank you Black Bunny.  Sounds like your answer to our racial problems is ‘get high on sugar and die.’  Obviously, we haven’t read the latest report on sugar, now have we?  Um-humph! Anyhooooo. . . our second contestant is Bunny “Going Rogue” Palin.   Ms. Palin, your name sounds vaguely familiar and really scary; in fact, I’m getting eye tics just saying it out loud.  Have you ever run for office?  No?  Okay, I could have sworn, I’d met you before.  Ms. Palin, the NRA lobbyists have gotten completely out-of-hand.  What are your views on gun control?  What would you do to reign in this growing scourge in our country?   Guns are flooding our schools, homes, and streets, and we are gunning each other down like clay pigeons and without so much as a “by your leave!’”

Courtesy of www.angrybunnycomic.com

BUNNY “GOING ROGUE” PALIN:  “What the hell is that, a gotcha question?  I support our constitutional right to bear arms, and if you’ve got ‘em—flaunt ‘em, if you don’t—‘tote a Colt,’ or maybe you are a sucker and have been brainwashed by the lame-stream media.  At the very least, I’d flood everybody’s Easter basket with chocolate toy guns and bullets from the cradle to the grave that sport the inscription:  Viva la Second Amendment!  And then I’d pass out NRA stickers with the lock and load insignia for their Easter Baskets.  Yeah, Baby—‘cause that’s how we roll in Alaska!”

(ONLY CRICKETS CAN BE HEARD FROM THE OUTSIDE.  NO SOUND COMES FROM THE HORRIFIED BUNNY AUDIENCE BECAUSE THEY CAN HARDLY BREATHE WONDERING WHICH BURROW IN HELL  THIS BUNNY CAME FROM.)

BIG MAMA:  “Ooooh-kay. . .!  Thank you Ms. Palin.   Let’s move on to the next contestant.  Ms. Norma “Nutria” Bunny.   Ah, Norma, I don’t mean to be rude, but you look awfully big for a bunny.  Where did you say you were from?”

NORMA BUNNY:  (BUNNY VOICE EXTREMELY HIGH-PITCHED EVEN FOR A FEMALE BUNNY) “I’m from around these parts.  What’s it to you?  Toss me one of them contestant questions so we can get this over with, Big Mama—I ain’t got all day.”

BIG MAMA:  (clears throat, trying not to show how close she is to opening up a can of “whup ass” on the obnoxious bunny)  “The human recipients of your Easter joy are stressed to the max.  They will need to know that you have a sense of humor.  The March jobs report just came out and it is below expectations.  What is an example of some of the things you’d do to help cheer up the jobless and lighten their spirits?”

NORMA BUNNY:  (BUNNY VOICE EVEN HIGHER THAN BEFORE) “Why, I’d use my girlish bunny charms and my beguiling ways and “make ‘em laugh.  I’ve got tons of jokes like this one:

Two chocolate bunnies walk into a barn.  One has a hole in his ass and the other has no ears.

  What do they say to each other?”

Pinterest

(AN ANGRY COMMOTION IS HEARD IN THE AUDITORIUM AS AN AUDIENCE MEMBER SCREAMS OUT:  “That’s no female bunny, that is ‘NORMAN Nutria’ from Louisiana—the river rat that attacked the woman in Wal-Mart a couple of years ago.  He/she’s an imposter and she’s wanted by the PO-lease!”)

My concept of Norman Nutria (a.k.a “Norma Bunny,” a.k.a. Myocastor coypus)||Google Image

WANTED BY THE FBI

Louisiana woman sues Wal-Mart over incident with “Norman the nutria”||May 7, 2009||LA Times

(AS THE COMMOTION REACHES FEVER PITCH, BUNNY SECURITY CAPTURES “NORMAN” NUTRIA AND BIG MAMA RESTORES CALM TO THE AUDIENCE WITH NO ONE THE WORST FOR WEAR.)

BIG MAMA:  “My goodness gracious.  Lord, have mercy—you just never know what’s gonna’ happen in a day.  Calm down everybody.  No one got hurt, thank God, so let’s do our best to carry on.  We only have one more contestant and then we’ll choose a winner.  Now where were we?  Our next contestant is Dr. Henrietta Beatrix Bunny.  Welcome Dr. Bunny.  I understand that you are a history professor at Beatrix Potter University.  A lot of humans are interested in the history of how the bunny, the basket, the boiled eggs, the Cadburys, and the jelly beans supplanted the death and resurrection of the Lord?”

***

Pinned by milkbeforebed.tumblr.com

DR. HENRIETTA BEATRIX POTTER:  “I’m-so-happy-you-asked-me-that-question-because-it-is-really-quite-the-story-since-history-is-always-quite-the-story-is-it-not? (GULP) Well-you-see-the-Christians-stole-all-the-pagan-rituals-and-tied-them-into-their-new-celebrations-and-Easter-is-no-exception. (GULP) Greg-Jenner-has-written-a-marvelous-article-(I-tell-you-just-marvelous)-entitled-‘Easter:-what’s-with-all-the-bunnies-and-stuff?’-and-he-says- that- the-word-Easter-came-from-the-word-‘Eostre-who- was-a-pagan-goddess-in-the-Saxon-religion. (GULP) In-fact-almost-everything-we-do-or-have-done-emerged-from-the-pagans-and-we-either-modified-it-to-fit-the-biblical-characters-or-we-outgrew-it. (GULP) Why-Mr.-Jenner-tells-the-most-delightful-story-about-how-Christian-farmers-used-to-bless-their-lands-to-make-them-fertile. (GULP) They-would-go-out-and-follow-these-pagan-instructions-to-the-letter-of-the-law:

‘1) At night, dig up four clumps of soil from the four corners of the field

 2) Then take a sample of every grass, herb, tree in the field, and add it to milk from every cow, and honey from every bee hive.

 3) Now add holy water to this concoction, and drip it in the holes…

 4) Now sing an incantation, asking them to grow.

 5) Now sing the Lord’s Prayer, several times

 6) Now take the four clumps of earth into the church, and get your local priest to sing four masses… one for each clump

7) Now get four crucifixes and write Matthew, Mark, Luke and John on them. Place the crucifixes in the holes you have dug, and shout ‘Grow!’ nine times

 8) Now sing the Lord’s Prayer nine times

 9) Now turn east, bow and say a prayer

 10) Now turn around clockwise three times, and then lie prostrate on the ground while chanting about your lovely green fields

11) Now bless the plough and bless the seed

 12) Now plough a furrow, and place a cake of honey and milk in it.

 13) Well done, you now have a fertile field!’

WHEW-isn’t-that-so-silly! (GULP) Now-back-to-bunnies-eggs-and-Easter-which-came-to-us-via-the-Germans in the 17^th Century. . . .”*

***

I am discovering that one must never give a professorial bunny an open mic!  Anyway, a very beautiful bunny won (Miss Honey-pot Bunny) that was a mixture of all the bunny races and became the proud Easter Bunny of 2012.   But since none of the answers of the bunnies were satisfactory to nourish the spirit and soul of humans, Miss Honey-pot’s Easter duties only encompassed satisfying the taste buds and the body.  IMP. NOTE:  “Norma” Nutria escaped from the Bunny security and is still on the lam.

Prize Rabbit/Google Image

I am discovering that bunnies, boiled eggs, and Easter candy (I do so love me some jelly beans) can only feed the body, but the rejection, the loneliness, the fear, the cruelty, the injustice, and the pain and horror of living on this Earth can only be overcome by the touch of a god who has the ability to feed my soul and inhabit my spirit so that I will not retaliate and become the evil that assails me.  I don’t understand everything about my Lord’s death and resurrection, but nobody has come back to tell me what is really on the other side (I don’t believe that little boy who claims he saw Heaven for a “hot chocolate minute”—he’s a mimic of his religious parents—no more no less), so I could be wrong about so many things which is why I respect other religions and would never, ever lead a crusade.  But until the newly departed atheist author, Christopher Hitchens (“Hitch”), comes back and says, “nanny-nanny-boo-boo, I was right—there is nothing beyond the veil,” and Carl Sagan tags along to confirm it, I’ll stake my claim on the resurrection and keep aiming for an abundant life on this rock and beyond.  To that end, the Easter Bunny will stay in its place of “cuteness” along with Santa, and I’ll go and join in on Handel’s Messiah with the rest of the imperfect Christians on Easter as I humbly sing, “As for me, I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last He will take His stand on the Earth.”

Happy Easter and a glorious Passover (“Chag Pesach Sameach”)!

Ruben’s Resurrection of Christ

* http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/greg-jenner/easter-whats-with-all-the-bunnies_b_1406355.html

Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Eleanor Tomczyk and “How the Hell Did I End Up Here?” with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

 

Are You Happy?

Do you know what I’ve discovered?  The Federal Government wants to start measuring our happiness as American citizens.   After all, our constitution does guarantee us the right to the “pursuit of happiness.”   What a hoot!  They’ll probably call it the GNH (“gross national happiness”) as opposed to the GDP (“gross domestic product” or the sum of our economic output), and that will be one more thing to worry about.  (Note to the Feds:  please do not give me a survey on my opinion of our sorry-ass Congress or the state of the Republican Party before you give me the survey about my GNH—results will definitely be misrepresentative of my actual state of being which will be highly agitated.)

Kingdom of Bhutan—“Land of the Dragon” (Photo courtesy of buddhanet.net)

The term, ‘gross national happiness,’ was coined in 1972 by Bhutan’s then King Jigme Singye Wangchuck but according to Peter Whoriskey’s article in The Washington Post (“If you’re happy and you know it . . . let the government know”), “. . .statisticians will first have to define happiness and then how to measure it.  Neither is a trivial matter.   There is even some doubt whether people, when polled, can accurately say whether they are happy.”

Photo courtesy of businesspundit.com//Google Image

Right now the Mega Millions Lottery which covers 42 states is worth $640 million, and I’m sure most Americans are secretly fantasizing about what they would do with that much money if they won it, because they are all assuming it would make them super happy.  But research has borne out the facts that 9 out of 10 lottery winners end up worse off than before they won the lottery and many wish they had torn up the ticket.  Because, you see, humans are creatures of extremes:  whatever shit you were addicted to before you were flushed with cash will simply get magnified once it is infused with $640 million.  Data has shown that if you were a gambler before the jackpot, you’ll simply become a person who bets higher stakes until the money is all gone; if you have an addictive personality before you win the extra Benjamins, you’ll become a junkie who uses a gold tipped syringe to “shoot up” rather than a stainless steel one.  And if your cash-infused habits don’t get magnified to the extreme, then relatives you never knew you had will come out of the woodwork and torment you for handouts until the day you die or give away all your money—whichever comes first.

Daily News/Google Image

So I’ve given this entire “gross national happiness” concept a lot of thought and since I’m old and have learned a few things along the way, I thought I’d write an open letter to our President in this week’s blog to offer him some suggestions as to what he should look for to determine if his American peeps are really happy or if we are just bullshitting him (not counting Fox News or the Tea Party—there is nothing that would make them happy except Ronald Reagan coming back from the dead).

OPEN LETTER TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

Dear President Obama:

First of all:  How you doin’?  My name is Eleanor Tomczyk and I’m one of your biggest fans.  While reading The Washington Post the other day, I noticed that the Feds want to start monitoring GDH.  Personally I don’t know how you’re going to accomplish that since we are such a desperate, angry bunch of humanoids.  But if you were to ask me, if you really wanted to know how to do this, I thought I’d send you a few tips to pass along to your census takers.

IMHO, Mr. President, all your questioners need to ask are three non-sectarian, bi-partisan questions and they will be able to determine the state of mind of any American in the land.

GROSS NATIONAL HAPPINESS SURVEY

• DO YOU NAP?

Nap Time/Google Image

Here’s the deal, Mr. President:  I’m sure you’ve noticed that you are in charge of a bunch of really cranky, partisan people.  We are perennially pissed off about everything, and some of us are really bent out of shape because you slipped by them into the White House!  On top of all that angst, we love us some guns almost as much as our religion and lack of sleep and guns are a volatile mix!  Why, today, in a neighborhood not too far from where both of us live, one neighbor shot another neighbor over three trees bordering the property that wasn’t the property of the neighbor who got shot.  And the shooter wasn’t even the owner of the house—the owner’s father shot the other dude on his behalf who was the friend of the neighbor who lived down the street—all because of three fuckin’ trees (pardon my French)!  I think we Americans are on the verge of losing our minds just because we are so freakin’ tired.  I don’t mean to sound like an “old fart,” but we haven’t had a good attitude about life sense the Sunday Blue Laws were struck down.  Even if you weren’t religious and didn’t go to church, no matter how rich or poor you were, at least you could catch up on your sleep and read a good book.  It may be my imagination, Mr. President, but we could use a national nap time to up our “happiness quotient.”

•  DO YOU GARDEN?

E. Tomczyk’s “Blush” Hibiscus

E. Tomczyk’s prize-winning variegated yellow Princess Hibiscus

E. Tomczyk’s Violet Wave Petunias

Mr. President, enclosed is a small sample of my flower garden last year (aren’t they fab!).  I’m recreating something similar on April 30^th for the 2012 summer season.  As I’m sure the First Lady has told you, there is something about digging in dirt that eases the stress and elevates the endorphins, especially when Puccini’s La Boheme (or Dolly Parton’s “Jolene”—whatever floats your boat) is playing in the background.  (Personally, I’m rather suspect of a person who doesn’t like to garden.)  Mr. President, my American sisters and brothers need to get back into the dirt.  Anything as little as flower boxes outside our apartment windows to community gardens would help relax our minds and shrink our chubby waistlines.  Whether a person gardens or not, will give the Feds an excellent understanding as to whether Americans are happy or agitated as hell because they don’t have any dirt to turn into something beautiful to soothe the soul.

•  DO YOU GIVE A SHIT ABOUT ANYBODY BUT YOU AND YOURS, AND HOW DO YOU GO ABOUT CULTIVATING EMPATHY FOR OTHERS WHO ARE NOT LIKE YOU OR HAVE DIFFERENT EXPERIENCES?

Twins: blue-eyed white-skinned “Remee” and her biological twin sister, brown-eyed, brown-skinned “Kian” born in 2005 in Britain

Mr. President, I’m sure you know this, but I have discovered a secret:  we are all God’s children—just different flowers in God’s garden.  I know an alien from another planet would never believe that concept that we’re all created equal if “It” had dropped down into our country the past two weeks and witnessed the Trayvon Martin murder and miscarriage of justice, along with the attempted smearing of Trayvon’s reputation from the extreme Right, and Spike Lee’s stupid terrorization of that sweet old couple when he tweeted their house address by mistake in his attempt to flush out the murderer, George Zimmerman.  (Really, Spike?  Seriously, Dude?)    Mr. President, if you see Spike when you’re out and about would you please ask him what the hell was he thinking?

The other day I discovered a phenomenon:  Black and white twins born from the same parents.  Did you know that the chance of this happening is only one in a million, but in one family it has happened twice?  But don’t you think God purposely allows twins to be born of different skin and eye colors from the same parents just to mess with our heads and to illustrate a point:  we are all sisters and brothers under the skin?

Triniti and Ghabriael Cunningham—twins born in USA/ABC news file photo

 If we answer the “happiness” survey as people who try and consistently learn something that will broaden our perspective about those who appear different than us, then the Feds might find that our happiness equates to that openness.  Might I suggest that you have the survey ask how many of us have seen or plan on seeing “Bully,” the documentary about the realistic portrayal of middle school and high school students who are bullied—some to the point of suicide?  Have the Feds ask your survey takers if they plan on teaching their children not to stand by and watch the bullying of another child or if they plan on teaching them how to put a stop to it.  Our country’s happiness and future depend on us becoming more empathic to the suffering of others, not becoming bullies ourselves, and joining together as a nation to stamp our this scourge.

Courtesy of www.thebullyproject.com ||Contact this site for distribution of the film in your city

Thank you, President Obama, for considering my input and here’s wishing you and yours an abundance of joy and grace.  I’m pulling for you.

E. Tomczyk (a.k.a “Big Mama”)

P.S. I just have to ask, Mr. President:  Are you happy?

******

I am discovering that money will come and it will go, things will always happen that we can’t control, and that happiness is temporal:  Joy is what is eternal.  Happiness is circumstance based and the circumstances can be destroyed in a heartbeat by mean people, the weather, or simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time.  But joy is attitudinal and no one—absolutely no one—can take that away from you.

Author: “One Joy-filled Big Mama”//photo by J. Tomczyk

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”—Viktor E. Frankl

“Everything can be taken from a man or a woman but one thing: the last of human freedoms to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” —Viktor E. Frankl

Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Eleanor Tomczyk and “How the Hell Did I End Up Here?” with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

 

A Bridge Too Far

Do you know what I’ve discovered?  I am never, ever going to join the world of “The Twitter.”  I realize that it is one of the many forms of communication needed to stay in touch with one’s peeps, especially when one is a writer or an entertainer, but I cannot be trusted with the medium.  I’m 63 years old and I’ve finally gotten to a place of maturity where I no longer use my inside voice (pissy rage) in places or situations where only my outside voice (reasoned grace) should ever be heard.  Just in trying to explain why I wouldn’t engage with the little blue bird when it first emerged, I once commented to a group of my younger daughter’s friends (guys and gals), “I don’t tweet, I don’t twit, and I don’t “twat.”  (Apparently, in the world of twenty-something white kids, the words “tweet” and “twit” are fine, but the word “twat” is not to be used with one’s outside voice, which became very obvious when they all stared at me in horror, and my little vanilla bean daughter slid beneath the restaurant table to hide her mortification.)  Who knew?

ruthawestbrooks8654.highschoolfootballhq.com//Google Image

But that is my point.  The Twitter may be legal and accessible, but it doesn’t mean that someone with my temperament and hot-headedness should ever tweet my thoughts because that would be going a bridge too far in my efforts to conquer my ability to “keep in touch.”

A case in point:  Last week a person whom I’ve known for years, and whom I used to call a friend, finally crossed over the line with me.  Through the years, I’ve put up with her taking me for granted, her Neanderthal husband’s racist comments to me, her verbal attack against me in front of a mutual friend rather than engaging me in private, and finally her public broadcast attack and lecture about a subject that was mine to hold an opinion about that she didn’t agree with but not hers to lecture me on as if I were a child.  All those years of trying to be “nicer than Jesus” with this person finally collided with my hurt and anger, and I realized that we hadn’t been friends for a very long time because she had trespassed on the relationship too many times to count. Had I had access to The Twitter when that revelation of trespassing on my heart hit the hurt and betrayal I felt, all hell would have broken loose because I would have opened up a can of “whup ass” that would have verbally beat the shit out of that woman and left her racist husband’s sorry ass to put her back together again.

Getonmyspace.com//Pinterest

Getonmyspace.com//Pinterest

See what I mean?!  I’m not to be trusted with the privilege of The Twitter or I’ll make Jesus cry, and I would really like to end up in Heaven when I die.   (To all my current friends and readers, please note: I’ve never knifed anybody in my life, except with my words, but the visual of me bitch-slapping somebody underscores why I need as many filters in place as possible to keep my mouth shut until I can calm down, and the appropriate contrite verbiage can be found, which ain’t ever gonna’ happen with an instantaneous access to The Twitter.  I know myself.)  I don’t think I’m the only one who should back away from access to The Twitter given what I read nowadays.  Most of the time, I hear all sorts of famous people screwing up over that thing.  Just ask the actress, Patricia Heaton (you know, of “Everybody Loves Raymond” fame?).  She ran off at the mouth on The Twitter against Sandra Fluke (a young woman from Georgetown University [G-Town]) who was testifying before Congress (you know, the one who Rush Limbaugh called a whore and a slut?).  Well, Ms. Heaton had to eat her Twitter account and come back with her tail between her legs and publicly apologize to Ms. Fluke for being such a self-righteous bitch!

Patricia Heaton’s Use of Her “Inside Voice” on Twitter/E-Online

Without access to Twitter, I thought and prayed about the incident I’d experienced with the ersatz “friend,” mulled over the history between the old girlfriend and myself, decided that that some relationships were never meant to go the distance of a lifetime, forgave her, and then let her go without fanfare or hyperbole.  Then I blocked her sorry ass from my Facebook page and went on my merry way.

2-year-old-Indonesian boy who smoked 40 cigarettes a day/Google News Image

There are other things that come under the umbrella of going a “bridge too far” besides The Twitter abuse.  Take the story of the children from Indonesia who can’t stop smoking.   They are addicted to cigarettes and smoke 25 – 40 of them a day.  Why?  Because there is no law that dictates an age limit to smoke in Indonesia.  If you can puff it, you can have it.  It doesn’t matter if the kid “becomes emotionally aggressive and uncontrollable and acts like he’s possessed by evil spirits,” according to an eight-year-olds father—it is still legal.  Half the Indonesian population lives on less than $2 a day, but cigarettes account for the second largest household expenditure in that country and it has the world’s highest percentage of young smokers according to Yahoo News.

Why is it “because we can,” we humans think we should?  Which brings me to the subject of “every mother’s son:”

17-year-old Trayvon Martin with his little brother who was recently gunned down by George Zimmerman, a vigilante self-appointed neighborhood watchman

You would have to have been living under a rock not to have heard about the egregious murder of the seventeen-year-old child that went out to buy Skittles and an iced tea in a gated community and never made it back to the home he was visiting with his father.  By all accounts Trayvon was a darling boy, a good student, and a football player who had never even gotten into a scuffle in his boyhood life.  As Trayvon walked home in the rain while talking to his sixteen-year-old girlfriend on his cell phone—armed with only a bag of Skittles and an iced tea—a paranoid, self-appointed (unofficial) neighborhood watchman followed him because he was black and wearing a hoodie which made him appear suspicious.  Somewhere in between the store and home, Trayvon noticed the stranger following him in a car.  The last thing that Trayvon’s girlfriend said to him was “run,” but Trayvon said he wouldn’t run (he knew better), but he would walk fast.  The last things neighbors heard were a child screaming for help and gunshots.

Trayvon’s body lay in the morgue for three days as a “John Doe” while his parents frantically searched for him.  Who goes out for candy and tea and doesn’t return?  His body was drug and alcohol tested by the police (he was clean) but the murderer was never tested, never investigated, and never asked to provide proof of his claim that he shot in self-defense.  Trayvon is dead but the murderer, as of this posting, has yet to be arrested because he pursued this child under the protection of two Florida laws:  The Right to Carry a Concealed Weapon and the Stand Your Ground law.

Some people think the murder of Trayvon was a hate crime (there is some confusion as to whether there was a racial epithet said to the 911 despatcher by Zimmerman just before he shot the son of the Martins) and some people think it was what my peeps like to call “Walking while Black.”*  My gut tells me that it is an extremely complex situation with both racial overtones and thoughtless gun laws that go a “bridge too far” for our volatile and fragile society.  We won’t know just what motivated Zimmerman until he can stop hiding behind the gun laws and be honestly investigated.  We do know that in Zimmerman’s zeal he had called the police department over 46 times to report “incidents” that never came to fruition.  But one thing is for sure, the murder of this child better be a “come to Jesus” moment for our nation and our love affair with guns, because next time it could be any mother’s child or grandchild, no matter what the race and no matter what the place.

President Obama’s comment today, March 23^rd

“I can only imagine what these parents are going through,” Obama said. “And I think every parent in America should be able to understand why it is absolutely imperative that we investigate every aspect of this, and that everybody pulls together — federal, state and local — to figure out exactly how this tragedy happened.  If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon. When I think about this boy, I think about my own kids.”  The Washington Post

“Walking while Black:  A Cautionary Tale”

*I am discovering that “Walking while Black” is something that every black child used to learn at the knees of their parents or caretakers.  It means that you must always assume that most (not all) white people will think you’re up to no good when you walk through an all-white neighborhood, therefore, you must walk with hands exposed, a pleasant expression on your face (even if your dog just died), you mustn’t wear anything that obscures your features, you must answer every rude white person’s questions in a polite manner (even if what they ask is none of their goddamn business), and you must never, ever, ever run!   I’ve been married to my man, WW (“White and Wonderful”), for almost 33 years and because he has always made decent money, for years we lived in all white neighborhoods.  In the beginning of our marriage, I was a long-distance runner and, like clockwork, the white Po-Po (police) would stop me mid-run to find out what I was doing in the neighborhood I lived in.  So I started wearing make-up, pearls, and diamond tennis bracelets (it’s a wonder I wasn’t robbed every other day), and the latest fashionable jogging attire so that my persona screamed “I’m a corporate executive’s wife, so if you mess with me, you’ll have hell to pay.”  That worked for a while until I moved to a different location further south.

By the time I arrived in Virginia Beach, Virginia (a beach town with a church on every corner and a military pit stop), I was no longer a runner but did enjoy a morning constitutional of a brisk walk or two.  Out of concern for my safety, WW made me promise to only walk in our neighborhood and only with a couple of neighborhood women who had befriended me.  So three times a week for six months the ladies and I walked the same route (it never varied) through our neighborhood (at the same time), while wearing the same thing (jogging wear and a head wrap/scarf, full makeup and dripping with bling), and life was grand.  But one day both of the white ladies, whose husbands were in the military, had an event that required their attendance, so I went out alone to walk the same route, at the same time, in the same outfit I’d worn for six months.  Within ten minutes, a car with two white women in their fifties pulled up alongside me and the driver angrily demanded to know who I was, what I was doing in their neighborhood, and why were my hands in my pockets?  I started laughing because I thought they were joking.  “Ladies,” I said.  “You must be pulling my leg—haven’t you seen me pass your house every other day for six months?  I’m your neighbor for God’s sake!”   They did not think me humorous at all and as I looked up and down the empty street, I realized that if these women shot me, no one would believe that I had been minding my own business and was just out taking a walk.   As I “slowly” pulled my hands out of my pockets to show them that all I had was a Walkman and a couple of tissues, I’m not ashamed to say that I did a “Step-and-Fetch-it” (servile persona) routine with a toothy grin plastered from ear to ear as I said:  “Aw, shucks, Ma’am, you knows how it is with us womens of certain age—we’s gots to keep up our constitutionals or we’s will turn into little porkers, and we’s can’t have that, now cans we, girlfriend?”

The saner of the two women forced the angrier woman to move on as she shouted, “I’m watching you; I can tell you’re up to no good—you better not be here when I get back.”  I slowly walked the “one block” back to my home (forcing myself not to run)—back to my babies, my sweet, precious white husband, and I thought, “I must spoil the garden of racial equality that I’m raising my girls in and tell them what happened to me today.  I must tell them about what it means to be ‘Walking while Black.’  I must warn them.”  And I wept!

I didn’t end up teaching my children about “Walking while Black.”  I just couldn’t bring this evil fruit into their lives.  In fact I never told them this story because hope springs eternal, and WW and I decided to rear the children to be color-blind (which they gloriously are as adults today), but I often wonder if we blew it by not warning them of certain perils so that they wouldn’t be blind-sided.  Because I now have a grandson who looks the spitting image of Trayvon Martin at three-years-old, and I am concerned that that survival technique will not be passed on because I naively thought we were headed for a brave new world in America by now.  Maybe Trayvon thought, as my children still do, that color is irrelevant—heart and character are the defining motivators—and given that, he probably thought he would have had nothing to fear simply walking to get a bag of Skittles and an iced tea.

Author: E.L. Tomczyk

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