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Talking Story |
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From The Asian Reporter, V18, #12 (March 18, 2008), page 7.
Day after The Big Bang
I had a dream last night. A really nice dream, though I’ve got to tell you it started out nightmarish.
Here’s what happened: an asteroid, a big one of course, was hurtling towards us. Straight at precious Planet Earth.
Now, I know you’re thinking I’ve seen that film. Bruce Willis and his best buds strap into a Titan Centurion, and blast out there, and blow that accelerating apocalypse to smithereens. But no, not in my movie. None of that. In my dream that big ugly rock smacks full-tilt boogie into us. BOOM.
Everything heaves up — yellow fire plugs, pink Rhododendrons, our brick-red Hawthorne Bridge. It all goes straight up then it all comes right back down. Oddly, in my dream, every little thing lands about the same spot it stood before the Big Bang.
Everything that is, except for us and white folks. Well, we’re still half a foot shorter, our café restrooms are still stinkier, we’re still smiling and nodding way too much. And yes, white boys’re still more nasal and still splashing soy sauce on steaming white rice. But beyond that, stuff went upside down. Asian and Africans and Arabs, all peeps starting with the letter A, are in charge. And non-A types scramble under some very basic differences between us. Fundamentals in family life.
In my dream, my guys, The A Team, are running around charging Anglos with child neglect. We’re the big blue cops, the natty prosecutors, the raven-robed judges, accusing and arguing and adjudicating child abuse. Like I said, it was an odd-odd dream.
I dreamed about a baby boy dashing off on a Broadway sidewalk even after his pop calls his name. And POW, we cite that adult with neglecting to teach his child to listen to parents.
I dreamed of a third grade teacher exhausting herself trying to manage 22 unruly students. And BLAM, BLAM, BLAM, parents face charges of neglecting to prepare kids to learn, for raising perfectly good babies into self-centered 10 year olds. We give that tired teacher a sincere pat on her back, an apple, and the rest of her day off.
How earnest my troops are in that dream, getting white folks to get our values. How eager we are to drag them into court for failing.
Child abuse too
If child neglect is bad after that Big Bang, child-abuse stats are even worse. Our unannounced adventures into the Mt. Tabor neighborhood net offender after offender:
w Middle-school kid smirking at grandma, grumbling at dad — SMACK, we have a zero-tolerance policy on children abusing elders who make their lives easy, indeed those who make their lucky lives possible.
w High-school student leaving his room a mess, dirty dishes lying where he set them, as if others’ effort and time aren’t as important as his — WHACK, civil society will not have well-abled young men abusing others’ responsibilities for him, not without him reciprocating just as responsibly.
w Teenage girl walking away from good food on her breakfast plate, lunch tray, dinner plate; turning her back on more calories and nutrition than entire skinny families consume in many corners of our aching earth — CRACK, a kid cannot abuse our reverence for gifts from God, gifts from Mom’s loving hands, from Dad’s hard-hard work. Reverence.
Oh, I tell you, in that dream we’re removing abusive kids from their negligent families, ordering pitiful pops and moms into parenting classes, putting the whole clueless lot of them into corrective action plans, hauling them all before glowering judges every 180 days to review their progress. At being better human beings. At learning The Good Old Three Rs. Respect, responsibility, reverence.
Aaall that happened in my dream (not in reality, mind you) because a mindless space rock smacked our pretty green planet so hard that America could no longer sustain a nation gobbling up all Creation’s goodies. Because kids without firm parenting were becoming monsters. Because such a society that neglectful obviously needs a good spanking.
Thank goodness it was just a dream.
A silly dream.