Family and Politics
I have a favorite cousin I dearly love; we recently reconnected at the funeral of her mom, my Mom's best friend and maid of honor. It was at my folks' wedding where Dad's best man, his older brother Ray met and was instantly smitten with Phyllis. I have had 5 other cousins via Dad's oldest brother and his married sister and five other siblings to my cousin. (The other sister belonged to a religious congregation. Two cousins are deceased.) There are a few people in my life where there's been an immediate connection; I'm not talking of a romantic kind, but it's like you've known them all your life, communication just naturally flows effortlessly.I'm often amused by how other people perceive me. I think a number of people, including former students, perceive me as aloof, but one of my first girlfriends burst out laughing when I classified myself as shy. She particularly loved my sense of humor. It's difficult to explain--often dry; I love plays on words and unexpected twists. More than one progressive will unwittingly set himself up in Trump-bashing, e.g., (meaning Obama) "I remember when we had a REAL President." And I'll snap back something like, "Yeah, wasn't Calvin Coolidge great?" Or some Clintonite will talking about Hillary's dignity and compassion, and I'm apt to say something like, "You know another Hillary Clinton. What a coincidence. I just know the one who mishandled Benhazi." Or in response to Clinton's "bravery": "Yeah, those sniper shots in Bosnia." Over the weekend, someone tweeted in response to another anti-Trump/GOP hashtag a meme with Elizabeth Warren's face on an Indian photo. an obvious tweak on Warren's exaggerated Indian ties. I tweeted back, "Oh, she's on one knee. They must be playing the national anthem." One black responded to an appeals court reinstatement of the NFL's suspension of a Cowboys running back over a domestic abuse allegation (I believe): "You see, this is why the players kneel." To which I responded, "Praying they're not the next player to be suspended?"
A number of my tweets are tongue in cheek, and you wonder sometimes if it goes over the head of your audience. (Or worse, they understand but find it corny.) I used to do it when I was lecturing as a professor, more] of a change of pace between points. But it was more of deadpan delivery, like I was elaborating on the last lecture point. Nothing. And then 2 or 3 students would start chuckling maybe 20 seconds into my lecture resumption; the other students are like, "What just happened?"
But I don't know what it is: for anyone who thinks I'm aloof, there are more who seem to pick me out of a crowd for directions, to grab some grocery item out of reach (and I'm just average height, not tall). Babies will wave bye-bye, etc. My baby nephews and nieces would fall asleep in my arms. I still recall my youngest goddaughter; my sister-in-law said not to mention much from her during my upcoming brief visit to Edwards AFB, CA in terms of attention because she was a momma's girl. So near the end of my visit, I was sitting alone at their couch when sweetie suddenly popped up in front of me. Not sure what she was up to, I watched her climb onto my lap. She wrapped her arms around me and give me a big hug with an audible grunt. I think it was probably the sweetest thing that ever happened to me. My sister in law saw the whole thing and wrote back the next week the baby did the same for her big sister. I call it my "Howdy Doody" persona.
I'm absolutely astonished what people will tell me. For example, at UH Newman Center (sort of a Catholic student center off campus), we occasionally had social events, occasionally featuring Christian music (not necessarily Catholic) groups. I really don't disclose friends' names in my blogs; let's call this married couple Dan and Jane. Jane was an awesome vocalist and musician for this group with an upbeat personality; it was impossible not to like Jane. But one thing about Dan and Jane: they were a biracial couple. He was a quiet unassuming white postal worker (who probably wouldn't like the things I've said about the USPS in my blog--but then Dad worked for them, too, in his second career after the USAF.) Jane was a gorgeous, outgoing black woman. They had children (who I don't think I met). So at some point in the evening, Dan and I were sitting near each other, and I don't recall asking him anything leading or personal. He suddenly opened up about how his parents were irreconcilably opposed to Dan and Jane's relationship and warned him that if the relationship went serious, they would cut him out of their lives. And they did. They didn't attend the wedding. Dan felt that they would get over it; after all, Jane was the most important person in Dan's life; if they really loved him, how could they reject his happiness in life?
But probably even more devastating was their rejection/lack of acknowledgment of their own flesh and blood, their beautiful, loving grandchildren. Dan could learn to deal with his parents' rejection of him, but his beautiful kids had done nothing to deserve the loss of their grandparents in their lives.
It seems all of this was spoken in a matter of minutes. Of course, there was nothing I could do or say to alleviate such a tragedy. Maybe it was cathartic for him to share, beyond his sweet wife: someone who could simply be there for him. I was the one who he chose to talk to. When "progressive" trolls call me a "racist", they don't know anything about me.
Speaking of Newman, believe it or not, I actually have a bit of a performance artist in me. I did take a drama class during intersession (between fall and spring semesters) at OLL one year (like in high school I wanted to and succeeded in graduating in 3 years). I took it pass-fail. It was really the instructor's absurdist type plays. I had sort of a cameo role, something like 4 lines, buried in the middle of the first act, I think; if you read your latest text, you would have missed it. But that wasn't the biggest takeaway. One of the biggest scenes in the play involved a card game, and the instructor wanted to play some appropriate background music; he was brainstorming with the rest of it. I suggested "Sweet Georgia Brown", well known to anyone who has ever watched the Harlem Globetrotters. I thought it was perfect, but the response was rather underwhelming; nobody seemed to like it (or maybe they didn't know what it was). So imagine when it comes to the night of the performance (of course, I didn't know anything about makeup, but I didn't mind coeds applying it on my face; it was like a gentle massage, kind of hot): the card scene opens, and they're playing "Sweet Georgia Brown" in the background. I was literally the most surprised person in the building. I hadn't heard it in rehearsals; nobody mentioned it in my presence. But everyone knows who came up with the suggestion.
It was one of the first times I thought I had been blown off, and it turned out I had made a difference. In the past, I've blogged about one of my undergraduate DSS students at UH; I had advised students to look at management consulting (e.g., with an Accenture, Deloitte or PWC) for their early career. UH has an IT resource center, which I was involved with in a limited fashion, and after one of our presentations to members, a young man made a beeline to talk to me afterwards; I barely recognized him clean-shaven and in a suit. He then explained my advice is what led him to accept his current position at Accenture.
Then there was my first girlfriend I met through Newman at UH. (She wasn't a student, but she, her mom and a "little" (6'4") teenage brother lived a few blocks south of campus. She had a degree from some Hawaiian university. I heard along the grapevine that her dad was in prison (no idea why). She was tall, gorgeous and had a model's portfolio. She actually made the first move; it seems I made a good impression by being the only one to wear a suit for Sunday mass. At any rate, early in the relationship, I had mentioned how incredible she had looked in some white dress I had recently seen her wearing--and the next time I saw her, she was wearing said dress. I have to admit I was sure my compliment had a lot to do with what she wore that day; I thought to myself, "How cool! It's like having a 5'10.5" Barbie."
(I was not that experienced in relationships, but in my view it wasn't working out. One example: one afternoon, I came home from going to a Saturday Astros game to find something like 18 phone messages on my machine. She makes a beeline for me during the doughnuts/coffee social after mass. "Where were you?" "I went to an Astros game." "Why didn't you ask me to go with you?" "I didn't think you liked baseball." "I don't, but I would have gone with you if you asked." Okay, at this point I'm totally confused. And I have 4 little sisters. But she wasn't finished. "Oh, my boyfriend and I were driving past the Astrodome yesterday afternoon and wondering why so many cars were parked outside there." Okay, now she's an invented a boyfriend to make me jealous. A particularly stupid boyfriend who doesn't know Houston has a professional baseball team. Now granted, most of us geeks don't have as much dating experience as other guys. I didn't break it off at that point, but I knew at that point she had issues and I didn't see myself marrying her. A few weeks later, I called her and she responded in a passive-aggressive fashion. I actually thought I was doing her a favor by breaking it off. But that's when I found out some women don't respond well to breakups, at least ones they didn't initiate; they're determined to have the final word. She sent me a multiple page rant on typewritten Merrill Lynch letterhead. I stopped reading after the first paragraph; I don't take well to being called the spawn of Satan. I had dropped out of Newman by the time I was writing my dissertation. So much for my mom's advice to find a nice Catholic girl to marry.)
You never know when something you do or say touches someone. I think that's one of the reasons I continue blogging and tweeting. It's certainly not making me rich.
But anyway, I also took a speech course pass-fail; my speech professor loved my performances and told me I shouldn't have taken the class pass-fail, because she wanted to give me an A. I was doing these compelling soliloquies from George Bernard Shaw and others. I would wring the emotion out of a reading--and I was having the time of my love. I do think I would have made a good actor, but I'm well aware that supply swamps demand. I think part of me would have wanted a wider role including writing and directing, not unlike a singer-songwriter, a similar fantasy.
So before I broke things off with Newman, the priests encouraged us to have more active participation in the liturgy. I usually went home early for Easter, but this one year we had this participatory reading of the Passion. And I was lucky--no one else wanted the role of Pontius Pilate, the most evil man in history, who sentenced Christ to death. I played the role to perfection, my voice dripping with contempt and indifference. Others noticed; one, a young mildly challenged women came up after massand raved about my performance, claiming it reminded her of the miracle plays during her youth. I loved the praise but I said, "You do realize I was playing the most evil man in history?"
There are a few other experiences of a similar nature. Sometimes at retreats you're in a group project, like a skit. For all lip service of teamwork, I've been in countless groups over the years where I and maybe one or 2 others basically took a natural leadership role. In this case, no one had a lead on the skit, so off the top of my head, I play this judgmental jerk who knows how this young man in constant trouble will never amount to anything in life. So the skit ends with me coming up to kiss the ring of our newest bishop, Bishop O'Brien (or some Irish name, but the actual actor was a Latino; the name was meant to insert some humor in the skit, a typical device I use), the grown-up young man I had misjudged so many years ago. So it wasn't a one-man show, as the others put their own spin on their roles in the skit. But we got enthusiastic applause from the other people at the retreat. I have to admit it's always nice to hear positive feedback--but I knew this skit had been a mere passing thought in my mind some 20 minutes or so earlier. I have always been a fan of improvisational comedy.
But going back to my cousins, I don't ever recall discussing politics with any of my cousins. I think I had tacitly assumed most of them were Democrats, since most of my relatives live in highly Democratic New England. So around the time I learned my widowed aunt had suffered a massive stroke, I quickly friended them on Facebook. And the girl in the family of 4 kids (a male my age died in an auto accident in his 30's, I believe) is a real sweetheart; among other things, her husband and she went to the Ukraine about 10 years back to adopt a young orphaned girl. (By the way, this is a major reason why I push adoption as a worthy option in the blog.)
So my beautiful cousin turns out to be a HUGE fan of Donald Trump and I've seen more Fox News posts in my feeds than over the last decade combined. But her comments are more lighthearted than mine in comparison--she's more apt to say "Tisk! Tisk!" to a progressive behaving badly, while I would drive a missile through their nonsense.
But (assuming she's following me) she's going to find out I have a very different, much harsher opinion of Trump; I mean there are thousands of tweets and hundreds of blog posts or Facebook comments. I can't hide it. So I messaged her, telling her, "We have differing opinions on politics, but don't take it personally, sweet cousin. I love you dearly." She sends back a teasing reply. "We'll get along just fine if you remember I'm always right and you're always wrong." I love her sense of humor. She then went on to say that she doesn't mind skipping past something she disagrees with.
