Pinch Yourself

  PINCH.

Me and sis...a few years before I became a jerk.

    You can be in one.  Once a year you can choose to not wear green and receive one. You can come through in one.  My Granny mentioned a pinch once in one of our table-top conversations with my Pepsi and her ever-present coffee.  She said, “if you need to find yourself, just reach down and pinch.” I am sure that my little kid brain knew that was a great line, because 44 years later I remember it with a smile.  She must have been referring to some book or other feel-good fad about ways to “find yourself.”  

                Like my dad, I picked up some of my philosophy of life from Pauline. The whole family did. Between Pall Malls and Taster’s Choice the gems would collect for you.  Once when my cousin Bobby and I were running roughshod in some arrogant young-dude-teen way, our female cousins complained to Granny.  She did not tell them how to handle it, just where our early attempts at mansplaining and elitism emanated from.  She told them, “David and Bobby think they are God Almighty.”

               

  I was observing young kids walking with their dad yesterday.  I was on vacation and my mind was free and maybe the surge of organic, fair-trade coffee was helping me find myself.  I felt a pinch though as I passed a Latino man and his three small, beautiful children. As I walked towards them on a neighborhood sidewalk at 11 am, on a perfect day in Santa Rosa, California, I swear he pulled his children closer to him as we passed.  Their eyes seemed troubled.  I felt the pinch of being a threat to someone else.  Children like them are in cages and men that look like me not only made it happen, but are the loudest cheerleaders for tearing families apart in our country. 

                I have to pinch myself as observe large numbers of of citizens joyfully celebrating their immigration “win” and relishing the horror that the rest of us are feeling.  I don’t know if we need to find our true self as a nation or if we have pinched ourselves and discovered that racism, intolerance and comfort with authoritarianism are the truth that steers us.