Since the beginning of my time of remembrance on this planet, that's all I can remember doing.
When I was young I was taught there are always two sides to a story. Even before that lesson was actually consciencely taught to me it was instilled within me to question.
I must have been born to never take anybody at their word, but to always look behind it to see if they stood on it.
I must have been born with a moral sense of what was right and wrong, because I don't ever remember anybody teaching me that and yet I knew it at a very early age.
In the summer of 1961 I was all of 3 years old and I knew it then. My family lived in Fox Lake Ill. and we were on a weekend outing by the water. I don't know all the particulars of it but I do know segregation was in full force at that time. It was also my first lesson remembered of the fact that people could be viciously ugly and I can remember that fact scaring the living crap out of me. In fact it scared me so much that I never forgot it.
My family had a boat and we had been riding the river that day. We were at the dock and I guess my parents must have been loading up the boat, because I can remember being by myself.
In those days you could actually leave a kid for a few minutes without the fear of them being snatched. Upon reflection on one hand times were so much easier and on the other hand they weren't. That was also the day I learned that people thought color of your skin made a difference and I was horrified by that fact.
A little girl had drowned at least in my mind that's all she was. She was older than me by a few years. She looked to be maybe 5 or 6, just a baby in her own right. I remember people pointing at her in the water and talking about her, but no one would help her. In my mind I can still see those people to this day. There was a group of people men and women and all they were doing was laughing and saying that it was some kind of a good thing. All I knew was her face was in the water for a long time and nobody pulled her up. I was to young to realize that she had died. I had no concept of death yet, but I did know that when my brothers played around to much and kept me under the water to long it stung up my nose and I always cried, and she was under the water
alot longer than I had ever been and I wanted someone to pick her up like my mom or dad did to me when my brothers were being so mean. But nobody would.
I don't remember doing it but I must have started screaming because my mom was there in a shot picking me up and my dad was wading in the water to the little girl. I saw him pick her up and bring her to shore. He started CPR and then the people weren't laughing anymore they were screaming at him for helping her. Which made me cry even more because I didn't understand why they were doing that. My mom must have been frozen in place and the screaming was getting louder because I can remember hearing my dad's voice thunder over it all. He yelled MaryAnne get the kids to the car and she took off running with me in her arms and my brothers right behind. She put us in the car and locked the doors and ran over to the pay phone and called my Uncle Frank. He was on duty. He was a cop, and so was my dad.
My mom wouldn't leave my dad until my Uncle got there. My dad was to exposed, he was still trying to revive the little girl. I know for a fact that if someone had tried to intervene and stopped my dad my mom would have shot them, because she had taken the gun out from underneath the seat.
I woke up with this on my mind this morning I think because I don't understand why people seem to be using that same herd mentality about the conflict in Ossetia.
They seem to want to believe what the media would feed them rather than use there own rational minds and understand the fact that all people have rights no matter what their ethnic origin is.
The people that were screaming at my dad had also been media fed and reinforced for years by the governments position to think that black people didn't deserve the same freedoms that white people did.
How ironic is it that in this day and age that same position still seems to be occurring.
That people black and white and of all color persuasions are still not fully versed in the fact that they are all their own individual entity and don't need to think like the herd.
That God gave a unique part of himself to each one of them for the ability to act as though they were he. So when people ask the question Where was God my answer is always where were YOU!
