Asking Why, Can Change a Trajectory
Unpleasant or traumatic experiences can certainly help shape our futures, but do they have to define us? That’s an age-old question with significant implications regarding so many facets of the “US against Them” paradigm.
As a launching point, I’d like to share my thoughts regarding an unpleasant experience I had decades ago. Although it was relatively trivial on a scale of things, a wrong choice on my part or my brothers could have led to the destruction of several lives.
One Christmas night when I was in high school, my family went to a party at my aunt and uncle’s house. It was about five miles from ours, and for a reason I can’t recall, I couldn’t go with them. After some walking, I started along the four-mile stretch of two-lane highway. At that point, a “great” idea came to mind — I could put out my thumb.
I had heard somewhere that hitch hiking was dangerous, but this was Christmas, the celebration of the birth of “The Prince of Peace.” Those were my thoughts as I entered the all-black town just beyond my own. Within ten minutes, as I was crossing a bridge over the interstate, I saw two black guys approaching. They were a little older than me and one of them was looking down at me, from a distance.
The authoritative figure stated that they “just needed bridge money to go to Philly,” seven miles away. I’d seen enough movies and cop shows to know that this was just a ploy to get me to pull out my wallet. Since it contained a solitary five-dollar bill, I didn’t reach into my back pocket. But I did explain, “I don’t have any money for the bridge,” all the while watching the big guy in case he made his move.
Their heads pivoted back and forth as they watched the rare car pass by and eyed the guardrail and traffic below. This all happened over maybe two minutes. They were considering their options, and I was working through mine when the smaller guy sucker punched me in the side of the head. I wasn’t knocked down but was doing a momentary regroup as a car came careening toward us, with tires screeching. It stopped only a few feet away.
I believe it had the desired effect as I was able to run past the car and both guys ran off in the opposite direction. At no time did I come close to seeing who rescued me, but a fleeting glance told me it wasn’t a police car. I ran until I couldn’t, and then walked the rest of the trip to the party.
It so happens that my older brother had spent much of his last year as a Marine in the rice patties of Vietnam. I was still in the afterglow of having him back with us, alive and almost in one piece. While we were alone talking, he sensed something was off and asked, “Are you alright?” I explained what had happened to his little brother.
Stiffening up he asked, “Do you want to go find them?” My response was apparently too casual as I said, “sure,” and made some reference to fighting. I still remember his words and an intensity that I had never seen. “If you wanna fuckin’ kill ‘em, let’s go, but I’m not gonna go play.” We never talked about it again.
As Yogi Berra once said, “When you reach a fork in the road, take it.” And we did.
Only one path led to a better place, and that was putting the misadventure behind me. For some reason I don’t even think the minimally traumatic experience had a chance to fester. I haven’t thought of it in twenty years and just recently started to question: had I let it go or was I merely suppressing it?
Only on reflection did I realize it was in my “file box” where I could retrieve it, but I never chose to. Of all the regrets I’ve had in my life, it didn’t even make the longest list.
For as long as I can remember, I have never harbored animosity toward those two black guys, or “their kind.” It’s certainly not because I have thick skin - I don’t. And it’s not because I’m a bad-ass who’s been in a lot of fights - I’m not and I haven’t. So, what’s the deal?
Could it be as simple as - I got stuck asking “WHY?”
I’m not even going to pretend that I remember what thoughts I had a half century ago. I do think I would have noticed and wondered about the difference between the way people like me lived, and the way that people unlike me lived. It didn’t take a college education to notice that none of the houses that I saw in the black neighborhoods were as nice as ours, or our neighbors. Why was that?
Could it be that all of “Them” were lazy or ignorant, and all of “Us” weren’t? I knew better. Could it be that those people had problems with drugs and alcohol, unlike my people? Personal observations revealed that my clan had more than our fair share of dysfunction - and I didn’t even have to step beyond our property line to find it.
Why was it that almost all the black people I saw working, were doing so in the service industry - cleaning rooms in motels, washing dishes or cars, doing janitorial work or cleaning houses, including our own. We had a maid named Mabel for approximately two years and she worked every bit as hard as my mother did. And yet my mother would have never done that kind of work for anyone else. Why was that?
My father had a job shop, contracting out engineers and draftsmen to do relatively short-term projects for different industries or the military. Though he certainly didn’t keep his generic distain for “colored people,” a secret, he really opened my eyes one day. I don’t remember the context, but I believe I was in high school at the time. He said, “If I have to choose between two men to send for a job and they have exactly the same qualifications and education, I will always send the colored guy. I know he had to work twice as hard as the white guy to get to the same spot in life.”
Why was that?
There’s a big difference between rationalizing or excusing bad behavior and trying to understand where it came from. It’s never delivered to us in a vacuum.
Merely asking why, can open up new roads toward addressing huge problems - such as the mentality that - it’s Us Against Them.