To Bridge the Divide With a Joke

Last night, I found myself surrounded by elderly white folks in a Baptist Church in Lewisville, North Carolina. I was terrified.

Elderly people are not attractive in the conventional definition of attractive. And often, it is difficult to look at them as people. They have shriveled up bodies that function less efficiently than that of a person half their age - which might be 45. Or in my dad's case, 46.

It is easy to become impatient with the elderly. They move so slowly.  It  requires great effort for them to simply get from point A to point B. They are often fully aware of their frailties, which is a hard fact for anyone to face.

None of us wants to be frail. None of us wants to fall prey to the whims of an aging body.

I'm terrified of aging. I'm terrified of watching my friends' bodies break down and being unable to do anything to ease their suffering. I'm terrified of watching my own body break down, rendering me useless. I'm terrified of reaching a point where I cannot live any sort of life that matters. I am terrified of becoming irrelevant. I dread the day that I am the source of another person's impatience and ridicule.

My dad's band played tonight at a Baptist Church in Lewisville, North Carolina. And that is how I happened to find myself surrounded by elderly people. My dad begins his concerts with The Star Spangled Banner. Everyone stands, places their hand over their heart or salutes, and sings along. I stood but I did not place my hand over my heart. I did not sing along. My mom did. And after the song ended, we sat down together and I noticed my mom was crying. I asked her what was wrong, and she said she couldn't stop thinking about all of the poor people who had been shot this weekend. As I listened to her, I wondered about the deeply ingrained racism present in the elderly white folks at this Baptist Church in Lewisville, North Carolina. They might condemn the terrorist attacks in El Paso and Dayton without acknowledging them as such. They might also think, like our current president, that immigrants should be sent back to their countries.

I noticed a black woman sitting by herself.

The racism that is in the blood of white people runs so deep that we don't even notice it. Of course we're all going to say "I'm not racist!" Because we don't see it. We don't see that we walk by the black woman in the church and do not ask if we may sit with her. Even though the rest of the pews are filled. It just doesn't occur to us. And then there are the people who approach the black woman afterwards to make an effort to seem friendly. It is done in a manner similar to talking to a little child who might feel left out. A black person left out of a white person's club. It is so sweet of you to come to our white person club! We are so glad to have you visit! You can visit all you like, of course. But the unspoken reality is: you know you'll never be a member.

I wonder about the youth who committed the terrorist attacks this weekend. Two men, boys really, in their twenties. They ruined so many people's lives. They ruined their own lives. Does the El Paso shooter have any real sense of his failure as a human being? Is his conscience completely annihilated by hate-filled propaganda?

I look at the elderly people who are still living and wonder how they feel about this privilege of living as a white person in America: the privilege that allows them to reach a ripe old age of 86, 90, 100.

I just don't know what to think about this life that we are living. I think one of the reasons there are so many mass shootings in America is that white people here are experiencing something of a spiritual void. We've lost a reverence for life and all its wonder. We've lost the capacity for Joy. We've lost the ability to experience magic.. This lack of wonder, this lack of joy, this lack of love for ourselves and our neighbors will kill us. How do we begin to teach people to love and respect their lives?

Later in the evening, I sat across the table from some of these elderly people at the Baptist Church in Lewisville, NC of whom I was afraid. For all the various reasons delineated above. And I began to talk to them. I listened to their stories. They asked me questions about my life. We shared jokes and laughter over homemade ice cream. And it was a good time.

As I was leaving, my dad linked his arm with mine to steady himself as he took deliberate steps towards the door. A man stopped my dad and told him that he has a great sense of humor. He said, "You keep your sense of humor! It will take you far. A good joke is the shortest distance between two different opinions." I felt like he'd been eavesdropping on my mind.

Similarly, one of the elderly men at the Baptist Church in Lewisville, North Carolina told me that I, like my dad, had a good sense of humor, and that I could be a stand-up comedian. I doubt that that's true, but it's a nice thought. I'd like to be able to bridge the great divides of the people in this country with a joke. What a gift that would be!

The Mensch

Twisted, knotted stomach-ache tension. Repressed anger. Grief on hold.

This morning I awoke with a very strong feeling that I needed to call out of work. A mounting stress which has become unbearable has pushed me to the point of breakage. I considered all the ways in which stress disrupts the body's balance. I considered the delicate state my body is in on any given day due to cancer recovery and ongoing fights with an auto-immune condition no one seems to know anything about.

But today is Thursday - a typically busy day due to Planet Care's campaign to fight childhood obesity. From 4:00 to 8:00 p.m. children eat for free. And many people take advantage of this opportunity to score free vittles. I considered calling out for the first four hours of my shift and working the second four hours during peak traffic. But a bizarre sense of obligation often overrides my inner knowing. I proceeded to work despite my tenuous mental health.

I cried on my way to work. I tried calling my boyfriend for moral support, but my phone's service had been suspended due to non payment. I sighed as I realized that this was yet another manifestation of my inability to function on a material world level.

I proceeded to work, sniffling, thinking about how I would call my mobile phone service during my lunch break to make a payment and have service restored. This thought distracted me from the dread thoughts: the imagined conflicts and customer traffic jams I would need to face during the day, the inevitable sighting of and potential interaction with The Bully, the confinement to a small cubby in which I must stand for eight hours. I managed to allow the logistical planning of telephone restoration to supercede all fear and trembling, at least long enough to get me to work.

What is this intangible sorrow?

I arrived at Planet Care and felt very much like I was walking on shaky ground. I recognized there was no way to combat the overwhelming emotion I felt. I must simply allow it to exist and try to get through the day to the best of my ability.

Evelyn's death? I was not that close to her. But it seems like such a tragic undefinable loss. The anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and a collective sorrow re-lived? The flooding in Pakistan creating ripples of loss and tragedy? My inability to heed my body's inner knowing? My blind allegiance to the timeclock?

I found myself less tolerant of customers on their cell phones who refused to make eye contact or verbally acknowledge the person who is selling them their goods.

I collapsed with relief and regained a sense of hope and well-being when a Friend happened through my line.

I daydreamed about all the possible ways I could make money in this world so that I could leave Planet Care and all the stress it creates in my universe.

The customers piled up. Lines stretched out to the drink cooler and beyond. Where are the other cashiers? I decided to work at a deliberate pace, to avoid feeling pressured to speed up, to allow the line to lengthen if it must.

An elderly woman began to unload her cart onto the conveyor belt as I finished a transaction with another customer. When I shifted my attention from the completed transaction to the transaction-in-waiting, I was surprised to see not an elderly woman, but a man - a regular - with a bag of nuts. He made some comment to the elderly woman indicating he had a hot cup of coffee waiting. A bag of nuts and a hot cup of coffee compelled this man to ask this elderly woman - with breathing tubes in her nose and portable oxygen and cane - to allow him in front of her.

He acted as if this was ok. I decided to let it go.

I maintained composure despite challenges which come in the form of products that won't ring up, products that ring up at prices other than those indicated on their signs, the constantly ringing phone which cashiers are expected to answer. I continued being helpful and polite though not exceedingly enthusiastic about it.

The Thursday night mayhem began as parents brought in their children, tired and hungry from a day at school, dance classes, tai kwon do, piano lessons. With the rise in anxiousness to get food and eat food comes a general impatience.

I was ringing out a woman when another woman approached the conveyor belt from my right. Typically, traffic moves from my right to my left. Sometimes people come in "backwards" - that is to say from my left, which is fine as long as I am not helping another customer to my right.

The woman to my right began to unload her groceries onto the conveyor belt. A man approached from my left, passed the woman I was currently serving and got in front of the woman unloading her groceries. The words escaped my mouth before I stopped to consider the possible ramifications for uttering them:

"Did you just break in front of this lady?"

The man puffed up and said, "Well I don't know if you could call it breaking in front of her! She was coming from that direction, I was coming from this direction. I got here first."

Yeah, motherfucker, you got here first because you jumped in front of the other lady.

Fortunately for me, the cashier behind me beckoned the man to her lane. There were no customers competing for service there. He immediately jumped at this opportunity. "This works out better for me!" he said.

The woman whose transaction I was finishing said, "He was here first." I became confused. Her words did not match my experience of the moment. After she left, I spoke to the woman - who I perceived had been wronged. I told her that I had witnessed two men breaking in front of women today and it pissed me off. "They think they run the world! They think they're always right!" It was an overly dramatic response to some inner turmoil I could not yet define.

This woman simply nodded wearily, looked at me in solidarity and said, "Thank-you for being a mensch."

"A what?" I asked.

"Mensch is Hebrew for Human Being. It's a good thing."

I thanked her for this high compliment. I told her that was the best thing anybody could say to me.

A mensch.

This word energized me. There was an hour and a half left in my shift. I felt like I could last until that time. I felt like I had something positive to hold onto.

The word "mensch." Given to me by a mensch. A sign of Humanity in a world where Humanity seems harder and harder to detect.