My Magic Wand

A few days ago, on her weblog, My Musings, Left-Leaning Lady gave an impassioned and detailed account of how, while refinancing her home, she became highly outraged, frustrated, and even close to illness when she found that the closing costs would be several thousand dollars more than what she had been led to believe. In the process of getting to the bottom of things, she said -- in different words -- that she had to scream and rage and kick a lot of verbal butt.

I was awed. It wasn't what I would have done, and it wasn't what I could have done, ever. Or at least I think so. But I know well the truth of the old adage that says the squeaky wheel gets the most grease. Now, as the end of things keeps galloping closer and closer, people can say to me, "See? You haven't called for nearly enough grease, and it shows."

I don't have the temperament, and I've never been able to decide whether that is good or bad, because I don't know the exact ingredients of what I do have. Prudence? A testosterone lack? Overactive peace genes? Or just plain cowardice?

I just know that when I am faced with nasty situations brought on by people of the ilk that so disturbed Left-Leaning Lady, my reaction has always been, first, to put some distance between me and them, and, second, to wait for the fools to come to their senses. This strategy could've been detected far back in my elementary school days. I was never one to get into a fight on the playground or to be part of those mob-like cheering rings that always formed around the combatants. Instead I would stand back and look with pity, bemusement, and disdain upon both the battlers and their audience.

This explains why, though I was as resentful as any at having Jim Crow directed at me and at everyone grouped with me, I never considered marching or joining those who were protesting and otherwise working to end it, however much I admired what they were doing. I had no stomach for being in the vicinity of all those raging segregationists. It would've been too big a strain on my Magic Wand, and, failing that, I would have been too tempted to pick up something else instead, most likely a rock.

I have a tactic that I call "waving my Magic Wand," and it has always been effective in disposing, permanently, of all those who offended me. If I can just create a distance of some kind, soon enough, poof! They're gone.

I attended the defining "March on Washington," in 1963, at which Reverend King gave his most famous speech. And I remember how thrilled and impressed I was, at seeing all those veterans of so many civil rights struggles waged mostly in the South and at so much cost of many kinds to them, most of them Rainbows but there were a fair number of Euros, too. Now here they all were, the battle-scarred soldiers, male and female, that I had been reading about for so long, looking so proud and standing so tall in one body and in one place, in my hometown, D.C.. They had joined in weaving ranks, and they strolled toward the Lincoln Memorial more than marched, as it was a very hot day

I knew I wasn't qualified to stroll with them, so I hung back in my favorite position, on the edges, and I just took a few pictures and looked and listened.

I don't think that to this day Americans of all hues and persuasions have yet really come to terms with how criminal and damaging Jim Crow was, for everyone, including Euros. A lot of older Rainbows have thought it a virtue to put all that behind them. Younger Rainbows are scornful of their elders for having endured it. And Euros of all ages reject all suggestions of blame as well as confessing to feeling damaged, on the grounds that they weren't around.

Yet the ripple effect of that monstrous crime still rolls on, and I try to flatter myself that, whereas so many have forgotten, I have probably kept up my inner forms of protest longer and more resolutely than most. But I'm aware of one disturbing possibility, and most likely it's a fact.

In some situations their taste for bad behavior is so deeply rooted that it is impossible for people to come to their senses, no matter how much grease is applied.