REGURGITATIONS

     I am old enough to remember women burning their bras.  I remember the Women's Liberations movement.  I remember the long hair, the bell bottoms and the bra-less-ness.  I watched it on television with my mom.  She was a housewife.  She married at fourteen.  She was gorgeous, compassionate, intelligent.... and spineless.  She spent her days ruled by my father who was not half the person she was.  My father was a selfish bully who was not giving up any of the power he believed he was entitled to.  I watch the women protesting the Kavanaugh nomination.  The organize, they carry signs, they scream, they screech, they protest.  They want their stories to be told.  They want their stories to be heard.  I am certain my mother wanted my father to hear her.  On occasion she told me her story.  Her dreams.  Her aspirations.  But my father wasn't listening... primarily because he was too busy talking.  And when he wasn't talking, he wanted quiet.  This is what these old white me

     "Them Ni**ers is lazy!"  My grandmother would yell at the television as we cheered her favorite football team, the University of Alabama, on a sunny, fall Alabama afternoon.  Puzzled, I would respond in my meek ten-year-old voice, "Grandma, the black guys are running circles around the fat white guys."  Oblivious to my keen observation she would continue, "They're animals. They ain't got normal sized human brains.  They’re dumb."  Undaunted I politely proclaimed, "But Grandma those black men are in college."  My grandmother, a fifth-grade graduate, leered at me as she spoke, "I liked football better before they allowed them Porch Monkeys to play with them good, Christian, white boys."  As I sat innocently on the worn, smoke-filled sofa of my grandmother's living room, under the watchful eyes of numerous Jesus renderings, it was obvious my grandmother was having difficulty adjusting to the integration of her belove

                 I was raised in a dysfunctional home.   Maybe, all of us were to some degree.   My home was filled with tension, harsh words, anger, threats, fear and physical punishment.   I felt perpetually unwelcome.   I would often lose myself in dreams of a better place.   A friendly, welcoming place where words produced laughter not pain.   To this end, I never missed a rerun of the Andy Griffith show during my childhood years.   Mayberry became my happy place.   Mayberry represented family and a better existence, a better America.   Baseball, apple pie and Chevrolet.   A cold coke on the porch as the autumn breeze brought another pleasant day to an end.   Maybe Uncle Andy would break out the guitar and we would sing a few tunes. No matter the events of the day it would end with a kiss on the forehead as Andy turned the bedside lamp out.   The town would rest easy, doors unlocked and windows open.   I dreamed of a weekend car trip in the police cruiser to Mount Pilot

How can a child shoot up a school?   The answer is obvious.   Bad parenting.   Parents don’t want to hear this reality.   We all know the parents who have the kid who we all know is going to shoot up a school or find another way to end up in prison.   If you don’t know those parents and those kids…then you are probably that parent and they are your kids.   The kids you see hitting their parents.   More likely to shoot up a school.   The kids you see cussing at their parents.   More likely to shoot up a school.   The kids you see throwing a tantrum in the store as their parents stand idly by.   More likely to shoot up a school.   The kid calling his mother by her first name.   More likely to shoot up a school.   The kid who has a list of prescription medications which is exceeded by his parents.   More likely to shoot up a school.        I spent more than twenty-five years as an Occupational Therapy provider.   I posses Bachelors Degrees in Behavior Modification and Clinical Psyc

Seventeen dead school children.   That’s a small price to pay so Americans can protect their right to play pretend cowboy.   We gotta be armed in case the Native Americans, Muslims, Atheists, Aborted Fetuses or the military of our great country decide to attack us.   Because let’s be honest nothing puts the fear of God in a Super Power military than a bunch of rifle-totin, frightened, hilbillies who weren’t smart or disciplined enough to finish high school but innately possess the strategic military skills passed down from their Confederate forefathers.   Sure God will protect us but only after we empty our magazine on a Ivy-league educated, communist-loving, constitution-hating, liberal-minded, atheist, half-breed, transsexual who will inevitably invade our double-wide to use the bathroom beside our youngens.      I am a courageous American.   I have no fear.   Hell, it says it on the back of my pickup window, “No Fear.”   Sometimes I drive around town and don’t even use my bli