Wednesday, September 21, 2005
Minority Report
I hate admitting my age. Only because of the knee jerk reaction many younger people have to anyone older than them. I took this online test twice. The first time I tested out as 26. The second time I regressed to 23. I've mentioned this to some of the young ladies I used to teach and add teasingly that pretty soon they could date me. Their reaction is a laugh, a smile, a wink. But not an EWWWWWW. It's reassuring only because it confirms that their parents brought them up to be polite. But I hate admitting my actual age to younger people because they are not always as polite as these kids.I've been a minority in several ways most of my life but I never consciously acted like I thought I was one. Usually among the five shortest in the class, I challenged others to get over it. The few fist fights I had as a preteen were always with much bigger guys. I won too. When I played football, I made sure that the big guys holding the blocking dummy noticed I hit harder than the bigger guys. When I came home from Catholic school, most of the kids in the neighborhood I wanted to hang out with were not Catholic. That suited me fine. I just had to curse more than the rest of them at first to help them get over it.
Being shorter and looking younger than most did not prevent me from becoming class president for the first two years in high school. I dated girls my height because it was easier to kiss them, not because I had to settle for anything. This photo is around tenth grade of me and my pal Maria. Her hair makes her look almost as tall as me. We're still pals.
In college I was again a minority for my political views but that didn't keep me from writing a weekly column in the campus newspaper. I really put it out there. Kept me off the deans list. Those Franciscan monks and their employees were very unforgiving. This group shot from college makes me look taller than the rest but I think the intention was to make me look like a standout radical in a Catholic college.
When I became an elementary school teacher, I was often the only man within shouting distance. I don't think any of my blog buddies are contemporaries. I refuse to act my age. Although I don't take it personally, I see and hear age prejudice on a daily basis. Where I live, it's not usually directed at me because I don't look like I fit in with my contemporaries. Also I retired young compared to most of these people.Cathy, in one of her inexplicable intuitive bursts brought a video home called The Station Agent. It was about a dwarf played by
Peter Dinklage I love this movie. There's a dude who has endured more than any minority I've ever been in contact with. He learned to ignore it but welcomed the solitude of living on his own in an abandoned train station. I like how he doesn't seek acceptance from normal sized people. Instead he is very choosy about who he accepted. He only had one drunken scene where he admitted his vulnerability. He also admitted his bitterness over a failed love relationship with a normal sized girl. This makes him totally normal in my eyes. This dude is my hero. No, I'm not a dwarf. If I was, this is the way I'd handle it, though.I always wanted to write a song about embracing our differences. I guess it's hard not to sound like "It's a Small World After All." So I never gave it much of a shot. My late great older brother, Jack Buckley, had a close friend named Sonny. Sonny is a black dude. I loved to listen to them carry on with each other making outrageous racial insults. We all laughed our asses off and that's the way I wish it could be all the time. Our differences are interesting and amusing and we should make fun of ourselves while poking fun at others.
We're all gonna get bald or gray, wrinkled, paunchy and slow. Our ears and noses are gonna keep growing. Chewing could be a problem too. I'll hold that process off as long as I can but when it happens, I'm gonna find something about it to laugh at. Hell, I'm looking back at my twenties with enormous amusement. They could produce a daytime drama about me called "The Young and the Stupid."
Today's sermon brought to you by the Lighten Up Society Enterprise or LUSE.
posted by Bud @ 5:16 AM
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