So Long Horrible Teens and 2019: Hoping 2020 And The Twenties Will Be Less Traumatic
Forgetting that some of my classmates were also teachers, I tried to use my authoritative teacher persona to end a debate on how many decades we seventy-year-old 1967 ETHS graduates had lived in. When I entered the debate, a somewhat sarcastic classmate named Mark was accusing other classmates of having smoked too much pot because they thought we had been in eight decades. I pointed out that they were right because we were born in 1949, which meant we had lived in the forties. That silenced Mark, who is a Facebook friend and so knows it's not a good idea to debate Teacher Mary. But moderator of our Facebook group Cheri, who is more authoritative than I am because she was an elementary school teacher, claimed that we couldn't count the forties since we were not yet one when we left that decade. We had to start our count with the fifties, which we were alive throughout, she argued. Fortunately, an even more authoritative classmate, another moderator named Paul, who fought in Vietnam and whose father was a police officer, joined and ended the debate. He sided with me, pointing out that we still lived "in" the forties while not "throughout" them. Based on that theory, my mother has been in ten decades. She was born in 1928 and has made it to 2020. I can't speak for my mother, who was a child during the Depression and an adolescent during World War II when some products were rationed, but the teens were the worst decade that I lived "through," and 2019 was one of the worst years.
2019 began and ended with an upsetting telephone call from a relative. On the first day of the year, I received a telephone call from a second cousin who lives in Riverside. I thought she was calling to wish me a Happy New Year and report on how her parents, who had just moved back to Southern California after experiencing a hurricane that badly damaged their home in Florida, were doing. Instead she was calling to tell me that her father, my first cousin, had died. On the last day of the year, I received a phone call from one of my Georgia relatives. Again, I thought the call was to wish me a Happy New Year and to show me some love and warmth since I had recently complained to this woman's father about how what I referred to as his family had treated (actually mistreated) me. Instead this woman treated me so disrespectfully that I called her father to tell him his daughter had made me ill. Interestingly, the second cousin somewhat saved my New Year's Eve by calling to thank me for the flowers I sent to her, her sister, and her mother (who suffers from dementia) to let them know I was thinking of them as they faced the first anniversary of my cousin's death. Between those calls, I dealt with more deaths, including a favorite Cal Poly colleague (see 6/23/19 post) and in August, Toni Morrison, my favorite writer (see 8/18/19 post). Still, 2019 wasn't as bad as 2018 when I was battling the corrupt HOA and management company, plus a backstabbing lawyer. I was able to testify against and (more important) stare down that lawyer last year. In fact, there were quite a few worse years than 2019 during the really awful decade that I was happy to see move into the history books.
The sixties when I left the black elementary school for the white junior high and high schools, left Kentucky for Illinois, graduated from high school, and started college were tumultuous years historically. There were multiple political assassinations--two Kennedys, Martin, Malcolm, and Medgar--protests and riots. But there was also much progress toward equal rights for blacks, with LBJ signing the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts. During the seventies when I finished college, moved from Illinois to California, and started teaching at universities (Cal Poly, USC, and Tufts), black people were feeling proud. We wore big Afros and dashikis. Our movies and music dominated pop culture, and there were several popular black television shows. Women were also fighting for and gaining more rights while voting rights were extended (too late for me) to eighteen-year-olds. I was young and living in the city (Los Angeles, on or near the USC campus) for the first and only time in my life. But I was also poor and looking forward to earning some money and living larger. Although I started the eighties in Cambridge, Massachusetts, teaching at Tufts in nearby Medford, I already knew that I would probably be in Pomona by the time school started in September. During the eighties, nineties, and aughts as I taught at Cal Poly Pomona and watched the conservatives take over our country (even Clinton was a conservative Democrat), I weathered some storms (my stepfather's death in 1988, my mother's rape in 1990, my serious digestive problems in the late nineties) but mainly enjoyed teaching, earning/saving money, and buying cars (five) and homes (two). If I had to pick one year that was the best in my life so far, it would be 2008, the year many other Americans lost their money and their homes. Of course, it was the year that the first (half-) black President was elected (to clean up the mess made by the rich, incompetent white President), the best historical moment in my lifetime; it was also my last full year of teaching. I retired in 2009, bought myself a new car, a new DVD, a new laptop, and became wired at home. I was looking forward to the next decade until it came.
Although the best President in my lifetime reigned during most of the teens, leaving the White House in January, 2017, his election twice by a coalition of enlightened whites and people of color led to a racist backlash that made the eighties conservative backlash look tame. Usually the backlash to progress takes us back but not as far back as we were before the progress began. Jim Crow, the one hundred years backlash to the very brief period of post-slavery Reconstruction, did not take us back to slavery (although sharecropping came close), and the Reagan era anti-affirmative action backlash to the civil rights and women's rights movements (not to mention radical movements like the Weathermen, SLA, and other left-wing terrorists) did not lead to black people having to ride in the back of the bus and use separate restrooms and water fountains or women not being able to receive charge cards in their names. However, the backlash to the election of a half-black President by a minority of white people and a huge majority of people of color took us back farther than the eighties. For the first time since the fifties, voting rights were taken away instead of expanded. Unarmed black people were killed by police and wannabe police who usually got away with it without having to spend millions of dollars the way OJ did when he was tried in the nineties for killing two white people (a crime no one saw him commit and after a nearly year long trial that revealed at least one cop was racist, and some evidence was planted). Since I remembered the racism of the late fifties/early sixties and even rode in the back of buses and went in back doors during my Kentucky childhood, the increased racism of the teens made my blood boil. And then came the worst historical day in my lifetime (9/11/2001 was second worst) when the majority of white people, including white women, elected an insane white supremacist. 2016 was the worst year in my life, worst than 1996 when I was rapidly losing weight because I couldn't eat (at least Clinton was President then). I had begun the year dealing with my mother's dementia and trying to move her into a memory care facility. After moving her into the facility on April 4 and coping with the usual problems that such a transition causes, I had spent the summer enjoying the peace (after two years of turmoil caused by her dementia) and quiet of my large, empty home, believing that Hillary was going to become the first female President, only to see most sane people's worst nightmare happen. Then less than a month later, my mother broke her hip, so I spent the end of the year travelling between the hospital, her memory care facility, and a nursing home, where she was receiving physical therapy.
2020 started the way 2019 began and ended--with a disturbing phone call. For the second time in a few weeks, a hospice worker called me unnecessarily, briefly making me believe that I was going to lose a relative on New Year's Day for the second year in a row. But two days later as I was taking my early morning walk, I saw a folded five dollar bill lying on the sidewalk, picked it up, and tucked it into my pocket. When I later reached in my pocket to take it out, I discovered that I had two five dollar bills. I hope those bills are signs of luck not only for the year but for the decade. I can't imagine that the twenties will be worst than the teens. What happened in November, 2018, suggests that Americans are regaining their senses. There will be more deaths because we're all growing older, and we all must die, but let's hope there will be less hatred and senseless killing. Happy 2020 and New Decade, everyone!
2019 began and ended with an upsetting telephone call from a relative. On the first day of the year, I received a telephone call from a second cousin who lives in Riverside. I thought she was calling to wish me a Happy New Year and report on how her parents, who had just moved back to Southern California after experiencing a hurricane that badly damaged their home in Florida, were doing. Instead she was calling to tell me that her father, my first cousin, had died. On the last day of the year, I received a phone call from one of my Georgia relatives. Again, I thought the call was to wish me a Happy New Year and to show me some love and warmth since I had recently complained to this woman's father about how what I referred to as his family had treated (actually mistreated) me. Instead this woman treated me so disrespectfully that I called her father to tell him his daughter had made me ill. Interestingly, the second cousin somewhat saved my New Year's Eve by calling to thank me for the flowers I sent to her, her sister, and her mother (who suffers from dementia) to let them know I was thinking of them as they faced the first anniversary of my cousin's death. Between those calls, I dealt with more deaths, including a favorite Cal Poly colleague (see 6/23/19 post) and in August, Toni Morrison, my favorite writer (see 8/18/19 post). Still, 2019 wasn't as bad as 2018 when I was battling the corrupt HOA and management company, plus a backstabbing lawyer. I was able to testify against and (more important) stare down that lawyer last year. In fact, there were quite a few worse years than 2019 during the really awful decade that I was happy to see move into the history books.
The sixties when I left the black elementary school for the white junior high and high schools, left Kentucky for Illinois, graduated from high school, and started college were tumultuous years historically. There were multiple political assassinations--two Kennedys, Martin, Malcolm, and Medgar--protests and riots. But there was also much progress toward equal rights for blacks, with LBJ signing the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts. During the seventies when I finished college, moved from Illinois to California, and started teaching at universities (Cal Poly, USC, and Tufts), black people were feeling proud. We wore big Afros and dashikis. Our movies and music dominated pop culture, and there were several popular black television shows. Women were also fighting for and gaining more rights while voting rights were extended (too late for me) to eighteen-year-olds. I was young and living in the city (Los Angeles, on or near the USC campus) for the first and only time in my life. But I was also poor and looking forward to earning some money and living larger. Although I started the eighties in Cambridge, Massachusetts, teaching at Tufts in nearby Medford, I already knew that I would probably be in Pomona by the time school started in September. During the eighties, nineties, and aughts as I taught at Cal Poly Pomona and watched the conservatives take over our country (even Clinton was a conservative Democrat), I weathered some storms (my stepfather's death in 1988, my mother's rape in 1990, my serious digestive problems in the late nineties) but mainly enjoyed teaching, earning/saving money, and buying cars (five) and homes (two). If I had to pick one year that was the best in my life so far, it would be 2008, the year many other Americans lost their money and their homes. Of course, it was the year that the first (half-) black President was elected (to clean up the mess made by the rich, incompetent white President), the best historical moment in my lifetime; it was also my last full year of teaching. I retired in 2009, bought myself a new car, a new DVD, a new laptop, and became wired at home. I was looking forward to the next decade until it came.
Although the best President in my lifetime reigned during most of the teens, leaving the White House in January, 2017, his election twice by a coalition of enlightened whites and people of color led to a racist backlash that made the eighties conservative backlash look tame. Usually the backlash to progress takes us back but not as far back as we were before the progress began. Jim Crow, the one hundred years backlash to the very brief period of post-slavery Reconstruction, did not take us back to slavery (although sharecropping came close), and the Reagan era anti-affirmative action backlash to the civil rights and women's rights movements (not to mention radical movements like the Weathermen, SLA, and other left-wing terrorists) did not lead to black people having to ride in the back of the bus and use separate restrooms and water fountains or women not being able to receive charge cards in their names. However, the backlash to the election of a half-black President by a minority of white people and a huge majority of people of color took us back farther than the eighties. For the first time since the fifties, voting rights were taken away instead of expanded. Unarmed black people were killed by police and wannabe police who usually got away with it without having to spend millions of dollars the way OJ did when he was tried in the nineties for killing two white people (a crime no one saw him commit and after a nearly year long trial that revealed at least one cop was racist, and some evidence was planted). Since I remembered the racism of the late fifties/early sixties and even rode in the back of buses and went in back doors during my Kentucky childhood, the increased racism of the teens made my blood boil. And then came the worst historical day in my lifetime (9/11/2001 was second worst) when the majority of white people, including white women, elected an insane white supremacist. 2016 was the worst year in my life, worst than 1996 when I was rapidly losing weight because I couldn't eat (at least Clinton was President then). I had begun the year dealing with my mother's dementia and trying to move her into a memory care facility. After moving her into the facility on April 4 and coping with the usual problems that such a transition causes, I had spent the summer enjoying the peace (after two years of turmoil caused by her dementia) and quiet of my large, empty home, believing that Hillary was going to become the first female President, only to see most sane people's worst nightmare happen. Then less than a month later, my mother broke her hip, so I spent the end of the year travelling between the hospital, her memory care facility, and a nursing home, where she was receiving physical therapy.
2020 started the way 2019 began and ended--with a disturbing phone call. For the second time in a few weeks, a hospice worker called me unnecessarily, briefly making me believe that I was going to lose a relative on New Year's Day for the second year in a row. But two days later as I was taking my early morning walk, I saw a folded five dollar bill lying on the sidewalk, picked it up, and tucked it into my pocket. When I later reached in my pocket to take it out, I discovered that I had two five dollar bills. I hope those bills are signs of luck not only for the year but for the decade. I can't imagine that the twenties will be worst than the teens. What happened in November, 2018, suggests that Americans are regaining their senses. There will be more deaths because we're all growing older, and we all must die, but let's hope there will be less hatred and senseless killing. Happy 2020 and New Decade, everyone!
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