Today I am thankful for the lessons learned by watching the body language of a seven year old boy of middle eastern descent.
I am not happy about his body language.
He taught me something.
At first I was sad.
Now, I am angry.
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I used to be vegetarian.
I was awesomely skinny when I didn't eat meat.
It was nice.
I didn't seam to age either.
Perhaps it was a subconscious thing. My step-father was Cherokee and he would say that we had to thank animals before killing them and use every part of the animal. If you didn't do that, you would ingest all the pain and loss of the animal that was disrespected.
The problem was, when I was vegetarian, my hair started to fall out.
I would faint a lot.
At the time, I thought it was due to my lack of protein.
It turns out I'm allergic to eggs, soy and peanuts. Those were my primary sources of protein.
I also have asthma due to the allergies. I probably should move because I'm allergic to the trees in the front yard of my house!
When I was a vegetarian, I used to shop at the Halal market. These were the years after 9/11. People were nice. One day when I was sick, an elderly man handed me a packet of borage herb and told me to make a tea out of it. It cost a dollar.
I did as he instructed and it healed me right up.
I met beautiful, wonderful people at this shop.
When I started eating meat, I stopped visiting.
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My workplace is having a potluck dinner for Valentine's Day. The theme is 'Keeping the Heart Healthy.'
I guess the thought is that those of us with hearts that carry emotional scars can partake in a healthy meal to keep it well in physicality.
That means that we can live longer in our misery.
I was asked to make falafel and tabouli. Hummus sounds pretty good, too.
So, I made a trip with one of my daughters to the Halal market in the area.
Young people don't understand discrimination. They tend to be ego-centric, thinking that if anything happens to them, that they are at fault. They take everything inward. It is very hurtful to young people.
I always hated the parking lot. There are, perhaps, only twelve parking spaces. There really isn't a lot of room to walk or load the car.
We stopped in the parking lot to wait for a family to cross the street. There was a man, a woman and five children. Three girls and two boys.
I made my own parking spot by a dumpster. We walked over the family and offered to take their empty cart so they wouldn't have to walk it across the street again.
The man seemed shocked.
That's weird. Everybody used to do that for each other.
What's wrong?
We go inside and shop. My daughter wanted rose water, fresh olives, hazelnuts, juice, flat bread and many types of vegetables. We filled the cart.
There was a young man, about the age of seven, cowering at the side of the isle. He wasn't free. He wasn't giving us eye contact. Somehow he had become separated from his family.
He was definitely of middle eastern descent. He had the beautiful golden skin, brown eyes and dark hair.
He was afraid of my daughter and I.
I'm so ugly white, I'm translucent.
When he saw us, he someone managed to make himself smaller and rush past the few inches between the cart and the groceries. If he had walked on the other side of the cart, he would have had three feet of room.
I watched the children.
The really young kids, ran and played. If they were under the age of five, they didn't seem to be different.
The demeanor of some of the other children bothered me.
I'm thinking that anti-immigrant politics is harming my community in a very negative way.
When I left, I noticed the cashier charging me two and three times for many items. He scanned the flatbread three times, the garbanzo bean powder twice. I left paying twice of what I should have paid.
I will never go back to this store.
I wonder why?
I'm fairly certain that there is a lot of pain in the Muslim community for the antics of a Child in Chief?
Trump needs to grow up. This is reality. It is NOT a reality show.
People are being hurt by his tantrums. Children are terrified.
People are angry.
I wish that one of those alleged 466 Djinn I allegedly own were real.
If so, that travel ban will never, ever become a reality again.
The travel ban is a political ruse meant to appease the uneducated. There was no research behind it. There was no thought behind it. People were detained and threatened to go back to countries where officials have vowed to kill them upon re-entry.
If you want proof, use Google. You can Google the reason the court had to make the decision to put a stop to it. Read the story of the man that sued to stop it.
To the idiots that say that people who enter our country without citizenship have no Constitutional rights, remember they often have relatives here who are citizens.
Their relatives have rights. We're trampling on those.
We are also forgetting that every state in the union has its own Constitution. There are 51 Constitutions conferring rights and responsibilities to the citizens of this county.
Trump will never trample state rights for very long. If he does, he's a fake, fraud Republican.
If you want to protect the rights of citizens, reach out to your state legislature.
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Whatever happened to the days when conservatives welcomed immigrants with open arms?
Many of us still do.
Trump is using our country as a set of a reality show.
I WISH Donald Trump would stop playing games with the citizenry. I wish he'd become so transparent that we know what he's going to do next. I WISH we all knew everything he was doing 24/7....every thought...every desire....every tactic.....every good thing and every evil deed.
I'll stop short of wishing that he and Pence meet St. Peter (or whoever it is that greets evil doers in Hell). Pagans, like me, don't believe in Hell. Christian theology is confusing.
One can easily see why he chose the man he did to succeed him. Pence is excellent life insurance, isn't he? Maybe I could WISH that they both have personal crisis situations that teach them empathy.
Alas....the Arabian Nights are just a collection of stories.
Or are they?
Sadly, I know the truth. I'll keep it to myself and my collection of pretty lamps.
Love ya lots,
S.