I worry about the kids today, just like any old lady, but sometimes I see things that give me hope.
- First observation: I was seated in a cramped corridor at the local Starbucks on one of those dreadful hot days last week. At the end of the corridor, around a tight corner, was the restroom, whose entrance was surrounded by boxes and furniture of all kinds. Now, the Starbucks was full of well-fed Marblehead and Salem types, all white (including me). It's worth it to note that you couldn't see what was going in in most of the corridor or restroom corner from the main area.
Then a blind, skinny black man with a cane walked into the store. He was apparently on his own, and while he didn't appear to be homeless or starving, he looked like his road had been kind of tough. He started down the corridor to the restroom, not very gracefully. I'm not sure whether he was just not very skilled with his cane or whether this truly would have been an obstacle course for a blind person even if that blind person were James Cagney. These days, of course, you can't be sure that someone with a white cane is truly blind, either... and sadly, for a lot of white people, many times that thought will come to mind a lot quicker if the person with the cane is of color ... which leads to the next piece of the story.
It became obvious after a few seconds that the guy was not going to find the restroom easily without some help, so I tried fumblingly to guide the guy to the door, verbally. Didn't go well. Then, in darted a little blond boy of about eight or so who'd had a bit of an awkward interaction with the blind guy when he first walked into the store. No shyness, no fear, just ran up and physically guided the blind guy right to the restroom door. It was so sweet to see this.
Too bad the kid's mother didn't see it. She was too busy getting her nonfat Frappuccinos and yelling at him to come back into the main area. The kid kept trying to go back to the restroom to talk with his new friend, and yelled back at his mom, "I'm trying to help him!" The mother yelled back, "Well, he doesn't NEED your help! Get back here!" Now, the kid could be one of those boys who routinely runs amok on the slightest provocation, and I don't have kids running around on a daily basis, so I can only imagine how wearisome that can be. That being said, there seemed to be something so sad about the whole thing. So, on the kid's second return to look for his new friend, I looked him in the eye and said, "It was nice of you to help that man. He was having a hard time."
Normally, I keep my fairly large nose out of people's business with their kids, but this kid's actions and intentions seemed so much from the heart that I felt that someone else had to support what he was doing. It seems so typical that kids act spontaneously in a spiritual way and some adult does his or her damndest to crush it out of them because the person they're helping is the wrong color, wrong class, might be faking the whole thing, the coffee's getting cold, what have you. So I figured I would be the other adult, at least for a minute.
Anyway, I beat a rapid retreat at that point, frankly because I wasn't sure that I hadn't just made life worse for the kid. As I left, I heard him quarrelling with his mother still. I hope he grows up to be something like what I saw that day, but if so, it's going to be a bumpy ride. - Observation the second: Yesterday, I had to listen to Janis Joplin's "One Good Man" before I left for work. I found it on Youtube, naturally. In the comments section was a post from a 14-year-old saying how much she loved Janis Joplin. I was just about the same age when I found Janis. I like Gaga and all, and I would really have loved her when I was 14, but she ain't no Joplin.
