IMAGINE MY SURPRISE

Dedicated to Yesterday's Post

I spend a lot of time reading blogs, surfing the web, and compulsively following whatever issue is chaining me to my social conscience at the moment. Now there are a lot of things that demand my attention since I view society with quite a critical and personal eye.

Most of my life I have been somewhat obsessed with injustice. Where it came from, I don't know. My mother was a racist. This turned out to be a quite a surprise to me when I found out that she was a Native. As I grew older I came to understand some of the roots of her self hatred and why being "white" was so important to her. I was about seven years old when I saw "Negroes" being corralled by white authority and I knew that this was wrong. I lived in a foster home where the father was a Deputy Sheriff. This was in Florida. On Saturday mornings he would strap on his gun, take his Boxer dog and head out into the palmetto groves to hunt "n*****s." I knew this was wrong. My sense of racial prejudice was formed and my position strong.

It was in junior high when I found out that not everyone was like me. I made the socially fatal error of asking a girl to a junior high school dance. I had crushes, sure, I just had them on everyone. That was when I first heard the word "queer." I didn't necessarily know what it meant, but I knew that it was something that I shouldn't be. What I didn't know was the word bisexual. How strange that was to figure out. As I grew up and understood more of who I was, I became comfortable with who I was and add that to my already well developed "attitude" and my personage became one that presented such a front that even if one wanted to call me a name, they would think twice about it.

Poverty was also part of my life. I didn't quite have the concept of money down when I learned to steal food. It was something my mother had me do. Some people had things that I didn't. Unfortunately, I didn't know why that was but I decided early on that it had to have been my fault. It took a long time for me to understand fully what really was happening. Through that I learned that poverty was a disease and not to be tolerated. I learned by experiencing that classism was not to be tolerated.

When I graduated from grammar school, I was at the head of the class. This meant that I got to give a speech. The things that I spoke about were my dreams. The main dream that I had was that I would grow up and be the first woman to attend CalTech. They weren't allowed to go there in those days. I didn't understand the full realm of feminism at that time, but there was a great start that went on to become a core part of who I am.

I really knew nothing of war. Well, I knew about the Civil War, primarily from the movie Gone With the Wind. What I carried with me from that movie was the scene in the rail yard where the wounded and bodies of the dead were. That scene stayed with me and was the seed of my understanding of peace. The Viet Nam war finished off my education of war. I became a peace-nik. That was one of the nicer names I was called at the time, I kind of miss some of them...they were rather amusing.

These are all ideals and ideas that I developed prior to true maturity. They are as hard and fast now as they were then. I have pride in who I am politically: Native, Queer, Peace Activist, Feminist and Socialist. I will admit that there were times when I wished to a little bit more like Anna Nicole Smith, but it ain't gonna happen folks. I will continue to address any social issue I choose at any time I choose. It doesn't make me less of an American, it doesn't mean I hate this country, it doesn't mean that I think that everything this country does is wrong. It means that I will speak when, where and how I wish...as is my right.

However, I reserve my right to be as shallow as I want to be, whenever I want to be. I love to be underestimated and work at setting that up every chance I get. I want to be silly, inappropriate at times, and the one who says the things that no one else will say. If I were to be a bimbo, I wouldn't mind being Anna Nicole...she came up from poverty, is also underestimated quite a bit, and has managed to make it to where she is even with her mistakes. Haven't we all?