I was in my hometown for Saturday night and Sunday morning this past weekend, to see my brother a bit while he was visiting. Saturday night, he, I, and our mom went out to dinner at the local pizza place.

We were sitting in a booth, I on one side, my brother and mother together on the other side of the table, talking and just having a very nice time together. We were just starting our pizza when I heard the 80s Dexys Midnight Runners song playing through the overhead speakers.

My brother and I briefly referenced the song, “That’s an old one,” “I never really cared for it.”

Then an old juvenile joke came to my mind.

I said to my brother, “What’s worse than grease on Olivia Newton John?”

“I don’t know,” he said, “what?”

I gently pointed up towards the music.

My brother chuckled quietly.

I didn’t think Mom had heard me, or at least she didn’t catch exactly what I had said. There was a short pause and then she asked about the song we were talking about.

Brogrit summed it up in a few words, naming the title as “Come on Eileen.”

Mom said, “I don’t think I’ve heard it,” then she went back to her pizza. So did brogrit and I.

A few seconds passed, then she stopped cutting her slice of pizza, froze in place a moment and said, “Oh!”

The mixture of embarrassment, disapproval, and humor crossing her face as she put her hand to her mouth caused brogrit and I to burst out laughing. Quickly, all three of us had our hands covering our faces to conceal and muffle the laughing out loud. We were all three red faced, tearing up, and bouncing in laughter.

Fortunately, the restaurant was pretty loud during the height of dinner rush, so we didn’t attract more than just a few glances from other tables. We convulsed for a good five minutes before we could calm down and straighten our faces. When we could at last talk calmly again, our conversation quickly moved on to other topics.

That was probably the best laugh we’ve had together in many years (and we’re generally not a very serious family).

Bullgrit

I took Calfgrit8 out last evening, just the two of us, to go get Calfgrit4 a birthday present. (CG4 will turn CG5 on October 15.) I wanted to use this time not just for gift-getting, but also for some one-on-one time with CG8. We haven’t had much alone time together in a while, and I felt like we both needed it. (I need and want some alone time with CG4, too, and that will come soon, I hope.)

As we drove out, I asked him where we needed to go to get what he wanted to give CG4: Target, Toys R Us, somewhere else? He said Target. I then asked him if he was hungry and wanted to eat before or after shopping. He said after. So we went to Target.

At the store, he knew exactly what he wanted to get his little brother – they’ve apparently discussed this: a particular Pokemon deck. We went straight to Pokemon cards, and Calfgrit8 immediately grabbed the specific boxed deck. There was no looking around, no examining the selection, just straight to and grab it.

When we left the store, I asked him where he wanted to get dinner. In that shopping center there are several restaurants I like and I know he at least doesn’t dislike: Chili’s, Red Robin, IHOP, Fridays, and several smaller places. He chose Panera; I wouldn’t have guessed that. We went to the bagel and sandwich shop.

Calfgrit8 is a great kid. He’s normally polite and well behaved. Sometimes, though, when with his little brother, he gets a little passive/aggressive, and he loses his manners. Also when the brothers are together, he gets a little less mature – he tends to regress back toward CG4’s age. I think this might be because his little brother can’t really advance up to his age, so to have some common ground, CG8 has to “stoop down” in age a bit. And there’s also the sibling rivalry aspect, which as my brother and I can attest (at around 40 years of age), will make anyone drop a maturity level or twenty.

But when CG8 and I are alone together, his intelligence and maturity comes through. We sat in a booth talking and eating our bagel and sandwich. He seems to love asking me questions about random stuff. Apparently he asks these random questions of other people (his mother, his teacher, his grandparents, etc.) and when they can’t answer them, he brings them to me in batches.

“What does the a.m. and p.m. stand for in telling time?” he asked.

He knows they mean before noon and after noon, but he didn’t know what the initials stood for. I explained ante meridiem and post meridiem.

“Cool,” he said, “I’ll tell my teacher. She didn’t know what they meant.”

“What does ‘all rights reserved’ on a movie mean?” he asked.

I tried to give a short-form explanation of copyrights and reserving them, but this question and answer led us down an unexpectedly long discussion about creating stuff, getting paid for selling the stuff, and the wrongs of copying and selling other people’s stuff. Although copyright is a subject somewhat intertwined with my career (and this site), I didn’t intend to get into the depths of it with an 8-year-old, but he kept asking for more explanation and examples.

I really didn’t think we’d be spending our father-and-son time talking about copyrights, but it was still good just to have the together time.

Some fathers and sons sit around talking about football and cars. I and my son sit around talking time zones and copyright law. I love him so.

Bullgrit

I got into a discussion on a message board about how the Confederate flag is inextricably associated with racism in general, and the Ku Klux Klan specifically. In the discussion, I did some little research, and I felt it a shame to waste it on an ephemeral forum topic.

I’ve lived in the South my entire life (42 years). I lived in small towns for a sum total of about 23 years, a university town for about 6 years, and the state capital area for about 13 years. I’ve seen the Confederate flag flown here and there, and its image displayed in many places and worn by many people. But I’ve never met someone whom I knew was a member of any organized racist group, KKK or other.

Now, this is not to say I’ve never met a racist — I’ve known many through the years (and not just white folk). And I can’t say that someone I met or knew wasn’t a closet member of some organization. But I can say, self assured, that the KKK (or similar) was never a major factor in my personal culture.

I never saw anything “KKKish” in my world. I knew about the organization, just as I knew of the FBI and NASA, but the group had no place in my real life. We occasionally (once a decade or so) heard of a news report mentioning something the KKK did. Looking back at the historical record, now, I see there was a “massacre” (5 deaths) in my state back in 1979.

And I find it hard to believe that living through the 70s and 80s in my hometown with its Southern quota of rednecks, that I would completely miss the presence of a truly ubiquitous organization.

In the discussion I mentioned at the beginning of the post, a few people mentioned the KKK being active and “stronger than ever.” And since it is always assumed that the KKK is a Southern “tradition” I had to look into this — surely my lack of experience with the group through the years wasn’t because I wore blinders. Maybe my family especially worked to shield me from any such experience. But even if so, that shielding can only last so long. Eventually, a child grows up and learns the truth about the world.

In the 1920s, there were 4-5 million KKK members.
In the 2000s, there are 5-8 thousand.
Compare this to the US membership in Mensa: 50 thousand.

Hardly “stronger than ever.” Now, this suggests that the KKK has become more boogeymen legend than active real men. With the estimate that two-thirds of KKK members reside in the South, that’s 5,280 members (using 8,000 max-range total) out of a total Southern population of 109,083,752 — that’s 0.00004% (four hundred thousandths of one percent).

Since there are many other racist groups besides just the KKK, let’s multiply the numbers by ten. It’s still a very tiny relative number: at most 80,000 — less than the number of SAG members (139,000), school principals (~130,000), NAACP members (300,000), lawyers (~1.2 million), and NASCAR fans (~75 million).

Back to the original issue: that the Confederate flag got coopted as a racist symbol.

The Confederate flag should be an American historical icon, in the same category as the “Don’t Tread On Me” flag, the cavalry bugle call, and the girly nose art on WWII bombers. But when it was claimed by the KKK as a symbol for them, it became tainted. That’s a damn shame.

But since the KKK seems to have been dying out as a viable cultural force over the past few decades, I got to wondering if they still use the Confederate flag as a symbol. Just because everyone else still identifies that flag with that group doesn’t mean the group still uses it.

So I went to the KKK’s main web site to see what imagery they use there. (I’m not going to link to the site, but I’m sure you could easily find it if you wanted to look for yourself.) What I found surprised me. I was even surprised to be surprised. That site is pretty damn pathetic. It looks like something a teenager designed for a personal geocities web site in the 1990s. My local game store has a better, more professional looking web presence — and it’s just one store with maybe a couple hundred regular customers. You’d think a national bugaboo would have something more sinisterly impressive.

But I did find a Confederate flag at the top of their page. It was part of a collage of images including the American flag, the U.S. Capital building, and Mount Rushmore. So, damn, they do still show the Confederate flag.

But now that the racist organization seems to be dying a quiet and lonely death, how long will it take for the Confederate flag to air out the taint they’ve smeared on it? It would be nice to have it among the mostly-politically-neutral icons of American history. Something a Southern good ol’ boy could paint on top of his orange Dodge Charger as a fun and cool symbol of Southerness without getting branded a racist asshole.

Bullgrit

Way back when I was 21 years old. . .

I went to visit a girl friend one evening and found her hanging out with two other friends, (two sisters). They were getting ready to head out for a night of clubbing, and they invited me to go with. I, of course, said, “Sure.”

As we were walking out of my friend’s house, they warned me:

“It’s a gay and lesbian club,” my friend explained.

“Oh,” I said, taking a few moments for the concept to fully sink into my head.

My friend was bisexual, one of the sisters was lesbian, and the other sister was straight. I had known my friend’s orientation, but I had only just then met the sisters. (If it needs to be said: I am pure hetero.)

We stood on my friend’s front porch for a minute while I considered the night’s destination. “Hmm,” I said. “Will one of you always be with me while we’re there?” I asked. I found myself surprisingly not put off by the idea of going to a GL club, (I mean, there’d be men and women there, just like a normal night club, right), but I really wasn’t comfortable with the idea of having guys hit on me if I stood around alone.

I actually found my curiosity rising, (not about that); just what did a GL club look like? Was it any different than a normal club? My only image of a GL bar was from Hollywood comedies. Did the men actually wear black leather vests, and did the women actually wear flannel shirts?

The women standing beside me at that moment, inviting me to the club, were dressed like any other 20-something girls going out on a Saturday night. They didn’t look like a stereotype, (unless you’re thinking of the girls-going-out-on-a-Saturday-night stereotype).

They promised to not leave me by myself. So we loaded into two cars (in case I and/or the straight sister wanted to leave early), and headed out.

Continued: The Gay Lifestyle part 2

Bullgrit