Ramblin’ Prose

Writing evokes emotion in different ways for different people. As someone who has spent a great deal of his life in the writing arts, I’ve developed a great appreciation for skilled writers. Perhaps that’s one reason I married my wife.

Leonard Pitts, the teacher and Miami Herald columnist is making an appearance in town and I’m lucky enough to go hear him speak today. Always thought-provoking, Pitts delivers a perspective that may appear outside the mainstream to some of his critics, but he delivers a down-the-middle view that I find refreshing.

I also read The New Yorker. Well, I say I read it, but usually I only have time for the Talk of the Town feature that appears at the beginning of the feature content of the magazine. The first piece is usually political in nature, but the writers delve deeply into a subject in a small amount of space.

This week of course, the cover and first story in Talk of the Town deals with the election of Barak Obama. Now, I’m keenly away of the historic nature of his election as an African-American, okay black person. But you won’t see me carrying on about it. We still have major issues, especially pocketbook issues, that need to be resolved. Like, will I ever be able to retire with the market crashin’ and burnin’ like it is?

But the last few lines in the piece “Obama Wins” hit me in a way I have not felt in a long time.

A generation ago, few people anywhere imagined that they would witness the dissolution of Soviet totalitarianism, or the inauguration of Nelson Mandela as President of a multiracial South African democracy, or the transformation of China into a fearsome engine of capitalist commerce. Nor did Americans of an age to remember Selma and Montgomery and Memphis imagine that they would live to see an African-American elected President of the United States. It has happened. No doubt there will be disappointments and difficulties ahead; there always are. But a few months from now a blue-and-white Boeing 747 emblazoned UNITED STATES OF AMERICA will touch down on a tarmac somewhere in Europe or Asia or Africa, the door will open, and out will step Barack and Michelle Obama. That is something to look forward to.

I read this on the heels of a story my kids’ doctor told me a day ago. She said the she and her husband had been in Wilmington just after the election. The bathroom at the establishment they were visiting had a unisex bathroom, a novelty in the United States but common in other parts of the world.

While she was waiting in line, a African-American man got in line behind her. They made some idle chitchat and he commented on the unisex bathroom. When it was the doctor’s turn to go in, the man said something to the effect that because Obama was now elected president, she should let him go first, that it was “our time.”

Uh, wrong.

First off, never, ever get in the way of a woman who has to go to the bathroom, especially if you want to live. I learned that a long time ago.

Second, Obama’s election has nothing to do with payback. You can’t write a wrong by committing another wrong. Obama’s election has everything to do with paying it forward. The time of healing this country’s wounds should be now.