Sincere apologies

The optics were immediately unpleasant. Fresh-faced teens dancing around the Lincoln Memorial in bravado flagrante, openly mocking a Native American man beating a drum and singing.

Not a crime, indeed, but also not behavior in step with what any rational person would recognize as the intent of religious preparatory schooling.

A quick and direct apology from the school, along with a promise to investigate, in real time reinforced what was undeniable.

Contrition was called for and necessary.

But then the reporting changed incrementally and with small nuances as longer videos from different vantage points joined the online collection of evidence. The main narrative hadn’t changed: Hotheads on two sides, a peaceful drumbeat purposefully meandering into the middle.

Press releases. Interviews. Anger everywhere bubbling over.

But the facts in agreement remained clear and unsettling:

The kids, a large and boisterous mob from a Catholic high school, attempted to overwhelm the voices of the others using the same volume and ferocity of their inbound sideline taunts. The cherry on top is the red MAGA hats, which for many have come to symbolize the normalization of American racism in the new millennium.

Chaperones reportedly gave sophomoric advice and permission for students to escalate tension.

One student removed his shirt to lead a sporty “fight” cheer. Another made hatchet swings with his arm, clearly reveling in mimicking the Native American song. A third, and the most prominent, is motionless with a tight smile and sharp eyes — as deliberate as Marina Abramovic with her The Artist Is Present stare.

The ring of jubilant faces around this teen know what’s happening: he’s standing his ground. There are murmurs of immovability. They are kids and this is fun. They are the center of the universe, and they aren’t going to give an inch.

What we see over and over again is ugly and jarring, but also irksomely familiar. Snarky, entitled teens who are having a laugh at someone else’s expense. They don’t see the cruelty in their actions. They never see the cruelty, even when it's held up to them like a mirror.

Yet it is so apparent as the cameras roll. The cruelty has a pulse and a rhythm, if not a heartbeat.

Yes, these are kids. They have committed no crime for which they need a pass. But the behavior deserves scrutiny all the same. In religious texts, we might start with “...whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’ ...”

As I watch the media turn this new information about the encounter into the familiar, time-worn defense “boys will be boys,” I can’t help but think how much worse it is to see the undeniable and watch as good people deny its existence.

Thing is, we don’t want to see these boys lose their futures over their adolescent awfulness any more than we want to see black children murdered for buying candy.

But perhaps it wouldn’t be the worst learning experience for them if we temporarily block their path with an immovable mob of crossed arms, determined faces and similarly reassuring smiles.

They need not worry. This ugly picture might haunt these boys in perpetuity, but with publicists and time it won’t keep them from having the life of privilege and opportunity they have come to expect.

The system is ready, willing and able to give them the benefits of not only doubt but also of any dubious defense they can pay to put forward. No one will ever mistake them as someone who doesn’t belong.

And that's the real shame.

None of us should seek to belong to a club that takes its dues by extracting from humanity.

Afterglow

I am pretending not to care that the Christmas-flavored water bowl is still standing tall and festively dressed in my living room. The lights are still glowing. 

Twice a day I replenish the liquid meant to keep the tree’s needles from falling out prematurely, though I suspect the Frasier fur has ceased taking any nourishment of its own some time ago. I’m keeping it full because all the free-range quadrupeds in the house prefer it to the flat tap they have to endure the rest of the year. Who am I to end the party early?

The working plan is to have all its adornments disassembled and packed away before Valentine's Day. 

Take small joys where you find them. 

Life can be such a drag. Like having to drag in all the boxes from the garage, figuring out which ornaments (that may or may not have been lightly chewed by dogs) get to return to a very cold storage for another year.

It’s a tough decision, and one that I have put off — on at least one occasion — until St. Patrick’s Day.

I’m not sure how Marie Kondo would weigh in, but I feel that only keeping those things that bring joy leaves entirely too much room for disappointment.

You know ...like when the kids spill grape juice on the joy-filled rug. When you love every single object, each loss must be equally amplified. Aside from an extra lap with the broom, no one really cares when the dog chews up the recycling. 

And what about when that joyous thing could be literally defined as clutter?

Thus far the son’s third (or fifth) Santa Letter, written hastily and last-minutely on the back of a cash register tape, continues to make the cut.

It seems unlikely to ever face the revolving file as the missive has historically attained prime real estate space, front, and center since  it was first drafted.

I think it’s the tell-tale pink line meandering down the left side that makes the letter extra festive and rare.

Not that a decommission is impossible. The construction paper bat headband made for a preschool Halloween party seven years ago never saw the light of our LED Christmas spread this year. That was a notable first. However, the turkey visor made from the outlined hand of a kindergartner stayed in the clutch last year.

Well ... not that anyone besides myself noted the absence. 

Not even me, truth be told. It must have made its way into the box labeled optional. … the one that gets opened and closed in one fell swoop. The one that has last year's Christmas cards and gift tags and other various objects a non-depression-era person might typically toss.

The box doesn't really have a label. That would take more organization than I have the patience for. 

It's the same chore, year after year. Usually done in solitude when I am procrastinating some other obligation. Not that I don't enjoy the tiny lights that almost convincingly pretend to glow as if they were incandescent.

Flawed logic and dream sequences

The boy isn't living up to his potential.

At least, that's what his teacher called to say at 2:16 p.m. -- about a minute after class was dismissed -- last Friday afternoon.

I'm sure I wasn't supposed to laugh, but I find nervous reactions of the parental sort are hard to contain. The stress of getting good grades, which will lead our kids to better colleges and opening up the best life possible seems to be overwhelming in this day and age of disruption.

This is why I usually close my eyes and plug my ears and try and empty my mind of all the things I can't control... 

Such as how to get my son to care about evaluating numerical expressions involving decimals ... or which homework assignments he has yet to complete ... or how to improve his god-awful penmanship.

You know .... like I'm taking it for granted that his teacher is the only human on the planet who can make out his hatch marks, which are forever decreasing in size as they trail at a diagonal across a smudged loose-leaf page. 

You know what happens to those who ASS-U-ME?

Apparently, I wasn't surprised by the phone call or the concern. And it's not that I don't take it seriously. 

I mean ... who isn't worried their son will prove to be a failure to launch and spend the rest of our natural lives living in the basement, playing video games, and doing deep dives into the dark web? 

Maybe you can tell, I've been waiting for this shoe to drop.

The boy follows in the shadow of his sister, whose school work, while not beyond reproach, left little for a sixth-grade science teacher to desire.

Hers was on time.

Legible.

And mostly accurate.

And she had taken great pains to correct the things that she misunderstood in texts she could trade for extra credit.

My son, however, doesn't really aim to please.

Any circle on the target is fine.

Doesn't have to be near the center.

He aims to finish. Quickly.

And without double checking to be sure he handed it in to be graded. 

You know that school teacher in "The Christmas Story?" The one who dances about Raphie's imagination as he dreams about the A-plus, -plus, -plus grade she will give him for his preternaturally eloquent essay on the attributes of possessing "a Red Ryder, carbine action, 200-shot, range model air rifle with a compass in the stock and this thing that tells time?” 

Well, the not-so-fictional teacher of this story might very well have celebrated my daughter's cerebral output with better than perfect scores, but the score she had to settle with my son was a little more to the point.

And it was just as blunt as it had been for Ralphie: He'd shoot his eye out ...only the "I" my boy would shoot out would be the "Incomplete" he'd get for all the homework assignments he'd neglected to hand in before the marking period ends.

"But I finished them," he protested as I turned off the TV and fanned out a stack of pages 100-year-old-tree deep that I had extracted from his book bag. None of which had been inscribed with a red mark or frowny face. "Doesn't that count?"

"Only in flawed logic and movie dream sequences."

Top of the world

I was laughing. Giggling really. Begging someone to take a picture ... to record this moment. But I had the camera in my back pocket, and I had retained the sense to leave it there even as I had let one inhibition slide.

Surely this wasn't the top of the world, but it might as well have been.

Maybe the air was thinner up here? No. Couldn’t be.

I must not have been thinking clearly.

My only excuse.

That had to be at the root of my current predicament. My brain had somehow detached from all of the synapses that should have kept me tethered to reality, or at least allowed my body to remain planted, cross-legged, in a comfortable chair, sipping lukewarm coffee, as I waited for the fun to be over.

This is, after all, in line with the established bylaws my constitution, which have been in place since the moment a person wearing a mask and latex held a pruny bundle of joy in front of my face and declared: “It’s a girl!”

It took me a while to snap out of it.

When I did return to my so-called self, I turned my head and realized I was maybe 40 feet taller than everyone around me. 

And the mantra I’ve repeated since birth in memoriam, MOMS DON’T PLAY — words that have kept me from literally following my children up jungle gyms and down slides — had failed me.

I shook my head hoping to clear it.

I had the sharp recollection of climbing hand over hand up the rock wall, carefully trying to stay as close to it as possible. Spreading out my weight in the hopes of cheating gravity.

Honestly, I didn’t think I’d make it half way; I had absolutely no inkling I’d climb right up to the bell-ringing tip-top.

But there I was, peering out over the pinnacle edges of engineered rock, slapping my hand silently at the rope’s anchor trying to make a celebratory sound.

Then I looked down ... and immediately realized the reasons why the professionals tell the amateurs to avoid that very thing:

Rapid heart rate? Check.

Vertigo? Check.

An overwhelming sense of terror? Check.

Inability to move any part of my body even a fraction of an inch? Check.

I was frozen in place, 40 feet up, waiting for someone in my entourage to capture this moment for posterity.

Which, with a shrug and a you-should-probably-come-down-now, my-neck-is-getting-tired, wasn’t going to happen.

Eventually, my senses returned, and I shifted the weight that needed to change to start my descent.

Slowly and steadily returning to the ground with a whisper-soft landing.

Oddly, that moment of realized safety was when the adrenaline finally surged and left me shaking.

I know why they call it "a rush."

In my case, it’s also knowing full and well that my kids, having not seen for themselves, would not believe that I had literally climbed a wall.

I’d have to do it again.