|
At least, my mom swore it was him!
My daughter is five, BTW.
I recently bought a Prius on Ebay and had to go to Connecticut to get it. Well, I could have had it shipped, but why pass up an excuse to go to Connecticut and New York City? So I called my parents to see if they wanted to fly there with me, since they have been talking about NYC lately. They did, but my dad was afraid to fly (never was before, I think it has to do with 9-11), so we wound up renting a car and driving the whole way, me from Austin to Gulfport, MS, to pick them up, then all of us to Connecticut.
To make matters more crowded, my five year old wanted to go at the last minute, and frankly, I wanted her company. When I got to Mississippi, I discovered that the same decision had been made at their end concerning my twelve year old niece. So five of us piled in a rental car (a LeSabre) and drove to New York.
Around Atlanta, we got hungry, and there was a traffic jam, and we pulled off at the next exit, which happened to be Jimmy Carter Blvd. This warmed my heart, with Carter being my greatest hero. I joked that it would be funny to see him, and wistfully watched the people I saw. We stopped at a Cracker Barrel.
We had just ordered when my mother's face sort of got that "I think I know him" look, and I turned and saw an older man with a TV face in a very nice suit. He was with a younger (than him) man in a less-nice-but-still-nicer-than-any-I-own suit. Obviously a lackie of some type.
"Who is that," my mother asked, and I shrugged, and commented he could be a newscaster, then thinking that CNN was in Atlanta, looking harder to see if I recognized him. Didn't, but I have quit watching TV much. Suddenly, her face brightened, then darkened. "That's Zell Miller!"
Damned if it wasn't. He sat a table over from us, and I faced him. He got preferential treatment (a little, the kind a regular customer gets when the manager knows him). A couple of people walked up and shook his hand. He rose to great them. Definitely a public figure, and good at it.
My mother kept staring. She'd stop for a while, then start watching him again. She's lived in Mississippi long enough that celebrities are unusual to her. Me, I'm in Austin, I see politicians all the time, and I've met a few movie people, so while I was amused, I could eat without staring. Now, if it had been Carter, I may have been grovelling with tears in my eyes, but this was just Zell Miller-- someone I liked once, but have developed a distaste for. Finally, I laughed at my mother and her changing expressions. "You can't decide whether to be impressed or disgusted, can you?"
"No!" she laughed. This woman voted for Reagan. As a teenager, I argued with her quite often about him. "The Soviet Union will collapse in ten years of its own weight," I told her, back in 1980. "We don't need this warmonger. Besides, he's a crook, look at him." I was a teenager, though, so what did I know?
Decades of arguing, and now she hates Zell Miller because he sides with W (Reagan's wannabee adoptee) too often. She hates Reagan, too, and she grew up loving his movies. She finally broke out with "I want to go over and tell him what I think. That traitor!" It was loud enough for him to hear, but barely. He heard, though. I saw something, mostly from his assistant, and I could tell he heard. I suspect my mother meant him to.
So as we're leaving, my daughter is playing with the toys in the store, and she rolls a toy VW, and it strikes a foot of someone walking to the restroom, and that foot is Zell Miller's. I'm pretty sure it was Zell Miller, anyway. My family has accepted that as the man's identity. I laughed, and apologized to him, and he smiled a grandfatherly smile at her and forgave her. Nice man, no doubt, despite the big issue.
So the whole thing got me to wondering two things. One: if we all continue to argue against all odds, even with people who do not show any inclination to change their opinions, will we eventually wear them down with truth? Will we eventually change their opinions? I've always thought so, and am a ferocious debater in person, and aside from people with the power to fire me, I never back down on a political argument. I've changed a few minds. I've lost a few friends. But watching my mother's reaction made it seem worthwhile.
The other thing I wonder, though, is what will happen when my daughter starts arguing with me. My oldest will be a liberal, I can see it. My youngest is a fiercely independent sort who likes to argue already, and has the vocabulary and even the rhetoric to be persuasive even at five. What will I do when she takes the other side, and never gives up, like I did? Will I change out of love for her? Will I drive a wedge between she and I over politics? Or, and this is the idea I like to think about the most, will I eventually decide that she is more attuned to her world than I am, and begin to change my views? I've always worried that if I declared myself a Democrat, I would begin to agree with them no matter what, and that when the world changed, and the parties changed, I would miss it, and I would be the old guy, the Zell Miller, who feels left behind, who makes the wrong decisions because I'm identifying with a past group rather than seeing a real world. What works for one generation may become less necessary, even wrong, later. What was a good attitude to have towards Hitler was wrong against Saddam Hussein.
So maybe that's what argumentave kids are far. To keep parents looking ahead, instead of behind. I hope I can decide then what to do based on the sense of right and wrong I've always prided myself on, and not on how I feel for my child, or how I feel for my party. It keeps me examining myself. A good practice, I decided, watching the kindly old man who lost his virtue somewhere step over a kid's toy.
I bought the VW, by the way. And the Prius rides great, even with three adults and two kids, even on the Jersey Turnpike (and Broadway, and the Brooklyn Bridge, and all the other places a Texan has to visit in a short time in New York.) And the drive was worth it, getting to know better all five of the occupants of the car.
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
