Been down in the dumps a lot this month...some of it due to things at my job and some of it because of things going on at the apartment building I live in (to say nothing of the crap still going on in Washington, DC).
Take this past Wednesday.
At about 2:10 PM (Central time), I was coming back from music practice at the church I go to, and was trying to hurry up and get out of said apartment building in order to rush out to my factory job when I saw three little boys (each roughly five to seven years old) sitting on the stairs inside the apartment building.
I was heading up the stairs to my own apartment when one of the boys asked me: "Are you good?"
I told him: "Yes. I live here."
And as 5-23-2018 wore on and I was fighting to pack only high-quality products at that factory in Southwest Omaha, I got to thinking about something else that happened a month earlier.
One day back in April, as I was heading to my car to drive to work, another little boy was playing among the cars, SUVs, and trucks in the upper parking lot of the same apartment building.
Out of the blue, that boy proclaimed to me: "I'm a police officer."
As if I needed to know that.
As far as I'm concerned, the two incidents stemmed from just one thing:
The parents of the two boys taught them how to hate.
That's all there is to it.
What hurts even more is that the boys and their folks come from lands such as Myanmar and Nepal...two of the nations Donald Trump labeled as "s***hole countries." (In recent years, the Omaha/Council Bluffs/Bellevue area has built increasingly strong Karen and Nepalese communities...as well as increasingly strong Hispanic, Somali, and Sudanese ones.)
And with television and this here Internet teaming up to give some of America's newest naturalized citizens (as well as lots of people who came into the world right here in these fifty states) a crash course on who to hang out with, it doesn't take long to learn bigotry.
I've lived in the same neighborhood since 3-29-1997...the very day I moved back here to the Big O after spending the previous eight years and nine months residing in Sioux City, Iowa.
All this time, I've seen the apartment building I've lived in since I moved back to Gabrielle Union's birth city turn from half-Black, half-White residency to predominantly Yellow.
The building has changed hands twice, with the second sale having taken place this past February.
As long as I'm able to pay the rent, I've got a place to live.
And I've got to admit the truth: Like the vast majority of human beings, I've tried my best to be good. When not at the factory or at church, I've tried to keep to myself and mind my own doggone business.
When it comes to that, I'm someplace between the middle of this long, long line and the very back of the line.
And I'm going to keep trying my best to be good...and be myself.
I felt stung over a question that was posed of me this past Tuesday.
As I was getting ready to leave the apartment building I live in to go off to my factory job, a young woman who came to visit the family living in the apartment across from mine saw me head out the door.
After I said "Hi" and asked her how she was doing, the visitor asked me: "One bedroom or two?"
She was a young mother; her infant child was in her arms. And I thought she wanted to ask about renting one of these apartments.
So I answered: "Two."
I wasn't ready for the next question: "And only one living there?"
"Yes. I live here."
"A two-bedroom apartment, and only you living there."
I just wasn't very happy about where this was going...and I realized that if the conversation continued, I'd be late for work.
So I told the young visitor: "I'm okay with it."
As I hurried out to my car and drove off to my job, I felt stung. (Let's face it...I felt insulted.)
In fourteen years of living where I presently do, I'd never been asked to defend living single in a two-bedroom apartment.
Until 10-18-2011, that is.
I feel comfortable living in an apartment of that size. (Why shouldn't a person feel comfortable where he or she lives?) What's more, this two-bedroomer gives me all the space I need at the present time.
For the next nine hours, I couldn't help thinking about whether the questioner came from a country where housing laws- if housing laws exist in that kind of a nation- are harsher than they are here in the United States.
And then I got to thinking about the millions of Americans who put their lives on the line so that the nation could finally, in 1968, put a fair-housing act on the books.
I thought about how some of those millions of Americans were forced to face firehoses and barking dogs...firehoses and barking dogs unleashed by officials bent on keeping apartheid (okay, segregation) alive and legal in this country.
In addition, I remembered how some people were put to death because they wanted these Jim Crow laws overturned for good.
To top it all off, I thought about a 1965 headline in The Omaha Star (the legendary newspaper started in the 1930s by Mildred Brown): "Omaha and Birmingham Run Neck and Neck in Housing Discrimination."
That's right. Birmingham, AL...where, two years before that headline, police chief Eugene "Bull" Connor ordered barking dogs and powerful firehoses to be trained on people seeking their BASIC human rights.
Thinking about all these things made a young mother's question hard for me to take.
You see, as long as I'm still able to get my rent paid (and paid on time), and as long as I enjoy living where I do, what's the problem?
I don't know if that visitor has access to a computer; don't know if she's ever come across this blog (or anybody else's blog) before.
But if she EVER reads this post, I sincerely hope she understands why I feel uncomfortable having to explain and defend living single in a two-bedroom apartment.
Either the United States of America is a free country or it isn't.
No ifs...no maybes...no buts.
And I'd like to ask this young mom- if I ever see her again- this: "Which country is this- a free one or not? WHICH??"
