Dear Racist,

   At first I wanna say that I know you don't think you're racist, but I'm writing this letter to let you know that you couldn't be more wrong.  To help, I'm gonna give you a few tools of analysis.  The first is, if you've ever said "I'm not racist because . . ."

1. I have a Black friend
2. I listen to rap
3. I used to live in ______ (insert a very Black place like Kenya or Baltimore)
4. I speak Ebonics
5. I insist they check my receipt at the Walmart exit because I know they usually let white people pass (I heard this yesterday and the individual was completely serious).
6. I date Black people
7. or ANYthing else . . . you're racist.

   I'm sorry to report that if this phrase has slipped out of your mouth, regardless of the conclusion, you are indeed a racist.  The second litmus test also has to do with the words that come out of your mouth.  Hint:  If you say racist shit, you're racist.  Let me clarify, if you say things that are offensive and racially charged to people of color (or anyone for that matter) even if you don't think they're offensive, you're racist.  The reason why you don't think they're offensive is because you're part of the privileged majority institutionally trained NOT to see the color bias of the institution itself.  As far as racial sensitivity goes, consider yourself Helen Keller.  I, in no way, want to insult the wonderful Helen Keller with this statement.  I just intend to point out that you are both blind and deaf to the spectrum of prejudice that regularly confronts Black people in America.  You don't see it.  You don't hear it, and it's not because it is not there.

   I know you pride yourself on being open-minded and you've tried to create racial awareness, which is commendable.  However, if you refuse to respect and validate the perspective or feelings of those under constant attack within the minority community, you are racist.  You are part of the hostile environment created by the institution.  You are part of the machine.  You are just another spindle or pulley making people feel small by invalidating their experience.

   Lastly, and this is not a requirement, if people of color have a difficult time getting along with you, don't like you, would rather not spend time with you, want to disguise themselves under black hoods and do mean things to you, want to burn crosses on your lawn, or just want to shoot you, ask yourself why.  Because you're probably a racist. 

   Let me just say that if, during the course of this letter, you have realized you're racist, please know that change is plausible and possible.  As the alcoholics say, the first step is recognizing you have a problem.

Ever the optimist,
Me

profile pictures

Choosing a profile picture is tricky business.  First, I want to say that I'm not cross-eyed in real life, just in my profile pictures.  The second thing I want to say is I feel pressured to post pictures of me actually doing fun and adventurous stuff to give the impression that I'm, you know, fun and adventurous.  Truth be known, I do fun and adventurous stuff on occasion however I rarely stop to take pictures.  For example, last month I went kayaking for the first time in my life. I made a complete fool of myself.  I had problems steering my little kayak so I crashed into trees, muddy banks and large rocks.  By some odd miracle I did not end up in the water.  I also happened to acquired a temporary paddling induced palsy in my arms.  Now, do I have pictures of any of that?  Of course not, but I do have this picture of me sitting on my sister's lawn looking like I'm posing for the cover of a cookbook.

The other obvious trap with profile pictures is using the ol' "Glamour Shot."  A great example of this can be seen if you look up and to the right.  My picture for this blog is in total alignment with the typical Glamour Shot.  Glamour Shots are overdone and look both staged and like you're trying too hard to look good, but hey, it's better that ending up looking like I'm cross-eyed right?

The question here is should I be comfortable with ghetto, au naturale photos of myself?  So it may indeed look like I have a beard, or maybe my eyebrows are grown out and I have a unibrow.  I might look like I just woke up (no doubt it's really 3 o'clock in the afternoon), or am ready for bed.  Should I start posting these photos as profile pictures instead because they are authenic?  What say ye?  Because I'm really just trying to protect the public here.  Let's be honest, sometimes the less the public knows the better.  I'm just saying that posting a profile picture is like walking in a mine field.  It is filled with the pressures of advertising your genetic superiority and saying something wonderful about the life you lead.  Profile pics aren't for your average wimp!  I will leave you with the wise words of master yoda . . . "Choose wisely."  Oh wait, was that Indiana Jones?

America's Favorite Pastime

Let's talk for a moment about baseball.  Rather, let's talk for a moment about why I hate baseball.  I recently went to a Durham Bulls baseball game, I had a great seat and someone else was footing the bill for the food, which is always nice.  Still I left early, and by early I mean half an hour into the game.  If I ever have the inclination to attend another baseball game, please stick me in an Iron Maiden and leave me there for half a century (which I am sure will still be much more fun than attending an entire baseball game).  Allow me to share with you my reasoning before you suggest that I malign this historical and long standing American institution. 

First, why are baseball games soooooo looooong?  A baseball game is like the reverse fountain of youth, children who enter a baseball stadium will leave retired with a condo in Florida because baseball games last forever.  Of the baseball games I've attended, even if that number is really small, I've never made it to the end.  There's something like 82 innings that each last 3 hours.  You will seriously be there until you die if you don't leave early.  I could make a fortune if I started a mortuary in a baseball stadium.  I would never go out of business.  By the time the game is over people have rigor mortis.  Nevermind, sounds a little messy.

Second, at any given time you are watching people just standing around and I'm not talking about the audience!!  If you go with good company you kinda chit-chat and then turn around to see what's happening on the baseball field.  I can tell you exactly what you're going to see, and that is grown men in stirrups staring at each other.  I kid you not.  Do people really pay to see this?  I can go to the mall and watch people stand around.  I can go to the pool and watch people stare at each other.  Which brings me to my third beef with baseball, it's a low scoring sport.  At least with hockey there's occasional violence to break up the monotony of nothing really happening.  With soccer, at least people are running around looking like they are doing something (don't forget the rare but priceless head-butt collisions), but baseball  really has no hope of entertainment if there is minimal scoring because people are too busy standing around looking at each other.  Three words, worst sport ever.

Lastly, baseball is a summer sport but that's when it tends to be the hottest outside.  I know some baseball teams that start their baseball games at dusk which can be seen as a kindness in that I'm not marinating in a pool of my own sweat while the hot summer sun beats down on my dripping brow, but that only delays the torturous length of the game.  I don't know which to choose from, expanding sweat marks on every article of clothing (which is incidentally why I left early from the most recent baseball game I attended), or the procrastination of what is surely to be the longest night of your life if you stay an entire game.  Decisions, decisions . . .

In short, why America why?!  To be honest, there is one redeeming quality to the whole baseball experience and that is funnel cake.  Yummy, but even that is overpriced.  The price of food and drinks at a baseball game makes me feel like I live in the dust bowl during the 1930s and my only alternative is to start breastfeeding grown men to help them survive.  It's outrageous!  Why America why?!

Okay, I'm done ranting and raving about baseball.  Thank you for listening to my passionate entreaties to do away with the entire sport.  If, however, you are a baseball lover I guess I'll see you in Florida.

Thinking

There are two types of people in this world, those who think and those who don't.  I'm in the latter category but am greatly disguised by my good memory.  Memorizing and understanding are two entirely different entities.  Let's go back a few generations before I delineate the difference between the two.  My great grandfather was a brilliant scientist and made, from raw materials, radios, matches and all sorts devices that captured his attention.  He was a problem solver.  His daughter, my grandmother, is 86 and still kicks my butt at Scrabble.  I have a sneaking suspicion that it's because she knows how to think.  The point is, I come from a long line of thinkers.  I, on the other hand, tend to regurgitate what others have told me to think which makes me highly uncreative and unresourceful.

Recently I have been exposed (over-exposed to tell you the truth) to the scientific community and realize I am surrounded by thinkers, and I'm not one.  Maybe it's because I'm the second child and my older sibling was the one who solved all the problems.  In fact, I was well into adulthood before I realized I could solve my own problems!  Good times. 

In an academic setting, scientists see problems and then they solve them.  Given, I am simplifying this process a little, but that's the general gist.  For example, I was in a laboratory this weekend where a grad student built a microscope.  Now I know that a microscope has some glass, maybe some mirrors and a light, but far be it for me to actually throw one together.  Apparently the student needed a microscope that suited his specific needs so he decided to construct one from parts "lying around the lab."  Wowzers, that is so not me.  Here's how that situation would have played out if it had been me in that situation:

me:  Self, I need a microscope that does such-and-such.
me again:  There isn't a microscope that does such-and-such in existence.
first me:  Well, I guess we can call it a day.  Pizza anyone?
other mes:  Sure!

Not so scientific.  The problem is, I want to be a thinker.  Someone very wise once told me that I don't have to be smart, I just have to be determined.  Frankly, for me this is very good news, but what if I do want to be smart?  Is that possible?  How do I switch categories?  Endless rounds of Sudoku?  Are there 'thinking missionaries' that can convert me?  Maybe I should begin to start asking questions, get around to asking the right questions, then just assume I have the wherewithall and the resources to answer those questions. 

Well I'm open to suggestions, and in the meantime I'm going to go cure Lupus so if you'll excuse me . . .

SCIENCE EXPERIMENTS

When I was younger I didn't like science experiments.  I used to pull the ol' watch a volcano erupt using vinegar and baking soda experiment every year.  I dreaded meeting the annual challenge of having to come up with something other than the anti-climactic food-colored fizz dripping down a brown paper mache volcano.  Plus, it became really soggy and ineffective after the first eruption.  The whole set-up was more and more awful every time it was executed, but those were the limits to my scientific creativity in the early years.

Fast forward to Spring Break 2010 where, as a member of the American Chemical Society, I have decided to perform science demonstrations with a group of other Chem/Pharmaceutical Science majors at a local middle school to get the kids interested in the sciences.  There were four of us that each had a different experiment or topic that correlated with the science course curriculum.  I did an experiment called Elephant Toothpaste that you can pull off with household chemicals.  The chemical reaction that takes place is the decomposition of Hydrogen Peroxide.  You know what Hydrogen Peroxide does when you pour it on a cut?  It's kinda like that, only bigger.  It fizzes, or rather, it's supposed to fizz.  The final product should look like a bigger version of toothpaste (stripes and all).  However, due to some oversight on my part I ended up with a slow drizzle of bubbles that gave me flashbacks of the dreaded volcano from the early years.

I'm sure you know this already, but 20+ thirteen year olds are really not the best audience to disappoint, but the mess I made seemed entertainment enough and I left the front of the classroom before they could throw tomatoes.  Little did they know the real mess came with the last experiment.  We were supposed to make ice cream.  FYI if you put ice and salt in a big ziploc bag then place a smaller ziploc bag in it that contains some milk, vanilla, sugar and cream, after 15-20 minutes of shaking you'll have homemade ice cream.  Lots of chemistry to discuss here, mainly freezing points and how to change them.  Sounds simple, right?  

What happened next was a clear-cut case of Murphy's Law.  First, we ran out of salt.  Second, some kids didn't get sugar.  Third, 13 year olds tend to shake a ziploc bag a little too vigorously (i.e. salt and ice everywhere).  And lastly, when I looked up from my task of dispensing what was supposed to be equal amounts of vanilla with a shaking hand, my colleague leading this experiment was nowhere to be found.  He was probably crying silently to himself in a closet somewhere, which is what I would have done.  In his absence there were teenagers everywhere grasping for ingredients, there was a wet floor worthy of a lawsuit but that was still not as wet as our armpits, and a teacher using what I'm guessing is not an inside voice trying to regain control his classroom.  We could have given Ringling Bros a run for their money.  Yeah, not the success we wanted it to be.

We had an agreement to do this two days in a row and the teacher miraculously allowed us to come back the second day after suggesting a little more structure.  You'll be happy to know I got a higher concentration of Hydrogen Peroxide to give a little more "oomph" to elephant toothpaste.  In addition, ice-cream boy pre-filled the ziploc bags for his experiment, so day 2 went much better than day 1.  To the teacher's credit, he was fully prepared to do battle on day 2.  I noticed an extra garbage, rolls of paper towels, and his own much more frequent intervention.  Make no mistake about it, science experiments are traumatizing at any age.

Tales of a Cougar

So, as a 33 year-old attending a higher education institution I am frequently surrounded by those who are much younger than me.  This makes the social scene a virtual land mine.  I'm okay with this because I'm here to get really good grades in really hard classes and get my butt into medical school or graduate school if I get rejected again.  I'm not necessarily here to find Mr. Right or Mr. Right-Now for that matter, but as a 33 year-old single person I feel I have a certain obligation to always be on the lookout.

Well, I was on the lookout one Saturday morning when I had to attend some leadership training for a campus organization I'm involved in.  Afterwards, I agreed to help a guy friend involved with the same organization write a grant for an upcoming project.  While at the library lending a helping hand, I slowly became aware of how easy it was to be with him.  I actually liked being around him and he made me feel comfortable.  I mean he's smart, driven, handsome and not stupid in the way that guys generally are.  I asked him a personal question, and I was again surprised by his openness.  I then ask him how old he is.  He said 18.  18!!!  I couldn't believe my ears!  Right then and there I told him that I was 33 and I could be his mother to which he replied, "There is no possible way you can be 33."  To which I replied, "I so AM 33!"  After doing the math on paper (and counting fingers) I reported to him that he could be my son if I had him when I was 15.  Hey, teenage pregnancy happens all the time folks. 

Needless to say, I was mortified!  I thought the police were going to drag me away until I remembered I was in the South (I think people can marry their cousins at age 10 around here).  Seriously, watch for me on the next episode of To Catch a Predator.  I think flirting with him is against the law in, like, 17 states.  How could this have happened?!  And to me, of all people who has a record of dating men at least a decade older!  Just call me Mrs. Robinson.

So, I was bemoaning my fate when two other members of our organization joined us.  We started throwing around ideas about how to best execute the project and "the graduate" came up with an awesome idea I was sure would work.  I mumbled to him so I wouldn't be overheard, "That's brilliant!  It's really too bad you could be my son."  He replied with "That's the thing, it wasn't just you,"  meaning he kinda had the hots for me while I was kind of having the hots for him!  Dare this young buck say such things to a soon-to-be senior citizen like myself?  The audacity of today's youth!  At least it was a little validating.  It made me seriously consider moving to Cougartown USA, people.

The worst part about it is that I still have to see him all the time AND I think he's more and more attractive the more time I spend with him.  Also being 33, I'm kind of a rage of hormones right now.  I'm thinking that's a very bad combination with teenage male.  Hold on, I'm not really talking about this right now.  Forget I just said that.  What I meant to say is whenever I see "the graduate" I will run in the opposite direction.  He really is cute, though.  In commemoration of my weekend activities I wore animal print on Monday, reason being if I'm going to act like a cougar, might as well look like one, too.

Ben Carson

So, ages and ages ago before dinosaurs roamed the earth my mother gave me a book called Gifted Hands.  It was about this inner city Black kid with no daddy but who had a really determined mom who knew the value of education.  Long story short, the kid becomes a world-renown surgeon who is the first to separate conjoined twins (who are joined in the back of their head).  He's a big-wig these days.  It's a wonderfully inspiring story that's easy to read and I highly recommend it.  Anywho, to celebrate Black History Month at the school I attend, they brought in none other than THE Dr. Ben Carson as a keynote speaker.  Even though it overlapped into my calculus class and I had to trek through the freezing rain, I attended the event and had him sign my brand new copy of his latest book, Thinking Big.

Going to his speech was the best thing for my winter blues because I seem to keep forgetting that human beings are literally capable of anything.  One of my favorite things he said was to learn from dismal failure, which is hard for me because I tend to just get depressed that I've failed.  But if there's one thing I have had the opportunity of learning, it's that just because you have failed does not make you a failure.  History is filled with people who have flipped the failure coin on its back and have found success. 

The second favorite thing he said that I loved was to develop the talents God has given you so that you can use them to elevate others.  For some reason, I've never really thought about it like that.  I've heard of developing your talents and I've heard of serving others but rarely have I heard of the two coming together.  It was a beautiful thought coming from a person who has lived it.  His speech was uplifting and I am so glad I went.  I just thought I would share.