But when there was a Bay Village downpour of hot July rain, all bets were off. As Karen Carpenter sang, my neighbors and I were left “hanging around with nothing to do but frown.”
On one of these long gray days, when the rain was streaming out the gutter downspouts and forming long-standing mud puddles, canceling all swimming and evening baseball games, my 3 friends and I sat with sad faces on a dry picnic table that we pushed under a rain covering. Resting our heavy heads on our folded arms and hands, we watched the water come down.
“I’m bored, what do you guys want to do?” One of the boys said. (Remember, the only video games that were available for boys to play in the mid-seventies was Atari Pong. One minute of watching a slow pin-point of light going back and forth over a screen was all I could take). On this particular day, one of my neighbors who rarely played with us said, “Hey, you can come over to my house and we could play hockey in my basement. I have a plastic orange hockey puck and some sticks, it will be fun. And plus, my mom is at work.” We all looked at each other, shrugged our shoulders and said, “Sure, let’s go.”
his person’s house was half-way up the block. Taking off our shoes, we headed down into the large dark basement of his house. Leading the way, he turned on the light and said, “Let’s play on the other side of this room because our dog and cats poop right next to the stairwell on this side of the room…watch your step, the poop gets rather messy.”
Yuck! Right when he said poop my senses were attacked by the smell of the rancid air and ammonia hanging like a fog in his messy basement. Two of the other boys and myself couldn’t help it, but we had to pinch our nose as we tried to step around the brown land-mines littered all over the floor. Needless to say, we didn’t play for too long because you just couldn’t hold your breath that long. And the game ended when an errant shot landed on a newly steaming mound of brown poop.
“See ya!” Three of us ran like rockets out of the smelly basement, and as I was anxiously putting on my muddy Converse All-Star tennis shoes to leave I noticed his greasy-haired older brother sitting on the living room couch, eating tuna fish and watching a strange show called “Dr. Who” on a fuzzy PBS channel. Weird.
Once out of the house, we took a deep breath of the fresh rain-soaked air, and ran home. We never went over to his house again – and after that day – I think he was too embarrassed to hang out with us anymore. He knew the poop freaked us out.
I learned some very important lessons that day:
(1) Allowing animals to poop in your basement is not something sane people do. That night for dinner I told my dad about our experience and he said, “Ah sick. I knew there was something a little funny about that family. Letting your animals poop in the house is just plain wrong.”
(2) Some people choose to live in ways you never would. People are strange. And the more families that think poop in the basement is Ok, the more stink there will be.
(3) You are not a genius because you know poop stinks. It is so obviously offensive to your senses, you just can’t ignore it.
(4) Just because it stinks in one house doesn’t mean it stinks in another. Ever since that experience, I have had a tough time even smelling tuna fish, and I wonder about people who watch “Dr. Who” to this day. “Do they have poop in their basement too?” I remember having tuna fish at another friends house and I was scared to go into his basement…but luckily, there was no poop. I was relieved!
Brilliant lessons learned. And I have realized something else. Racism is just like having poop in your basement. It causes you to stink. And you can apply the same exact four lessons:
(1) Racism is not something sane people allow in their life.
(2) Some people choose to be racists because people are strange, they are broken, and the more people allow racism to capture their heart the more moral stink there will be.
(3) You are not a genius because you know racism is wrong. Stop acting like you are the only one who is offended by racism, stop thinking you are the sole spokesman who can point out the obvious stink that accompanies poop.
(4) Just because a person from a certain political point of view might be a racist doesn’t mean all the people from that point of view are racists as well. Just because a racist votes for someone doesn’t make the person they voted for racist.
I agree with this statement I read yesterday written by Tom Knighton, “decrying the racists at Charlottesville is a bit of a national pastime. I’ll admit, I’ve done so, as well. That kind of thinking, the idea that any race is more American or more superior than any other, has no place not being decried in this country.”
He goes on to say that both leftists and alt-right supporters are decrying it, they both are completely ignoring their own role in its return. He also believes the white majority are left in between a rock and hard place, “If white folks decry white supremacy, there’s a problem. If we don’t, there’s a problem.” As another writer puts it, “I”m against racism and you should be too!”
In other words, we all know poop stinks!
