“The revolution will not be televised. The revolution will not be brought to you by Xerox in 4 parts without commercial interruptions...” Gil Scott-Heron
Hello loves!
I thought I would do a post about the election, but I’m so emotionally invested, I just can’t. I can’t bring myself to make light of it, because it’s way too serious. Moreover, I can’t bring myself to type a serious political post because I’m way on edge. So I will stay clear today. Instead, I will give you something to lighten the mood, and depending on how this election turns out, I will give you the election post on Thursday? Sounds like a plan? Wait, why am I asking you? It’s my blog and the Leo in me says it is so! So Boom snitches!
By the way, please go out and vote. I won’t try to dictate to you who to vote for, however I will say if you don’t vote at all, I’m certainly judging you and dropping you into a filtered box. What filtered box you say? The one that says “Don’t fool with this person EVER”…I mean if you can’t care to vote for your future, you just can’t be trusted-simply put!
But on to lighter topics…
I often speak about the moments in my childhood that made me the person I am today, you know those “forks” in the road where you went left instead of right or perhaps your parents went right instead of left and you were indirectly influenced by their decision. There often isn't just one moment, there are many that help shape us, that design our behaviors, and influence our thoughts. So when my sister called me the other day about an incident with my niece, I had an opportunity to reflect on one particular moment in my life, a moment so significant that, it helped shape my ideas about being a wife and a mother.
To give you some context to this story, my mother, the marvelous and wonderful Ms. Bev, is from Tennessee. She’s a southerner through and through even though when I was a kid she hid that little tidbit from the naked eye. I mean she didn't hide it on purpose per se but to the naked eye you wouldn't know she was from the south. However, there were certain things she did or didn't do that were clear indications that her roots were strong! Not that there’s anything wrong (disclaimer) with strong southern roots, but if you put your kids in a suburban school that was predominately white, your southern views may not necessarily conform and would possibly conflict with the norm. Is this a bad thing? Not always, but in some cases….yes. As a kid, I truly struggled with my mother’s southern ways, or old school way of doing things.
Let me explain. What’s the most important thing to a kid school wise? Like what’s the most important time of the day for a kid in school? Lunch, right?! There was absolutely nothing more important than lunch aside from maybe recess, but since recess wasn't consistent, I would say lunch. It’s when you had your one free time when you could socialize with your friends and have a break in your day. And because of that, there was soooo much importance hinging on lunch. Your coolness, your popularity, and your social status, lunch sometimes determined it all. No? Just at my elementary school? HAHAHA! Who knows, but what I DO know is it’s because of this “socializing” that I was doomed from the beginning. Yup, from the moment I got to my elementary school in the 2nd grade, I had no chance. No, really, I’m not being dramatic. Ok, maybe a little bit, but here are some clues as to when I knew I would never win the lunch room game:
1) My mother bought all generic food:
Do you all remember the generic brand? Yes, I know I’m about to tell my age but, for example, there were Ruffles, Lays, and then you would have a generic brand and to indicate its “generic-ness” it was packaged in a white bag with black lettering and it was called the name of the product, in this case “Potato Chips”. Yup, that damn simple. Now as a kid, would you want that? Hmmmm? Yes, yes, yeeeees…spare me the tale of the starving Ethiopian kid. We’re on some superficial isht right now, and superficially would you want some isht that just said potato chips? Or better yet, quarter-water instead of Capri sun? Like, I went to school with some of the wealthiest people in this country, quarter-water mommy????? Ugh!
< 2) My mother worshiped aluminum foil:
This right here?? oooh weee…you’d think she had stock in the company. Aluminum foil was like a gift from God. There wasn't anything she couldn't do with a piece of foil! Cook with it, line the oven and stove top with it, use it as a top for bottles, use it to keep food hot, use it to keep food cold, use it to secure our beads, hell even a little bowl for hair grease… I mean that joint had many purposes in our house but the worst one hands down was that she wrapped our lunches in it! There was not one piece lacking the shiny adornment. Apple? Check. Sandwich? Check. Chips? Check. Thermos of Kool-Aid? (yes, you read that right KOOL-AID! It was the nutritional juice of our house and what?) Check!
You would open your lunch and that joint would shiiiiiiiine like the top of the Chrysler building. It was blinding, it was devastating, and it was a lunch trading turn off. I mean, how much more did sandwich bags cost anyway? It’s the main reason I have like 4 different zip lock bags in my house now. Hi, my name is Nika and I have PTSD!
< 3) Used grocery bags instead of buying the cute little brown paper bags:
Whew….this post is hard to write. I’m having flashbacks as I type this, THAT’S how painful this was as a kid. Imagine this; everyone has the cute little brown paper bags, you know the small ones you can fit in your back pack and here I come, with the super large grocery bag, rolled down. So large that it’s almost pitiful to watch me pull out just a sandwich, apple, and quarter water. It almost seems as if I should pull out a pot roast or something from grandma’s house. My mother’s reasoning? I’m not buying paper bags when we have these good bags from the grocery store! Siggghhhh, this woman is sooo lucky I still love her.
< 4) And last, but certainly not least, made lunches that no one appreciated but black folks:
Yeah I said it and I meant it, what? Listen, you take a pork chop sandwich WITH the bone in it, WITH hot sauce as the condiment WRAPPED in aluminum foil to a PREDOMINANTLY WHITE JEWISH SCHOOL and explain that to your classmates! Now the only reason I give my mother a pass on this one is that she went to a segregated school and I suppose her classmates were happy to see a pork chop sandwich or two, but when you’re a kid and you hear “ Is that a bone hanging out of your bread???”, you just want to curl up and die. DIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!
So listen, I’m not sure what you did in your schools, but lunches in my elementary school was all about “trading”. You scoped out each other’s food to determine who had the best lunches or items you wanted that they perhaps didn't want, and you bartered your lunch for theirs. The best items were string cheese, Capri Suns, Doritos or anything that came in that mixed bag of BRAND NAME chips and without these items, you were losing and losing bad! Plus, you already have sooooo many things to battle as a kid, lunch really shouldn't be one of them.
What most parents don’t get but what I vowed as a kid I would always remember is that socializing is just as important to your success as your performance. This is important! Listen, I promise you I had anxiety daily, not knowing what my mother packed for lunch. It was always, a surprise. It was always a gamble. It was rarely a win. And sadly, she would be so excited when I came home to see if I liked my lunch seeing as pork chops is one of my faaaaaavorite meals ….*ahem* AT HOME! LOL. I couldn't bear to even tell her the truth. I mean I used to try to get her to make me a “regular lunch” all the time, but she really thought she was “hooking” me up and then she would dare me to be different. Yes, then there's that...sigghhh..so I just gave up. But now I stand up for all of the kids with bad lunches.
My PSA to the parents: If pork chop sandwiches is the going lunch, by all means hot sauce on, but if mozzarella and basil sandwiches is what’s happening at your kids school, GIVE THEM THAT! Don’t force your kid to be a “leader” in shit that doesn't matter. No one is leading a revolution with a pork chop sandwich in one hand and a quarter-water in the other. Sometimes a child just wants to be one of the kids.
Peace…
The Lone Leader of the Hot Sauce Revolution
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