Bye Bye Betty?

Goodbyes are so difficult.  I am not ready to say goodbye, but it looks like it may be time.  Betty is at the car hospital.  I had to call the AAA emergency line on Saturday.  We were heading home in the early evening when she suffered a loss of gas to the engine.  (See map; click for points of interest.)

She wasn’t out of gas--I gave her 8 gallons that afternoon—but the gas was not getting where it needed to be.  There was no power to the engine; there was no power steering; there were no breaks.  We coasted until she came to rest on the front lawn of a large house in Davidsonville, Maryland.

An hour or so and 23 miles later, a very nice tow truck driver was unloading Betty from the flatbed ambulance to the corner of a tiny mechanic’s lot in Southeast DC.  (Conveniently, and coincidentally, down the block from my work.)  I said goodnight to Betty and climbed back into the tow truck cab for a ride home.  I haven’t seen her since, and it’s not looking good.  The mechanic is having difficulty locating the part she needs—a flex coupler.

Betty and I have been through a lot together.  8 years I’ve had her.  8 years and 5 months.  That’s longer than any other vehicle I’ve had.  That’s even longer than any home I've had.  (Thanks, Mom and Dad, for kicking me out for college.)  When I bought Betty for $2200 on New Year’s Eve in 2007, Daddy told me she wouldn’t last a year.  My amazing mechanic in Cali said I’d probably get at least another year when I moved in 2013.  In that light, making it to 2016 isn’t too bad.  But still, I don’t want Betty to go.

Betty has carried me through my life in four states.  Together, we did the move to three of them.  We’ve been across the entire country, from the Pacific to the Atlantic, and many parts in between more than once;  Highway 40, I-80, Route 66, and of course the gorgeous drive down Route 1 with Munchkinhead.

Betty and me in Wisconsin winter-before-last.  She looked good in snow (it hid all the missing paint).

There was that time in Iowa, when Orgfish’s neighbors called the cops about this unsightly car parked in their neighborhood and the police left a giant florescent pink “WARNING” on Betty’s windshield.  (I sent it to Orgfish as her birthday postcard some years later.)  The adventures with Daddy moving from Cali to Wisconsin when we spent an unplanned day exploring Ephraim, Utah while the hose connecting Betty’s coolant overflow tank to the engine was replaced.  And that infamous time we got pulled over for DWB, also in Utah.  I guess we should have stayed out of Utah.

Daddy and me being the statue outside Ephraim City Hall while Betty was being repaired.

She’s had some tough times, my Betty.  There was that incident where I sort of backed the side of her into a pole trying to get out of a parking spot in Cali.  And that time a week later when I did it again in a different garage.  That first incident was the one that resulted in my having to go in-and-out the window for awhile until a body shop could get her unlocked.

After that, I couldn't lock Betty anymore.  She was ransacked at least once in every town in which we lived, but it was never that bad.  In El Cerrito and D.C., they just made a mess.  But in Cudahy, they took my tape adapter.  I had to fork out another $5 for a new one from Amazon. 

Betty after being ransacked in Cali.

But that was back before I made Betty her very own mixtape.  We've been listening to it a lot less these past few months.  One, I was getting a little tired of it, but more importantly, Betty hasn't been feeling well a lot of the time and it's important for me to listen to her as we putter around town.  She gets especially cantankerous on damp or rainy days and left turns.  I check her fluids at least weekly and keep a storehouse in the trunk of every liquid you could need to put in the car, plus spare clothes and an astronaut blanket in case we get stranded, and bungee cords and sheets for unexpected hauling adventures.  She can really carry stuff!

Taking home my new queen-size bed.  The frame was in the car.  Sometimes going in-and-out the window is a good thing!

Betty hasn't really had a radio in a few months.  The antenna was knocked off by a carwash back in Cali years ago.  The mechanic disconnected the auto-expander and quasi-fixed the antenna to the car.  A few months ago, I walked past Betty on the street and noticed it was gone completely.

Betty with antenna quasi-fixed back in 2014 (after we lost her front trim on who-knows-what).

Betty sans antenna in snowy DC this winter.

DC is rough on Betty.  Besides the antenna loss, the swampy humidity caused the fabric on the ceiling to start detaching.  I pinned it back in place with a decorative pattern of thumbtacks.  Sometimes, they fall off, too.  Backseat passengers, beware.  Parking outside with no shelter these past two years hasn't been great.  The mohawk on her roof that had developed slowly over the years has quickly gone, leaving just a small patch of white amid a mess of unpainted grey and rust.  Whenever AAA asks what color the vehicle is, I say, "well, where there's still paint, she's white."  AAA came out a lot the past year.  In addition to the tow, there were several dead batteries. We eventually figured out the culprit was the glove compartment light, which wouldn't shut off correctly ever since Munchkinhead broke off the latch on a very cold WI night coming home from the theater.  I braided some yarn, looped it through the inside hook and the hole in the door where the latch used to be and tied the door shut, but it wasn't enough pressure for the light switch.  A mechanic took out the bulb and Betty stopped dying.  Somebody took out a taillight with who-knows-what.  (I replaced it.)  Oh wait, that was me.  I backed into a tree trying to do a Y-turn; dented my bumper sticker.

And then there was that time a few weeks ago when Betty got shot.  Just her tire, luckily.  The police tape is still in her backseat, next to the blanket I put in her for when homeless people use her as a warm place to sleep.  (Tho I would prefer if they'd put the seat back upright when they're done.)  The tire shop had to bust off one of her hubcaps in order to rotate the tires when I got her new one.  That put her down to two hubcaps.  We'd lost one in Cali when the mechanic had to bust it off.  She wears the two she has left on her back tires.  The recently removed one rides in the trunk.  I always have to call AAA when I have a flat tire, not because I can't fix a flat, but because I can't jack up the car.  There's no frame left for the portable jack to lift; it just goes right through the car.  AAA has to come out with their big fancy jack and lift her from the frame underneath.

Betty's got character; there's so much that's still so wonderful about her. She floats down the highway--when her engine's getting gas anyway.  I can parallel park her like you wouldn't believe, even on the left-hand side of the street.  Her heater is amazing--the air-conditioning hasn't worked since at least '08, but I hate air-conditioning anyway.  She's very polite--no horn.  Her interior is spacious and comfy.--At least I think so; Daddy thinks her front seat is broken, claims it's lopsided.  He may be right, but since I weigh about 100 lbs less than him, I can't really tell.  The thing I notice more is that one hole in the floor by my left foot that my stiletto will slip into if I'm not careful.  It matches the hole in the seatback from the previous owner's dog.  But I digress. 

Betty is so spacious, Munchkinhead turns into a t-rex when she tries to drive her.

And most importantly, she gives me an amazing freedom.  Not just the standard freedom of a car that allows me to go places far or near whenever I want, but the additional freedom of going places I otherwise couldn't or wouldn't.  I never worry about where I park Betty, if she'll get scratched--who'd notice? or that she'll be stolen--that'd be a very weak joy ride.  I get the prime spots in the grocery store lot, right next to the cart return.  Her heft makes her a great option for snow-covered streets (ok, my Wisconsin training helps a little with that, too.)  And I'm safer in neighborhoods where I otherwise would stick out like a blazing red target.  The combination of Betty and my white privilege allow me to go anywhere.  Betty helps me blend in where it's rough, and being a white girl gets me a pass when Betty raises suspicions in the fancy places.  In a city like D.C. where neighborhoods can change from one to the other in half-a-block, and where it's so easy to get lost, this is especially important.

Betty and I have travelled a long way together and we're both a little worse for the wear.

Betty and I both looking shiny, if not new, back in the summer of '08.

 



Betty turning 170K just over a year ago.

 

 

I'm just not ready to give up.  Not yet.  Not quite.  Not without a lot of tears.  So here's hope that somehow, a 1993 LeSabre flex coupler shows up in D.C., and that the mechanic can then figure out why gas stops going to the engine sometimes.  The flex coupler isn't for that; it's so the steering column doesn't detach from the wheels.  That's why she's been hating those left turns.

Ndili Mukuwa, and It’s Ok

I’ve always been acutely aware of my “whiteness.”  In kindergarten, it was benign, meaning only that I couldn’t do as much fun stuff with my hair as some of the other girls.  By first grade, it was that other people’s not having as much or being downtrodden was my fault as on Martin Luther King Jr. Day we were taught “white guilt.”  By fourth grade, I was evil, inhumane, cruel, for beating all those slaves before the Civil War. 

In high school, added to all this was that I simply wasn’t cool enough to talk to the groups of black students.  By college, all the guilt and meanness and cruelty and uncoolness, added to the fact that I’d never be able to dance or jump, had me paralyzed with fear.  “I can’t talk to you.”  “I don’t know how to talk to you.”  “I’m not good enough.”  “I’m not cool enough.”  “Everything bad that’s ever happened to you is my fault.”

So I did what anyone does when they’re totally afraid.  I ran away.
To Africa.

Here, it was different.  I was different.  New stereotypes were flung at me, but I didn’t buy into them.  Maybe it was because they were delivered to me by individuals instead of society as a whole.  Maybe it was because I knew them to not be true with respect to myself.  How come I always accepted that the stereotypes back home were true?  Indoctrination at a young age?  Societal reinforcement?  Not grown up enough to know myself?  I started to realize that things I’d believed about myself weren’t true.  I was me. Me. Alone. Me. Not the billions of other people in the world who had come before me and happened to have something in common with me.  Me.

I had been taught that “racist” was the worst thing you could ever be called.  My fear came from fear of that word.  In Africa, the worst thing I was ever called was Mukuwa/Muzungu/Onyibo and that isn’t that bad.

Now I understood.  Just because someone calls you something, doesn’t mean you are such.  I was, am and always will be Mukuwa.  But in some ways, I was also correct when I’d yell back to those “Mukuwa!” screaming kids, “Tandili mukuwa, ndili Ba Tonga.”  I am not a foreigner; I am one of you.

There may be times when I am racist, but it’s because of me, my thoughts, my experiences, not because of all those people I never knew in all those places I’ve never been.  I’m me. 

Sometimes I’m good; sometimes I’m bad.  Sometimes I’m right; sometimes I’m wrong.  Sometimes I’m cruel and unfair; sometimes I’m compassionate and generous.  But I am not afraid of what I am anymore.  Africa gave me that.  That, and some of those hairstyles I’d been wishing for since I was a little girl.

Don’t Shoot, I’m not a Real Princess!

The thing I remember most about my childhood is being afraid.  I had – and have – wonderful, loving parents who did everything to keep us safe.  I had no reason to be afraid.  But, I also had a very active imagination.  I could turn anything into a terrifying situation.

I was afraid of monsters and ghosts and death, burglars and murderers and wild animals, escaped prisoners – in 5th grade I couldn’t sleep for a week because I was afraid of Jeffrey Dahmer, after he was arrested – you name it, it probably scared me.  Disney movies, closets, basements, stampeding cattle in my bedroom, the bathtub drain, things Daddy got from estate sales because they’d belonged to dead people who might be angry I had them now, streets with tar lines, swimming pools – there might be sharks! – the dark, bathrooms especially with mirrors – Blood Mary was very popular at my school in 3rd grade – my sister dying in her sleep, my parents dying in their sleep, me being murdered in my sleep by those burglars/murderers/escaped prisoners or because I was a princess, like Lincoln.

Wait, wait!  It totally makes sense in princess child logic. 

The old house, as Alfred and I still call it, had a large yellow bedroom that she and I shared most of the time we lived there.   It was bright, happy room with orange carpeting and a rainbow wallpaper border around the top.  The room had a special nook area in it where the ceiling was lower and sloped down to short walls.  This nook wasn’t yellow like the rest of the room but instead wallpapered in a fun primary color plaid/stripe type design.   There was a scalloped white, wood edging around the slanted entrance to the nook. You can see the nook and a bit of the edging off to the right in this picture of Mommy and Alfred.

At some point, we didn’t use the beds as bunkbeds.  My bed was in the nook, head against the back wall, feet sticking out towards the entrance.  It made me feel like a princess, being in this special area with scallops coming down from a point above my bed, with the ceiling sloping down from a point above my bed, it was like the drapery around the princesses’ beds in fairytale movies.  I was a princess!  And I was terrified.

Princesses are the daughters of Kings and Queens.  But in America, we don’t have Kings and Queens, we have presidents.  And being President is dangerous because people may want to kill you, like they did Lincoln.  Lincoln was shot and died in his bed because he was President.  I’m like a princess now and a president is the closest thing we have to that, so I might get shot in my bed, too.

Never mind that Lincoln got shot in a theater and then carried to the White House and died in a bed because that’s where they put him.  I didn’t know any of that.  Never mind that Lincoln was shot for more reasons than just that he was President.  Never mind that a princess is really nothing like a president and never mind that I wasn’t a real princess.  In my young mind, the logic was solid, and I was scared.

I was very glad when Munchkinhead moved into the yellow room and I moved into the nook-less blue room.  Then I only had a giant closet to be afraid of.

We interrupt your regularly scheduled silliness for this Rant about Our Sexual Abuse Culture

I love dresses and makeup and heels and pink and dolls and sewing and knitting and cleaning and heels, oh I love heels!  But, quite frankly, I’m getting sick and tired of being a girl.

I’m tired of constantly having to be on the defensive.  I’m tired of constantly dealing with smiling through unwanted and often threatening encounters in order to protect your fragile egos.  I’m tired of having to demurely say “thank you” and blushing after you’ve followed me in your car through the parking lot to yell, “you’re stunning” or “you’re beautiful” or “you’re gorgeous” or something far worse at me out your window. 

I’m tired of your assumption about what I “must want” based on how I look, what I’m wearing or how I happened to be shaped.

And I’m sure as heck tired of our culture’s nonchalant attitude and acceptance of your doing whatever you want to us because we were somehow “asking for it.”

George R. R. Martin, author of the series that includes Games of Thrones, responded to the attacks that his fantasy novels have been receiving for their frequent depictions of rape – as one author put it, so frequent it’s “rape as wallpaper” – His response,“I provide a similar description, just as detailed, of a penis entering a vagina, and I get letters about it .”  That people complain there’s too much rape and he basically says, “it’s just sex” exemplifies the problem better than any of his critics could.

But, women, we’re just there for your sexual pleasure aren’t we.  After all, a woman travelling on vacation with condoms has to be a prostitute being paid for her sexual pleasures.  Clay Nikiforuk was simply trying to pass through the US for a connecting flight when she was detained for hours because custom officials were certain she would only carry condoms if she were selling herself.  How we dress, what we carry, has to mean we’re a certain type of person, doesn't it? And give you a license to do whatever you want.  They actually asked her if she wanted to be sexually assaulted!

And of course, if something should happen, it’s on us to figure out what we could should have done differently.  We shouldn’t have been carrying x; we shouldn’t have worn y; we shouldn’t have had that much to drink; we shouldn’t have told.  But that’s what we get for carrying that, for wearing that, for drinking that, for talking to you, for being there.  That’s what we get for being a girl.

So you see, I’m sick of it.  I’m sick of it all.  But, I’m going to keep wearing my dresses and my makeup and my heels, because I like them.  But watch out.  One of these days, instead of turning and smiling and politely saying “thank you,” I’m going to deck you.  Or better yet, kick you in the shin with my heels; you’ll be asking for it.

“Wait!” or, The Day I found my Bravery

I suppose we all like to believe we’re brave sometimes, though we’re scared often enough.  I’m certainly afraid plenty; afraid of the dark, afraid of my shadow, afraid of strangers, afraid of plane crashes and falls and injuries.  Afraid of the unknown.

But we must all have bravery inside us somewhere.  True bravery to plow on despite those fears.  Bravery to say “no” to our doubts.  Bravery to remember we were brave once before.  Calling back on past bravery to create current bravery – yes.  It’s something I have to do now and then.  And I think back to the moment I first found my true bravery.  I remember it so well.*

I sat in the long corridor, gripping with white knuckles the bottom of the hard, plastic seat.  White from the force of my grip, white from fear.  My stomach somersaulted.  I wanted nothing more than to get up and run.  Run as fast as I could.  Run down the corridor.  Run past security.  Run out the big glass doors.  “Wait!  Wait for me!”  “Don’t leave yet, wait for me!”

What was I doing here?  Sitting on this cold, hard seat in my daddy’s old blue and red flannel with the soft quilted lining.  “Wait!  Wait for me!”  “Wait!”

Me, here, it was absurd.  I was the home girl, the one who wouldn’t even look at a college more than half an hour away.  The one who stopped by nearly once a week for four and a half years, who never missed a Christmas or an Easter or a Mothers’ Day at Grandma and Grandpa’s, who loved game nights in the kitchen and Fourth of Julys in the park, who preferred New Year’s Eve Monopoly with the family to any party.  And yet, here I was, alone in the airport – had I even ever been on a flight by myself before? – here I was, all packed and ready and about to move to Africa.  “Wait!”

I held onto the chair as much to keep myself from running than anything.  I was terrified.  Would I make it?  Would I get sick?  Would I have to eat bugs?  Would I die?  And most terrifying to me of all, would I lose all my friends?  Would their lives go on without me and change and not have room for me when I came back?

I looked down that corridor and saw myself running.  “Wait!  I changed my mind!  Let’s go home!”  “Wait!”  But I couldn’t run.  Not from this fear.  Not this time.  Everyone was too proud.  I couldn’t let them down.  I couldn’t run.

“Come on Daddy Bunny, we’ve got a world to change.”

Ok, I’m pretty sure I didn’t say that, though I probably did say something to Daddy Bunny.  Somehow, we moved towards the gate and we got on that plane.  I can’t say we never looked back, but we never ran.  And you know what, my worst fear did come true.  Few friends remain from before I left.  But, I’d do it all again.  Sometimes, we’re afraid most of things we needn’t fear.

Now, whenever I must confront a new challenge, a new unknown, a new fear, I remember that day, the day I found my bravery.  If I could get on that plane, I can face anything. …except peeing in the bush; I’ll never do that

 

* Ok, I’ve probably added details with the passage of time like I do with so many other “memories” as my mother likes to point out to me, but humor me.

10 years and 2000 miles later

On the 10th Anniversary, it seems obligatory to do a blog post about 9/11/01.  But my memories related to September 11th do not start that morning. 

My thoughts start two weeks before that day, when I finished reading Angles and Demons.  For those unfamiliar with the book, a very devoted Catholic stages an attack on the Church in order to revitalize the Church community and support for the church.  I remember finishing that book and thinking, “America needs something like that.”  Tired of people being ashamed of our country, of flags being uncool and patriotism being dead – and this was before I moved out to the Bay – it seemed that the last time our country had been supported by its people was World War II.  We need a cause to rally behind.  I didn’t expect us to get one, and I certainly didn’t expect it to be so dramatic.

The morning of September 11th, I was trying to sort out some credit card bills.  I called the customer service line.  The lady on the other end was all distracted.  “I’m sorry,” she said, “we just heard about the World Trade Center.”  “But that was years ok,” I thought, thinking of the parking garage bombing.  Then my roommate came rushing into the room, let out of her 8am class early.  “Did you hear?!”  “Hear what?”  She turned on the small tv atop our dressers.  Every channel, every single one, was showing the same thing, the clip of the second plane hitting.

There was lots of excitement, people running down the halls, exclaiming any news they’d gotten that others might not have yet.  Candlelight vigils on the campus’s Main Lawn.  Alan Jackson’s “Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning)” moved even those that hated country music.  American flags everywhere, not just cool again but practically required.  It was a cause to rally behind, and for most of us at my small Midwestern school, that’s all it was.

Ten years ago, I hadn’t been to New York.  I didn’t know anyone in New York.  I didn’t know anyone who would be on an international flight.  New York was like Harvard, a place that only existed on tv and in the movies.  It wasn’t until this week that I learned the plane that crashed in a Pennsylvania field was bound for SFO.  Even if I had known, it wouldn’t have mattered.  As a Midwesterner, I scorned those people on the coasts who flew from one side to the other, treating real Americans like they didn’t exist, “fly-over-country” nonsense.

Ten years later, I’ve been to New York.  I’ve seen the World Trade Center hole, and not because I went there to see it, but because it’s down the street from my friend’s dad’s office.  I know people there.  I know people who are frequently on international flights, including friends and family, and me.  I know some of the “coastal people,” heck, I’m even friends with them.  And while I still disdain the fly-over-country mentality, I don’t hate them.  Ten years later, the events are more real than they could have been to a sheltered twenty year-old.  And sadly, ten years later, the flags are mostly gone again.

I liked that patriotism; I’d like to see it back.  But I don’t expect it anytime soon.  It’s impossible to be both an apologetic and a patriot, and the loudest voices in our society are still demanding we be the first.

September 11th, 2001 may have given us a rallying cry on which to rebuild our patriotism.  But the events of the next 9 years destroyed it all again.  John Yoo said we’re safer and freer now than we were ten years ago.  He’s a good speaker, but I disagree.  When I feel trapped in my city because transportation out of it is either too long or too anxiety-filled due to the “heightened security measures” – not the risks, the measures – I do not feel safe or free.  I never feared the terrorists; I fear TSA.

They won. We have lost both our patriotism and our freedom.

Let’s Go to the Movies

My sisters and I used to have these funny glasses things that we picked up at some hands-on science museum or another once upon a time.  They were shaped like a plastic headband, with two clear plastic rectangles through which to view a rainbow colored world.  We used to put them on and pretend to be Geordi.

We spent hours practicing pulling our fingers apart, arguing over whether it was better to put the hand straight up and down for “Live long and prosper,” or sideways for “nanu nanu.”  We pulled on our ears in attempts to make them pointy and put Tribbles in our hair.

I’m sure we were the same as many kids; Star Trek culture deeply intertwined with the mass amounts of pop-ness shaping our young lives.  But for me, there was a sharp line between welcoming that influence and barely going beyond tolerating it.  I was about sever years old. 

Actress Denise Crosby decided she didn’t want her part anymore, so she was written out – her character sucked into some black bubbling alien creature.  Seven-year-old me knew nothing of this of course.  I knew two simple things: (1) this yellow-wearing lady was sucked into a giant mess of tar and (2) there was lots of tar on the street outside, on the playgroup at school, and in many other places encountered by a common seven year old.  That was the end of my participation in the family’s Star Trek watching.

Alfred continued to stay involved, becoming quite the Trekkie.  She even tried learning Klingon once.  I think it was mostly her enthusiasm for the show that kept me at all informed about it.  At least with regards to the Next Generation and all subsequent generations. 

The stars all pretty much belong to Alfred: Star Trek, Star Wars, Stargate, Starburst…  (Ok, maybe not the last one; she doesn’t eat a whole lot of candy.)  So, when I went to see the new Star Trek movie with Mommy and Daddy and Mr. Trizzle, I felt like I was stealing Alfred’s parents from her.  This was a movie that should have “belonged” to her, been hers to talk about with Daddy.  But here I was, standing in line an hour early with Mr. Trizzle, excited to see the show.

The “Old Generation,” as I call it, was always my favorite.  It was sillier, less scary than the yellow-person-eating-tar-pit generation.  Plus, I loved that the ladies had those cute skirt outfits and tall boots, instead of the ugly pants suits.  I think I was also amused that I had a cassette tape with Captain Kirk and Spock singing Bob Dylan songs.  (The cassette also had Mae West singing The Doors.)  The movie kept the skirts!!  That may have been my favorite part.  Ok. well that and several other things, including the old fashioned weapons and gear, but I don’t believe in spoilers.  You’ll just have to see it yourself. :D

Fear of a Black (with) Hat?

In case you haven't been following along for the last couple of months, I live in Africa.  Everyday, everywhere I go, I am surrounded by black people.  This is not the first time I've lived in Africa, and I also spend plenty of time at home around black people.

Hold on.

I'm not going to go into one of those so-see-I'm-not-racist tirades that often come after someone explains that they have a black friend or two.  I am just trying to explain that I am used to walking down the street and seeing black people, and they don't scare me.  Not saying not racist, just saying not scared.  Got it?

Ok, still think I'm heading down some sort of racist/prejudiced path?  Maybe I am - and that's the problem.  That's why I'm writing this.

The other day I was walking to an American-styled (and priced!) internet cafe on the other side of town.  It's about an hour walk down some pretty busy streets.  I passed lots of people, people carrying things on their heads, people pushing wheel barrows of sugar cane, couples out walking, groups of friends, and the occasional chicken (actual poultry with feathers and stuff).  Some people I greeted, some people I just passed, but mostly, if their presence affected me, it was because a greeting had made me smile.  Even though it was dusk and these were all strangers, I wasn't scared.  I was just walking.

Then, something happened. As I headed up one of the last main   streets, I saw a man wearing a stocking cap approaching my path.  Immediately, my heart started pounding.  My eyes darted around, looking for an escape route.  My legs wanted to freeze and run at the same time.  My body was automatically going into panic mode, adrenaline was flowing.

All these reactions happened before my mind had a chance to think.  Something had triggered my flight-or-fight mechanism.  Luckily for me (and probably for the guy, too), my mind quickly regained control, and I kept walking towards the cafe.

But as my heart started to calm down, my brain started going.  Why did seeing a black man in a stocking cap cause such immediate (and irrational) fear?  Would I have reacted the same way if he had been any other race?  Am I afraid of knit hats?  Maybe just headwear in general?

Clearly, I didn't react that way to anyone who looked similar but wasn't wearing a stocking cap.  I have to admit that I really doubt that just anyone wearing a stocking cap would make my heart race like that.  And I know that seeing people I know, of any color, in a stocking cap doesn't scare me.  It has to be something about the combination.  But why?  What has programmed my body to fear stranger+black+stocking cap so strongly?

Thinking back to an account by one of my friends, I can only comfort myself with the fact that I'm not the only person with irrational fears.  Great comfort. :-/

At least this made me laugh:

"Are the majority of black people messed up or is it just where I live?

I live in Oakland, California..."

(Well The Legend, that may explain why that Asian lady yelled at you...)

[*Fear of a Black Hat; Photo from http://blogs.kansascity.com/crime_scene/robberies/index.html]

Scared

 I'm becoming afraid to come back to America.  What will my country look like by December?

http://lessig.org/blog/2008/10/the_scary_context_of_this_elec.html#comments

Afraid of My Own Shadow

Fading off to sleep, my eyes did that sort of half flutter where you're almost awake again, but not quite.  What I saw during that flutter startled me and sent my heart racing. 

Cast against the backdrop of the sliver of light coming in from the bathroom window was a tall shadow.  Alarmed, I tried to force my eyes open again.  But my lids were heavy; I couldn't see who or what was there.  How did they get in my room?! Panicking, I moved to jump out of bed.

When I moved, the shadow did, too.  It was the little bunny, Foo Foo, that I had been holding on my chest.  In my half-awake stupor, I had no depth perception.  The rabbit's ears appeared to be a tall, dark figure standing in front of the bathroom door, not a little stuffed rabbit only a foot or so from my face.

I really need to stop waking up like this!  It can't be good for my heart.

Terror From Above

I was awoken in the middle of the night by something heavy landing on my chest.  A bit scared and unsure as to what was going on, I reached up to find out what had hit me. It felt like flesh, cold, clammy flesh!  My first thought was "it's a frog."

Terrified, I tried to grab it to throw it off of me.  It was too heavy.  I felt it again, a hand!  In a half-awake stupor I began to panic.  Did some sort of dead hand just fall from the sky and land on me!?  Groping at this strange object, I found it was still attached to an arm. 

Then I realized it was my hand.  My right arm had fallen asleep and was completely numb from the shoulder down.  I couldn't feel my left hand touching my right one.  I had thought my right hand was lying next to my body on the bed.  Relived that severed body parts were not falling from above, I left my numb arm where it was and went back to sleep.

(image from Vampires in the Fog)