Hump day

I apologize in advance; I fear that I’m turning into one of those aunts who will regale you with stories about their nieces and nephews, and I’m afraid of boring you to tears!  But this morning I had two of the funniest statements that I must share!  The first was that my niece came into my room after she had got dressed for daycare to wake me up.  Before I got my morning hug, she looked at me and declared, “Auntie Sonja, your bed is messy.  Fix it.”  I was still in bed at the time.  Then later, as we were finishing breakfast, she announced to her parents, “I’m staying home with Auntie Sonja today.”  That didn’t work, obviously, but it was hilarious!  Don said that he was tired, as he had some trouble falling asleep.  Jerry was concentrating hard on ignoring me.  I talked to him, and his ears flicked a few times, but he refused to look at me, then when he did look at the phone, he huffed and turned his back on me!  He’s definitely sulking at me for leaving, and I’ll be subjected to this abuse for a while.  He’s being very affectionate towards Don, and is conveying his disapproval of my travels.  

I don’t know what happened, but this afternoon I got up out of my chair and had this dreadful stabbing pain in my back.  I haven’t been able to get it under control, so I’ll be reading a short story and going to bed early tonight.  The pain is worse than I’ve experienced in a while, and it’s a complete surprise.  I didn’t do anything — I was sitting comfortably working on my crochet, and stood up to get a glass of water when my back flared up!  I’ve had to move the kids to the floor with their toys as I couldn’t cope with the usual pile o’kids-and-books.

I was talking to my sister this week, and we realized that watching children’s programming like Sesame Street plus growing up in Trinidad meant that we’d been acclimated to seeing people of different colours working together in various positions of authority, although on TV the people we saw were mostly white.  I remember doing some training years ago when we were asked to describe a “typical” Canadian or American.  I was the only person who described a non-white woman as typical, the other 20 or so participants described a white male.  That being said, in the last few years there’s been more of an adjustment to include women and people of different ethnicities in movies and TV shows.  The problem, as I see it, is that there are far too many troglodytes who want to freeze the world into a time when only one group — white men — were featured.  I’m not advocating for eliminating men or anything silly like that.  But I find it hard to believe that they’re the only people who can accomplish anything.  It’s just ridiculous to suppose that women, African-Canadian, Arabic or Asian people have no stories to share.  

A few years ago, there was a remake of the movie Ghostbusters using an all-female cast.  Even before it was released in theatres, it had garnered a very low rating from a campaign that wanted it to fail for daring to have women as the leads in a comedy.  Then the new Star Trek series, Discovery, was flayed for having an Asian woman as the captain and an African-American woman named “Michael” as the leads.  A young man asked me if I thought it was realistic that a woman could lead a fictional crew, and make “the hard decisions that were necessary” because he seemed to think that women were too weak for that kind of role.  (I reminded him of Janeway but he’d never seen her.)  The new Lord of the Rings series is getting flak for having a *gasp* black Elf!!!  And, of course, the new Little Mermaid is cast to be black.  The furore, as I understand it, is that fictional characters are all supposed to be white, except in limited, supporting roles!  

I find it absurd that these are issues that occupy people’s minds.  It would be, I suppose, better if they confined their hatred to fictional characters, but they don’t.  It spills out into the real world, and all too often becomes violence.  I would love it if there were a way to stop the attacks on those of us who aren’t white.  I”m going to stress again that it’s really easy not to be racist.  If you find yourself thinking about a person in terms of their colour, then stop.  Additionally, ask yourself if you’d have the same objection if the person was the same race/colour as you.  If the honest answer is “no,” then change your thinking.  It’s not hard!  Don’t use any terms that refer to people by their race or colour in any situation that doesn’t require it — like, filling in demographic information on a form.  And there you are, not racist!  No, I’m not calling everyone racist.  I know we all have inappropriate thoughts from time to time, and all we need to do is not act on them.

And it’s story time now.  I’m going to try for a short one tonight as my back is still in agony.  I hope that we can find something that works for us both!  Although she’s demonstrating a fondness for Dr. Seuss which pleases me.  That’s all for now, so good night!