Tag Archives: labels

I Have Been a Lot of People in My Life

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I Have Been a Lot of People in My Life

I have been a lot of people in my life –
I’ve been the daughter, the sister, the wife,
mother, grey-haired lady, and young lass.
I was once the littlest girl in my class –
thought too skinny by some
who couldn’t see that playing was more fun
than eating. I won the blue ribbon
for the broad jump and the dash in fourth grade.
I was the queen of multiplication tables
in the fifth grade, and in sixth grade
my teacher said I “ran like a deer.”

I was the new girl in school that year
and someone wrote “brainbucket sits here”
on my desk. Then I was the nerdy girl
in black frame glasses who weighed
more than 100 pounds and thought she was fat
and my eighth grade PE teacher said,
“We finally found something you’re good at”
when I was always the last one standing
in the volleyball elimination games –
she didn’t see that I ran like a deer.

I was shy in high school, but some people
thought I was a snob –
I saw myself as an unmemorable blob.
I was Karen when Karen Valentine
was everyone’s favorite ingénue
and I was Karen when it meant something else, too.

I’ve been chubby, pretty, plain, dazzling,
athletic, awkward, confident, insecure,
dull, creative, boring, funny, judgmental,
self-centered, open-minded, and generous.
And I guess “I” am still all of those things –
depending on who’s looking at me.

But the I who’s not in quotation marks
is what God, Love, sees
when She looks at me.
-Karen Molenaar Terrell

“All _____ are…”

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When someone says something like, “All Republicans are…” or “All Democrats are…” or “All Christians are…” or “All Muslims are…” or “All Mexicans are…” or “All atheists are…” – when whole groups of people are lumped together as if they all feel, think, and believe the exactly same things just because they share the same label – that is called stereotyping. Stereotyping is a sign of bigotry. I really, really hate bigotry.

“It’s a very important thing to learn to talk to people you disagree with.” – Pete Seeger

I remember on Election Day when I was a little girl my mom and dad would go off in a car together to vote. My Dad supported one political party, and my mom supported another – but they cheerfully got in the car together and went to the polls to cancel out each others’ votes. They weren’t angry with each other because they disagreed about politics. They didn’t yell at each other, call each other names, cuss each other out, or think the other person was somehow an inferior human being – lacking in intelligence, reason, logic, and good sense. Nope. They loved each other. They respected each other. Although they’ve since then become members of the same party, at that time, they totally disagreed with each other about American politics – and it was alright.

They were a wonderful example to me.

Although one of my parents was, then, a Republican, and the other was a Democrat, although one was religious, and the other not – they shared the same values. Both my parents valued honesty, integrity, kindness, generosity, fair play, compassion, the beauties of Nature, and having a good sense of humor about oneself. They brought their children up to value those things, also.

Here are some useful things I learned about the exchange of ideas and opinions from watching my parents interact with each other:

– Be kind.
– Play fair.
-Laugh at your own nonsense, before you laugh at someone else’s.
-Sometimes saying you’re sorry is the most important thing you can contribute to a conversation.
-Avoid hearsay.
-Don’t assume that a person is lacking in intelligence or reason just because he or she disagrees with you.
-Listen.
-I’m really grateful I grew up with the parents I did. I think it would be a marvelous thing if everyone treated each other with the same respect my parents gave to each other as they drove off to the polls on election day.

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