Children are ripe for every kind of indoctrination growing up in this world. Out of the womb we begin to soak up what we see and hear in our homes, from our friends, what our teachers present to us, and what we’re permitted to see on TV or movies or the rest of virtual reality. Some is necessary training we need to navigate the world, but too much of this brainwashing is because of the hogwash we’re fed in a media driven society gone wild. The amount of trash on TV alone is overwhelming. It is very difficult to understand that any purposeful physical abuse against another human being or a defenseless animal or the planet for that matter, could be a justifiable belief. But as we constantly see in the media, abuses of all kinds are running rampant, and sometimes, we as individuals believe we are powerless to right the ship. Add in the burden of emotional energies such as anger, fear, being treated unfairly, or broken trust that humans carry through the generations, and children and adults are left with a murky brew of confusion as to what we should or want to believe. Doesn’t matter whether or not we consciously ruminate on past hurts and injustices, they are ingrained in the deep recesses of our subconscious and are a part of who we are until we can get rid of them, which is no easy task.
Growing up in East Tennessee, I was surrounded by prejudice or fear-based beliefs. There were the usual targets of black people, Jews, poor white trash, sissies and people from the North. My high school was all white kids and was further segregated into three levels of educational goals which translated to the students as smart, average and not so average. I’m pretty sure there were plenty of deadbeats in the smart group, and several geniuses in the other two. Education doesn’t always translate to success, so those unfair and untrue labels skewed our belief in self at that critical period just before leaving the nest. I’ve found as I navigate life, that we surely can change our inherited life view. Can’t blame someone else forever. We can re-shape our belief system into a positive and uplifting life for ourselves and in doing so, greatly influence those around us.
When I was 10 years old, my Grandma Rose decided that she would install me and my cousin Robert 
on the side of the road in front of her house with a watermelon stand. Grandma’s mojo (established in my 5-28-16 post) also included growing perfectly round, black-green and spectacularly sweet, red flesh watermelon. To enjoy the fruit of her labor, her children and grandchildren would gather in her front yard, set up wooden saw horses with plywood and newspaper on top, and cut several melons into thick wedges which we would eat, dripping juice in the grass, while we sharpened our seed spitting skills.
That summer as usual, I was hanging with Grandma and learning useful things like embroidery (I still have the pillowcase with the little roses, and you can definitely distinguish my poor little flower from Grandma’s handiwork), the best time of day to sit on the porch and break green beans, how to wring a chicken’s neck, slop the hogs…the normal stuff (lol). Anyway, this particular lesson was in commerce and included Robert, who was 13 and lived across the street. We were summer compatriots in the rolling hills behind his house. Our adventures were glorious, exhausting, noon to dusk days full of exploration and just plain fun.
Grandma’s house was not situated on a busy street, but was more like a country road with a history. Old Sevierville Pike, it’s original name, had at one time connected South Knoxville to Sevierville, TN, the birthplace of Dolly Parton for all you country music fans. My family lived in what was considered a suburban neighborhood, but no one told Grandma, who lived maybe a mile or so from us, that hogs and chickens weren’t very suburban. So I always felt like her house was somehow in a different universe. She and Grandad had moved closer to town from the ‘old homestead’ where Grandma had birthed their 9 children, but had managed to bring along most of the familiar smells such as the hogs. Seemed perfectly okay at the time, although I don’t recall anyone else around there generating those same smells. You simply could not take the country out of Alice Rose!
My Grandma was very industrious. She had to be to feed all those children in the poverty of the area in the early 1900’s. She figured selling watermelon (sorry…watermelons is just not right) for 50 cents a pop was a good profit, and myself and Robert were the handy and willing sales people for the job. I vividly remember standing in the shaded spot on the opposite side of the pike from her house and believing that we were going to be very successful in our effort. Grandma smiled and waved as she sat on her porch breaking even more green beans, and we waved back as we waited for our hungry customers to come down the road.
Just as I was thinking that we should cut some samples to lure people in, all my hopes came to a crashing halt. The first car that came down the road had a passenger who yelled an epithet at Robert that started with an ‘N’. My cousin was part Cherokee Indian and tanned a deep bronze-brown in the summer. That horror of a person had assumed he was of a different heritage and yelled out that word because Robert was standing with a young white girl. He spat out that filth because of his own inherent and learned anger and fear that he didn’t measure up in some way. In order to elevate himself, he had to place other people below him in importance. Whole generations carry that through life after life, spreading and adding to what is an untrue and unnatural belief. I see their souls cluttered with pockets of dark energy, growing like a cancer. Ugly, but also very sad because too many are convinced of its truth. I’m not immune to this cancer. No one is.
As a young girl, I didn’t see color. Robert could have been green for all I cared. But I will admit to having to come against prejudice later in life that still seeps into my thoughts like the slime that it is. To this day I remember my utter dismay when Grandma walked across the street to usher us back to safety, deciding that our venture had to end almost before it began. But I also felt shame, as though we were somehow to blame. I think that’s when I started to wake up to words peppered in the everyday language of people that I really loved. People who saw no harm in using racial slurs as descriptions or in jokes. And the biggest irony? Robert’s parents, my aunt and uncle, named their black cocker spaniel…yep…the “N” word.
Be careful when you spew crap. It might just be flung right back atcha’!
And another thing…eat the watermelon seeds. Don’t spit them out as we were taught as youngsters. They won’t grow a watermelon in your tummy, and they’re very nutritious. 🙂
RE-Group 