black and white

Driving back from Port Townsend this afternoon, we stopped off at McDonald's with a poorly-feeling child and two adults craving french fries. A bit of car sickness, unpleasant. We hoped that the healing karma of McDonald's might help.

Before you blow a gasket, I'm really talking about the normative promise of the experience of McDonald's. McD's is a road comfort for many because you know what to expect. And you typically get what you expect, which can often be better than getting what you need. Sorry. At somepoint, the Stones crept in and my point went blooy. Damn wild horses!

My hope was the the kidplay area would divert enough emotional attention away from nausea and stabilize the car blorp feelings. I watched four or five (hell, maybe 300) kids wind through the twisty colorful conduit. Once again, I had greasy visions of an abundance of bacteria rubbing themselves into the playkids. Ugh. It occured to me that the knot of play tubes was the personification of Ronald McDonald's intestines: cheerful, well-ordered, and I will let you fill in whatever thought you want. I had many. You know me, always taking the high road. By the way, my intestines are fine, thank you for asking.

Part of the fun of watching the kids (does anyone need to explain the pleasures of watching kids at play?) was that there were two kids that had just made friends with each other and were in kid love. They'd follow the other around, animal stalk each other and just grin like crazy. Very sweet. I had watched them for a bit when I remembered something from my childhood. Back then, it was a rare in my town to see non-white kids let alone play with them.

I was with a male elder on some unremembered errand. In my small town, all driving happened at very slow speeds, it seemed to me. The automobile, she only went fast on the Inter-state. What's more, when this elder was a kid, he got around in a horse and buggy. My guess is that I must have been quite younger than ten. Couldn't say exactly.

As well rolled along, we spotted a black kid playing in his yard. Looked just a bit older than me. What prompted this man I revered to say: "Hey Phil. Why don't you go over there and say "Hi chocolate drop?" This felt distinctly weird to my young self, somehow wrong and shameful. I know that we were in his car but I remember feeling as if the car dissolved away as I contemplated his question. He pressed on by saying something about the kid being made of chocolate, like a Hersey's Kiss and that's just how it was so it was okay to say it. My response was a simple no, flat with confusion. I rarely had anything to forgive him for and I let this this pass. But I chewed on his motivation for this for years.

This memory collided with those sweet kids today. If you are anything like me, you find it difficult to measure any generational sense of positive change. Most of us have been flattened so often with "Well, when I was a kid, we had to..." that we must crumple automatically when faced with evaluating long-term social change. How do you appreciate progress in an imperfect present that contains horrors that you can describe in one word: Katrina, Darfur?

Watching these two kids play today, both so clear, happy and energized gave me a bit of hope for the world. But I know that's an overblown reaction, but sometimes you're just got to reach.