In The Closet

I lost my debit card last night at a Taco Bell.

I searched my car.

I searched my room.

I searched my pockets, and all I found was a crumpled receipt.

I reviewed the receipt.

I ordered a chicken soft taco and a fiesta chicken burrito. The grand total....

$3.18.

The Taco Bell rule of thumb is that you should NOT spend more than 5 dollars per person. If three people roll up to the Taco Bell window and start screaming out their order, the total should not exceed 15 dollars, by my calculations. That same rule applies to you big ballers out there who are ordering the Mexican Pizza. (Which was my routine order for years...86 the olives please!)

Anyhow, this post was supposed to be about Martin Luther King Jr., but it's now in honor of Bridget. This blogger is still learning how to streamline a topic, but have patience, please.

So, back to the Taco Bell receipt at hand. I confirm that I did in fact use my debit card to pay, and my heavy taco bell diaper bag was indeed my last purchase. I theorize that I was in such a mad rush to squeal out of the drive thru and get the party, er, fiesta, started in my mouth that I forgot to retrieve my BofA card back from Taco Bell.

It's now lunch time and I wanted to run out and grab something to eat. (Grocery shopping's for pussies.) In need of some dinero - no, not you Robert - I bolted to my Bank of America around the corner only to be greeted by this sign.

CLOSED - In honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day

MY first reaction: Damn, shit, fuck, I'm starving, I have no cash, how am I going to get a delicious thai lunch!?!

MY immediate CORRECTED reaction: MLK was the man!

Reality check: I know as an (above) average white man, I'm not technically allowed to refer to Martin Luther King Jr. as "the man". I, in fact, am the man. As in the white man. The oppressor. The status quot. The establishment. "Stick it to the man!"

You get the drift....

But before I was the MAN, I was a boy. And as a chubby little white boy growing up in Connecticut! - talk about white-washed - I worshiped Martin Luther King Jr. By forth grade I had moved to Florida and adopted Donatello as my new hero. (And yes, I'm talking the purple bandanna wearing Turtle prone to ninja moves, not the historic artist prone to sculpting.)

But in the third grade, MLK was my hero. I can vividly recall checking out all the MLK books from the library. I remember learning about him in class and grilling my teacher Mrs. Irwin on everything MLK related. (My nickname in that grade was QB...Question Box...oy!)I remember reading about him in our dusty collection of Encyclopedia Britanicas. The only topics I ever looked up in those things were dinosaurs, sex and Martin Luther King Jr. Isn't that what's on every boy's brain: Paleontology, Procreation and Progress? Social progress, that is.

One spring day, Mrs. Irwin announced a class project we would all participate in. We were to select a historical hero of our choice, come to school dressed up as him or her, and deliver a speech about your hero.

It should come as NO surprise that I was writing my speech on Martin Luther King Jr. before class had even ended. (Had this project been assigned a year earlier, I would have dressed up as Ernest from the Ernest Goes to Camp oeuvre.)

I powered through my essay on the great one.



Martin Luther King Jr. had a dream, and as a dreamer myself, I was ready to share his message of racial equality to my entire third grade class, every single one of us white. I was, in fact, preaching to "The Man" after all.

(I should have saved this speech for the following year, when I moved to Florida, and was in a more appropriately melting pot of whites, blacks, hispanics, asians, jocks and rednecks.)

The night before the big day, I recall reading my speech to my parents, who were by this point pretty accustomed to being held captive as an audience member to my written flights of fancy. (A couple years later I remember waking them up on a Sunday morning and forcing them to watch the inspired play I adapted from the film, My Cousin Vinny, which would have won a Tony in it's day, I swear! You should seen me as Marisa Tomei, taking the stand, er, sitting on my desk chair, flubbing my Jersey accent...but I should save that story for the Joe Pesci King Jr. day)



After approving my speech, we moved to the next critical phase of my presentation: WARDROBE! My mom pulled out my suit and tie, and dressed me up. I looked in the mirror. I was a chubby white kid in a suit. I was Brooks Brothers. I looked like I was doing my speech on Arthur Miller. I was NOT MLK Jr, not at all. Even then, I was a stickler for artistic integrity, and realized this boring hum drum suit was not achieving MY DREAM of getting into character! I remember telling my mom the materials I needed in order to achieve the full look of my costume. My mother took a backseat, and agreed to let me run the show. We formed our morning battle plan and I went to bed, while visions of black pride marches danced in my head.

The next morning was THE DAY! I ate my breakfast. I packed my backpack. I buttoned up my suit. I slicked back my hair. My mom put a black stocking on my head. We smeared black shoe polish all over my face and hands. I looked in the mirror and remember thinking, "Now THAT'S more like it." I was in full black face (and hands) and I probably looked more like a bank robber with the ridiculous stocking on my head, but hell, I felt full of pride as I left my house for school that morning. I never doubted the look for a second. If I was going to BE Martin Luther King Jr, I felt like I HAD to be different. I had to be black. And the only way I could get there was with some globby shoe polish. I had no idea that I was a walking minstrel show. I had no concept that this could be offensive. I was just a boy with a dream, and a speech tucked into my backpack.

The actual school day brings back NO memories.

I don't remember walking into class.

I don't remember the teacher or student reaction.

I don't remember how my speech went over.

My ONLY recollection of that day was LUNCH.

(INSERT FAT JOKE HERE)

I do recall I was making one helluva mess with my shoe polish hands, which had streaked my desk with black finger paintings. When lunch time came around, my teacher came over to me and expressed that they thought my costume was too messy to take into the cafeteria, and I had already made a mess of my desk.

She told me that she had set up a little lunch table in the closet, yes a CLOSET! (albiet a large supply walk in closet, but STILL!) She wanted me to eat my lunch in the closet - alone - by myself. She ushered me into the closet where she did in fact have a little table, a little chair and a little school lunch laid out for me. She told me I could out when I was finished, leaving the door open just a crack as she left me alone with my tray of pizza and corn (I don't remember the lunch, but I can only assume!)

At the time, I don't remember being upset or annoyed. I was accommodating.

I sat, alone, in the closet, with black shoe polish prints covering the crust of my pizza.

It would have made sense for me to just wash off my little paws before heading into the cafeteria with my class, but my teacher never once asked me to take off the makeup.

In retrospect, I'd like to think that my teacher was trying to teach me a lesson on segregation. I could dress up like MLK, I could write a speech on MLK, but until you've been ostracized from society due to the color of your skin, you could NEVER know what it felt like to be MLK, a man who made it his life's mission to fight racial prejudice and social injustice. Not to fight with violence, but with words, with marching, with song, with speech.

When faced with the closet, I didn't run. I didn't hide. I didn't take off my costume. I didn't rinse off my grubby hands. I didn't fight.

I was probably just starving and wanted to wolf down my slice o' pizza, but I like to think of myself as the person who accepted this lunchtime segregation not with violence, not with childish rebuttal, but in peaceful, starving protest.



Peace,
Brian