OK.
So I used all those words in one sentence. That pretty much sums up a part of who I am. But it doesn't say it all.
I grew up (and I swore I would never start a sentence with those words!) in a country that taught respect to those in positions of authority. The cop on the corner, the pastor, the teacher, your parents and grandparents. The old guy named Koskoff down the street who escaped from Czarist Russia in the early part of the 20th Century and set up a cobbler shop where I grew up in Wilmington, Vt. You would show respect to these people and others older then you. Because you knew if you didn't, word would get back to your parents before you got home. And you would hear about it.
And you respected your president.
In my case, a little grey-faced man named Truman who reminded me of my Grandfather on my fathers side, and a bald-headed guy named Eisenhower who always reminded me of Ukelele Ike, the fellow who was the voice of Jimeny Cricket in Disney's "Pinocheo". They never appeared in our classroom on television, of course. We were not set up for that sort of thing in the early and mid-fiftys.
But regardless of who they looked like, I still respected them.
After John Kennedy died on a gurney in a Dallas hospital in 1963, my focus on the president got a little fuzzy. It was the 60's, after all.
He was my commander-in-cheif when I was serving in Korea and when the Russians put up the wall in Berlin, he extended my stay in 'The Land of the Morning Calm' for a few months. My military service was extended even further a year or so later when we came a hairs breadth from nuclear annihilation over a few missles in Cuba.
But I still respected him.
I respected Johnson, yes, even Nixon, Ford, Carter, Regan, Bush, Clinton and Bush.
Don't get me wrong. I didn't always agree with them or their policies. I didn't always agree with the way they ran their personal lives, for that matter. Nixon made me scream at the tv. So did the rest of them, from time to time.
But they were the Presidents of the United States, for corn sakes!
And I know they appeared in thousands of classrooms accross the country in those years. Many times. I don't believe any child was damaged, or hurt, or had their lives ruined because of that.
Let's show a little respect.
Do you think our president is going to eat our children? Or that he will psychicaly scar them for life? He is the president. He is going to talk for a few minutes, take some questions and be on his way. Just as presidents have always done.
We send our children to school evey day. And every day they are exposed to the thoughts and ideas of everybody they come in contact with. From the bus driver down to the principal. Some of the stuff they learn in the locker-room can be pretty rough also, as you probably remember.
Frankly, most kids will be secretly texting or passing notes or trying to remember if the algebra teacher was giving a test that day.
And don't feed me all this jiggery-pokery about the health bill, or socialism or communism or taxes or the economy. Or whatever your personal agenda is. A thousand years from now, none of this stuff will matter. It's all smoke and mirrors anyway.
Let's just all take a deep breath and get on with lives.
We might start by trying to make peace in our own houses with the people we love and sometimes respect. The rest will take care of itself.
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