Virtual Slaps

Woke up this morning to find the looters had come to the neighborhood during the night.

The Archeologist posted photos of vandalized buildings at the strip mall nearest her home. She also posted a call for action:

Nice, but who the heck has sanitizer, thought I.

Thinking the shops surrounding the corner market might have been hit last night, I took a drive over and saw only the cellphone store had been broken into.

While sleeping last night, I was slightly roused by the sound of sirens and the faint sound of a helicopter but, thinking my imagination, I rolled over and didn’t let it waken me.

Feeling the looters will probably come back tonight, target the drugstore and market, I popped into the grocery store for just-in-case supplies — what I don’t need now, but might need by end of week.

It was a good thing I did, because the cashier told me — when I commented on the store being so crowded because it was fist of the month and people got their checks, that no, not about checks, it’s because "We’re the only store that’s open. All the others were looted last night".

This is bad, very very bad, with no end in sight.

The mayor and/or governor will probably impose a curfew.

Thoughts of people I’ve known in the past began coming to mind. People who were racist, but didn’t know they were racist. Like CVM — the woman I worked with at my last job that thought, because I’m Black, she was better than I and was offended by my not living and performing, in the job, down to the subservient role she had in her head. CVM announced to other coworkers (who sneak told me because they didn’t like what she was saying) how she was going to break me … "She doesn't know her place (meaning me). I’m going to put her in it".

I’m not sure what that "place" was to look like, and Lord knows she tried to break me, but I came into the job as a professional, with spiritual integrity, and I retired as a professional, with an even stronger level of spiritual integrity — unbroken by all of CMV’s pettiness, meanness, machinations.

Looking at her facebook page, I see CVM was not saying what I’d expected — that what happened to Mr. Floyd was Floyd’s own fault, that Black people should know their place. Instead, she was posting positive uplifting stories of goodness and words of being kind to each other.

WHAT! Kind to each other? You hypocrite you! What do you know about kindness!

And for you, my old boyfriend Jim. When I’d tell you of experiences I was having which I felt were racially motivated you’d say I was being dramatic, paranoid, because things like that don’t happen. You went a step further and said ALL your Black friends had the same problem — too sensitive, thin skinned, paranoid.

Now you’re posting about how your Black friends shared stories of misconduct, injustice and how you can understand their feeling of being always under attack, and in-danger simply because of the color of their skin.

So now you understand it’s not paranoia, or are you just mouthing off, saying what you think appropriate?