A few months ago I surfed over to GutRumbles who represents the “old-guard” of personal bloggers. I was saddened to discover that Rob Smith had passed away, just hours after writing his last post. Friends and family are keeping the site alive, and recycling the best of the Acidman's rants.
I bring it up because about three years ago he wrote something about race relations, specifically that he objected to cross-racial adoption. Basically Rob was saying that mindless white parents were adopting black kids without thinking through the implications and hardships that would be imposed on the child. I posted a reply on his site, explaining that while there are serious issues when one adopts a black child into a white family, the problems are certainly manageable. With the myriad of serious issues that come up with kids, race differences are simply another parental challenge. It isn't insurmountable if you know how to make it to work. To drive home the point, I linked an essay in Adoption.com which was written by JayWon during her senior year of high school.
Rob got back to me personally that day and complimented my daughter. I passed this on to JayWon. I didn’t go into the specifics about Rob or his blog and I wasn't sure how she would have reacted to getting praise from someone who repeatedly characterized his ex-wife as a “bloodless c*nt”. Actually, in retrospect,I think I do know. She would have found such stuff crude, but she would have quickly looked past it, and recognized his writing skills and been amused by his direct and candid opinions, regardless of whether they aligned with her views.
Getting back to the issue of race, it will continue to loom large in our family dynamics since it looks very probable that the interracial ties will soon be extended. JayWon told me recently that she and K-Man are starting to talk seriously about marriage.
K-Man wasn’t originally listed in my post of “Players”, so I need to introduce him here.
He is an immigrant, six years out of the country of Togo which resides in what was once known as French West Africa. Togo is on the cusp of the cultural line that cuts across Africa and divides the Islamic north from the tribal and Christian south. Needless to say this line is not just a cultural boundary, areas it often represents a front of some civil war. Darfur comes to mind, as does Sierra Leone.
K-Man is the same age as JayWon and they started dating in their last year of high school, but instead of going on to college, he is working very long hours cleaning out cars at a rental agency. There wasn’t really a choice in this decision. His family is relatively poor and he spent his years in high school simply learning rudimentary skills and English. For a while he didn’t have money to fix his car so he had to resort to walking an hour each way to get to his work. He supports his stepmother, his adolescent sister, and his younger brother and pays the majority of the rent. His father abandoned the family about three or four years ago. K-Man doesn’t have much spare time, but he is working through the classes he needs to take to get American citizenship. All this responsibility at the age of twenty-one.
During the winter, B2 got tickets to a live stage performance of “Grease”. Tenacious was to bring one of his friends, but he bailed at the last minute. I invited K-Man thinking that this would be a chance for him to have a evening out doing something different that having a beer and catching a late-night NBA game on television. Whenever he is around me K-Man is soft-spoken and reserved, but he was even more so in the company of B2 and Tenacious. We went to dinner and then went on to the play.
I had to wonder what K-Man must have been thinking sitting in the balcony listening to some blonde cutie on stage crooning, “I’m Sandra Dee, lousy with virginity.” It wasn’t clear from his muted reaction whether he was bored or confused by all the pop-cultural references of 1950’s America. Frankly, Tenacious was looking equally disengaged. When the play ended we dropped K-Man off at his home, and he thanked us politely for the evening’s entertainment. B2 and I figured the evening was a bust for the two boys.
Later that week I talked to JayWon about taking K-Man to the play and how I didn’t think he had a good time. She laughed. Apparently one of K-Man’s buddies at work had given her a call to complain about his new passion.
“JayWon. Why did you give K-Man that god-awful CD?”
“What CD?”
“That musical. We’ve been listening to him play that “Grease” shit non-stop for the past twelve hours.”
Apparently one of the perks in cleaning out cars is that you get to use the built-in stereo and CD player to listen to your own music. K-Man had immediately gone out after the play, purchased the sound-track, and was inflicting Sandra Dee on his buddies. JayWon clarified that the CD originated with K-Man and that she never bought it. K-Man’s buddy relayed the information, and JayWon heard muffled protests of K-Man getting tossed into a dumpster.
JayWon also informed me that K-Man does a killer Michael Jackson imitation. Obviously there is a lot more to learn about him.