What is you R2?
I told Mr. Scientist last night that this would be the title of my next post. I didn't have a topic to go with it then but one soon found me. We were talking on the phone as I drove home and soon after stating this as the title I stopped at Walmart to get a Redbox movie. (Such a quick trip but the subject for 2 posts, the 1 you are reading now, and this and 1 comment, quite fruitful I'd say.) Before going on, I should offer a word of introduction to the title. Last year I was reading an article in the Chicago Sun Times on how many perpetrators of gun crimes in Chicago actually are convicted and go to jail. (This article apparently won a Pulitzer, read it in whole here.) Sadly the number is very small. The article featured various victims who had been shot but for one reason or another the shooter in each case was never tried. One of the victims lived not far from our townhouse. While he was walking down the street a man stopped him and said 'What is you?' which apparently is how you ask someone what gang they are affiliated with. This victim in question had given up the gang life and so when he said he had a past with the Vice Lords, the guy shot him in the leg (for not being with the Taliban). After being shot, the victim's mother urged him not to pursue charges... The real kicker in this story is that as they were interviewing this victim, they were sitting in McDonald's and while talking, the man who did the shooting in this case walked in. But hey, they is cool.
If you've read any of my previous posts you'll know that I look for connections, or perhaps more precisely connections find me. When I went into Walmart last night to get a Redbox movie I knew my wallet was sitting on the seat of my car. As I walked through 0 degree temperatures I consciously decided not to go back for my wallet. (If you've ever rented from Redbox you'll know that this was a mistake whose remedy was more time in the cold.) I did manage to get all the way to the checkout process before realizing that without a wallet it would be tough to swipe a credit card to pay the 30 cents needed for the Blu Ray movie I wanted (Gotta love that promo code!). So I canceled the transaction and headed out into the chill. As I walked out the door a yellow suv with ladders was stopping near me. I made eye contact with the driver to make sure she saw me and then made a bee-line for the car. After grabbing my wallet and heading back I noticed the yellow suv was still there and a man was getting a child out of the back seat. What is coming next is very rated R so there's your fair warning should you click through to the rest of this post.
As a father of 3 (with number 4 coming in a few months) I couldn't help but catch what this man said to the child as he took him out of the car. The boy couldn't have been more than 3 years old, probably 2 and a half. What I heard was this Shut the fuck up, you retarded mother fucker. This derisive phrase was said without overt malice but seriously? To a 2 or 3 year old? It literally took all of my self control not to say something to this man. I hesitate to call him a father, if that is what he actually was. I truly wanted to say something like, 'He's going to grow up just like you if you aren't careful.' The hard part here is that to the person who would actually say this to a toddler, my comment is likely to just cause anger at me rather than an introspective look at his parenting techniques. As much as I try and try not to judge, this encounter truly feels like an indictment to our society. Every social ill just jumped out of that man's mouth and into my ears. Poverty, education, family cohesion, respect for others, human dignity, all of these elements were mashed together in my head as I pictured this small child growing up to be another like his father. It was almost enough to make me cry.
And I know. There are more powerful ills in the world. But we don't change the world by fixing everything at once. We start small. We show a man what it means to be a father. Except, in this case I didn't really show him a better example but you get the picture.