So my oldest sister and I drove to mom’s house Tuesday to take her out to lunch. She comes from Tampa and I come from the Keys so mom is in the middle in Ft. Meyers. I try very hard not to ever discuss politics with my sister because she is so far to the left I can barely understand her, but inevitably we stray and the topic comes up. I give short answers and avoid as many landmines as possible. I do this because I have never gotten over her trying to suck me into the built in vacuum cleaner system when we were kids. Imagine a house with vacuum outlets in every room that leads to a goliath sucking machine in a room off the garage. We always made sure the cats were in a safe location before turning this thing on. You would be careful around a woman willing to suck your 70 pound kid self into that, too. It was that, and the fact that she actually broke my bedroom door in half because I refused to do chores when she was in charge while our parents were out. Four sisters. No supervision. Violence was a way of life. We were famous in Bay Hill.
But I digress.
She said something that made me laugh out loud, completely forgetting my vow of self preservation. I’ll try to get the quote right.
“Say what you want about Obama, at least he’s not planning to round up the intelligentsia into internment camps.”
At which point I laughed because I thought she was kidding and she gave me a serious stare and said, “Don’t laugh. YOU would have been one of the ones rounded up.”
I let it go, but … really? Did the left sincerely believe that Bush was planning to jail all the smart people? How did I miss that rumor. My sister is a certified genius, btw. So is my mom. Me? I’m blond so any IQ point advantage I may have is completely obliterated by my complete lack of common sense and horrific navigational abilities. I’m pretty sure I was safe from the Bush internment camps for smart people.
Sometimes I wonder, though. My grandmothers (A Jew and an American Indian), they never talked about their fears (real ones), but they denied their heritage completely. They hid what they were from everyone as much as humanly possible and the message came through loud and clear to their kids and grand kids: Don’t talk about it. We don’t talk about the relatives we lost. We don’t talk about the fear that it could happen again. We don’t discuss what we are with strangers. But that fear – it is always there. I wonder if my sister transferred it to something she CAN talk about subconciously.
I’d like to say that someday our family will sit down and face our history, but I doubt it. What I DO know is, that while most people can’t imagine that their government is capable of arresting them for something as ridiculous as an IQ or a way of thinking – a philosophy or political views – my sister and I? We can imagine it quite easily.
Recently:
- Too Tired to Rant
- And this is why I hesitated to “join”
- NPR Incapable of writing article on Tea Party without first calling members stupid
- Monday Morning Sift
- Sunday Rant
- House Keeping
- Work with me here
- Did not watch the speech
- Specter Tells Bachmann To Act Like A “Lady”
- Cradle to an Early grave
