So I was visiting with most of my immediate family this weekend, in part to celebrate Mother's Day. 6 of my nieces and nephews were there, and it was great to spend time with them since I live at least 3 hours away from all of them.
So after dinner and dessert we were doing the usual hanging out and playing, and somehow the election came up. I think it was because one of my nephews had to finish homework for Monday, and the assignment was to come up with 10 facts on a U.S. President. By the way, all of the school-age kids in the room at the time all go to Catholic grade school.
He chose Ronald Reagan. So without judging his choice, I tried to give him some "legitimate" facts. I did a fairly good job of biting my tongue and editing myself. The first ones I could come up with were...
• he was shot while President
• he was old / the oldest one (so far)
• he starred in movies
• he rode horses
• he made at least one movie with a monkey
• his full name has 6 letters (first), 6 letters (middle), and 6 letters (last), and that often is the mark of the beast
• his full name is an anagram of INSANE ANGLO WARLORD [I don't think my nephew understood was "Anglo" meant]
• this one I said too fast for him to fully hear: he would have wanted your mom to stay in the kitchen and make your food
So my better half, the former elementary school teacher, went into to teacher mode and did a much better job communicating with and helping my nephew with his assignment.
And then more of the little ones ended up in our conversation and talk quickly switched to the election.
And at one point my nephew says to me,
"Kids at school said that if Hillary is elected then she will say that if you have a baby you will be able to shoot it or kill it if you want to."
Now, as someone who teaches college students primarily about race and gender, I had to refrain from going into one of my presentations about choice and reproductive justice. The best I could muster was something to the effect of "actually, no, that isn't true."
What I wanted to say included things like:
"Oh yeah?!? Well so does Barack!"
"John McCain wants to force your sisters and mother to give birth against their will."
We did end up having a pretty good talk about rumors and not believing everything you hear. But in the end 4 out of 4 of my nieces and nephews who are all in school would rather see Obama OR McCain elected president. Yeah, because they have so much in common (besides the alleged genitalia?).
Although--and I'm not completely proud of this--I can also report that 4 out of 4 of my nieces and nephews are better at U.S. Geography than Senator Obama. And yes, I couldn't resist showing them the clip; they giggled and maybe they'll take it back to the dishing that takes place during recess.
Sigh...
All the more reason to keep fighting.
