Hmmmm.....

Two Thots I sent out to subscribers, but did not put on the blog. Then I received this email from a subscriber friend, so here they are.


To: Linda Angell ..
Sent: Friday, September 25, 2009 3:36:19 PM
Subject: Re: My Thots (at last)

A great thought that we remember, " There but for the grace of God go I. Now show how grateful you are and share!"



From: Linda Angell ..
To: angellthot@yahoo.com
Sent: Thursday, September 24, 2009 2:00:36 AM
Subject: My Thots

Old-School Honesty

No Thots tonight?

No Thots.

How can that be?

It’s new and I have just decided to admit I have been writing for over four hours, have actually written numerous Thots and not one is being sent out.



From: Linda Angell ..
To: angellthot@yahoo.com
Sent: Thursday, September 24, 2009 4:50:42 AM
Subject: My Thots (at last)

Born Unacceptable

I was driving my car to the grocery store today, thinking about how much money I had and what I should buy to get the most out of that money. I say that I am not embarrassed by the lack of money I am experiencing in this moment, but I did not want anyone to see me take my wallet out of my purse and count it. There is no sin in being poor, but there is certainly a contradiction somewhere in there.

I sat there in my car, in the parking lot, surreptitiously counting out the crumpled dollars I had stuffed into the small zippered side of my wallet when thoughts began pouring through my head.

Imagine being born to a nationality that is considered less, or in a skin considered too dark. Imagine being born poor and having to walk through areas where people spend more on a cup of coffee than you do on food for a day.

Imagine what it feels like to walk through this world knowing that you are being judged for these things simply because you are alive.

Now add those things that we appear to have control over, but really do not.

Imagine what it is like to have people think you are dangerous and detestable because of who you love, because they are the wrong color, or nationality, or sex. Imagine having your every move observed with fear and loathing simply because you have crossed some line other people say exist?

There are so many invisible ceilings and walls and prisons and they spare no one.

I remember a girl in my sixth grade class who had to wear cut down men’s trousers for P.E. and was not allowed to have one of the books from our class book club because she did not have the three cents to pay her dues that month. I don’t remember why it was three cents, but I remember how thin she was, how lank her hair, how fragile and frightened she looked all the time and she stood before me in my mind today as if it was yesterday. I remember her being teased because of the way she gobbled down her food and how she had to go to detention because she forgot her tennis shoes when it was her sister’s day to have them. I was the new kid in school and she was my friend for a while, but it was hard being her friend. I am ashamed to say it didn’t last. For one thing she wasn’t used to having friends and felt she had nothing to share, but for another, it kept the other kids away from me too. And I was so young too back then. I only knew her a few months, then I moved again and never saw her again.

Part of me wanted to sit there in my car in the parking lot of a grocery store forty odd years later and cry, but I was afraid it might be out of some sort of self pity that I now considered myself one of these people, when I am so far from it that it shames me I even thought about it. I am fortunate that all my obvious shortcomings, the ones I cannot hide in this world, are acceptable ones.

Imagine being born unacceptable.