Anyone Need An Extra Loaf of Bread?

We live in a world of action followed by reaction. If you don’t believe me, just tune into your local social media pages and post something controversial. Then watch what happens. You’ll find out you had enemies you never knew you had. And on rare occasions, you might actually find new friends you never knew you had.

I say this, not because of the way people shamefully behaved themselves during the changing of the President. And that was on both sides. No, what I had in mind was what happened with the weather predictions the week before. A week following our first snow of the winter, the forecast was for our first major ice event of the season. It could be devastating to Oklahoma, they said. You need to load up your homes with supplies in anticipation of an extended period of time without power or the ability to drive anywhere, they told us. And we did it because we had experienced moments like that before and we knew what it felt like to be unprepared for something that affected our lives that negatively.

I went to the store early that Thursday afternoon to pick up something for my dad when I saw the first glimpses of just how seriously Oklahomans were taking the weather reports. Wal-Mart was a madhouse and what should have been a simple trip to the store ended up being a lengthy experience. Unfortunately, I had to return later that night for myself to pick up a handful of food items just in case the weather reports were right. The parking lot was full and the lines were long and deep. The shelves, on the other hand, were nearly bare. It was a good thing I already had a loaf of bread or I would have been driving around all night.

Friday morning was crazy. Having already been informed by the gym that my yoga class had been cancelled for that morning, I was expecting to spend the day inside hanging out with my son. Instead, all it took was a quick browse of Facebook to see that predictions fell somewhat short of the “Icepocalypse” we had all been promised. The concerns people had for their safety turned to anger at those who had caused them to feel that way – our local meteorologists.

 I’m not here to take shots at people who at the end of the day are always focused on helping save lives. Telling people to stay inside during potential weather anomalies is not a bad idea. Plus, many of those people are friends who I have worked with in the past and I’m not going to question their integrity or professionalism. Unfortunately, with so much of the business world pushing people to their limits to get more and more work done, it doesn’t go over well when businesses have to shut down their doors because weather forecasts are telling them to keep their employees home. As busy as Wal-Mart was on Thursday, most businesses were either planning on shutting down or at least starting late on Friday. Schools were closed. Even a meeting I had with a prospective client Friday afternoon was up in the air until we had a chance to see what the weather was like.

In hindsight, all this anger could have been easily avoided. Had the potential ice storm been explained more clearly as something that might happen based on various conditions, then I’m sure people would have been more reasonable with their outbursts on social media. If the weather men and women had just said a few degrees one way or another could make a significant difference in whether or not the rain froze into ice (the temperatures were in the low thirties and high twenties throughout most of the weekend), then we might have seen a different mood on social media. But instead, it seemed as if the predictions focused on the winter event being a promise rather than a forecast. Ratings seemed to rule out over common sense and logic. Images of “drive south” were in our heads throughout the week.

Again, as I said before, being safe isn’t such a bad thing. Lives were likely saved by people not going out on the roads during those few hours when the roads were actually slick. Western Oklahoma did have some severe winter storm conditions and those people were probably helped by the forecasts. But Chicken Little didn’t gain a lot of friends when he always said the sky was falling, and the wolf was probably thrilled that Peter didn’t have the common sense to know the difference between when to cry wolf and when to just shut up. Maybe we could use a little more of that in Oklahoma.

Drawing the Line on Ridicule

Her life began as what could be described as relatively normal. Except for that bubble in her heart. It wasn’t something that was just going to go away on its own. Surgical science in the mid-1970’s wasn’t what it is today, so an operation of that magnitude was a big deal at the time. It wasn’t successful. The entire left side of her body was instantly paralyzed, and the remaining three decades of her life were spent attempting to rehabilitate what once had the potential to be a normally functioning body.

Developing as an infant with hemi-paralysis stunting development is every much as difficult as it sounds. Mental and physical limitations. Grand mal seizures. An inability to socialize normally. Frustration. Every bit of it beyond her control, yet she continued to bask in the glories that life sometimes provided with a smile that will forever be etched in the minds of those who surrounded her.

But mostly, life was difficult for her. The grand mal seizures were more than just the physical damage they tolled internally on her heart and brain. The negative effects from the endless amounts of medicine taken to assist with the negatives of her condition. The falls that resulted from the seizures, causing scrapes and bruises that seemed to never quite go away. The pain. The constant pain.

Compared to my little sister, my life has been a blessing. Sure, I’ve spent my share of time in the hospital, all due to the choices I was allowed to make to test the limits of my body while playing sports. My sister, Shelly, experienced some of those same thrills as a Special Olympics athlete, but that was only after she overcame obstacles most people couldn’t envision. Her life was not her own to live and it was something most of us could never imagine having to endure, even for a moment.

Having grown up with my sister dealing with her condition gave me a unique perspective about those who were born with misfortunes beyond their control. I saw firsthand as people called her a “retard” or laughed at her for something she couldn’t change. She took as much abuse verbally and emotionally as her body did physically, which brings tears to my eyes as I write these words today.

I know I should have stood up for her more than I did when she was alive, which is why I can’t sit back and allow the world to continue to hurl insults at her and those like her just because they support the guy who clearly has no respect for people’s disabilities.

Over a week ago, actress Meryl Streep called on the press to do their due diligence in standing up for people who were the targets of abuse from those in power. Then-presidential candidate Donald Trump had made fun of the condition of reporter Serge Kovaleski, who suffers from a congenital joint condition that causes him to deal with forcibly awkward movements and daily pain. Trump recalled a conversation he had with the reporter and mocked the way he appeared as he talked about it. I was embarrassed at the time that he would stoop to that level, but I also didn’t consider him someone who would actually appeal to enough voters to win the primary and especially the general election.

I have been around a lot of people who don’t know how to act around disabled people. Some of them just feel awkward and try to be nice. Some of them just try to avoid eye contact and focus on something else. Some of them, unfortunately, are like Trump – they mock them and don’t care how it makes the person feel.

What stood out to me last week was when people stood up for Trump. I assumed they were just supporting “their guy” and I didn’t put too much thought into what they were actually complaining about. That was until I read the transcript of what Ms. Streep said. Her focus was on how Trump used his bully pulpit to mock a disabled person. And the people who were showing their support for Trump weren’t displaying ignorance as to what the content of the speech was about. They mostly tried to convince others that he had not, in fact, done what he did. Or they just stood up for Trump without offering an opinion as to what it was they were standing for.

How people are willing to be perceived is up to them, but I insist on drawing the line when it comes to people who are disabled. They are often born into situations they couldn’t control or they have been the victim of some unfortunate accident that changed their lives for the worse. And to add insult to injury, they are mocked by people whose privileged lives apparently allow them to say whatever they want to say to anyone they want anytime they want.

When Trump turned out to be the chauvinist we all assumed he was, nobody listened to me because I wasn’t a woman. When Trump turned out to be a racist with all his anti-immigrant rhetoric, nobody listened to me because I was a white male who should enjoy the benefits of such for at least the next four years. But today, I will not be silenced because my sister and others like her don’t have the voices to speak for them that women and minorities do. Support Trump for his desire to lower taxes or for his position on reducing regulations and limiting government. Support him because his presence in the White House will get you those precious Supreme Court judges that will still never overturn Roe v. Wade. Do not, however, support the way he treats people or you are adopting his behavior as acceptable. And mocking Serge Kovaleski or Shelly Packham or anyone else with a disability is NEVER behavior that should be considered acceptable.

The Uncertain Future of 2017

For many of you, the year that was 2016 may be one preferably left in the past. The headlines seemed to reflect a negativity that spread throughout the world, and certainly didn’t escape our somewhat hallowed ground here in the heart of America. That will all change in 2017, we keep telling ourselves.

There is reason for optimism in 2017. Whether or not Donald Trump was your candidate in the election, anytime there is a new president taking over as the nation’s leader, there is a hope that any negative influences out there may go away. Time can only tell when it comes to national policies and how they will affect our lives.

It is tough to predict how things will be different on an international level, regardless of who our president was going to be. Russia seems content with hacking into our lives and suffering little to zero consequence for their actions. China owns the United States through our massive debt, yet we have misguided people who seem to think we are in a position to “bully” them into accepting our demands. The Middle East is the same mess it has been my entire life, and there is no reason to believe that is going to magically change now.

On a more local level, there is plenty of reason to be concerned. There are tons of jobs and plenty of people in need of jobs. The people matching the right people to the right jobs seem to be underqualified to accurately get the job done and it shows. Oklahoma consistently lags behind the more productive states when it comes to economic productivity and that doesn’t seem to be changing anytime soon.

One example of how our state does things backwards comes from oil and gas production. With a surplus of resources, it would make sense if Oklahoma had chosen to exploit that to build revenues to fund services. Instead, the state pretended to believe nobody would drill for those vast resources unless they were given incentives to do so. It was a ridiculous concept, really. It’s like a kid convincing adults to pay them to eat candy and play games.

Now, we look at a deficit of hundreds of millions of dollars and we wonder how we could have found ourselves in this situation. Meanwhile, our healthcare system is in complete disarray, our teachers still are among the lowest paid and our politicians keep pointing the finger at everyone else. We can only cross our fingers in 2017 and just hope logic makes a rare stop at the State Capitol to build around a different way of thinking.

So, yes, 2017 may be a better year than 2016, but we just don’t know how or if that will actually happen that way. It’s like comparing to mud to animal waste – you never want to be waddling around in either one but at least the waste can be used as fertilizer to grow something. Let’s hope 2017 doesn’t turn out to be nothing more than a load of crap and instead builds into something we can be proud of as we look to the even more distant future.