You have to be carefully taught…

Yes, I am an old musical junkie. Even though I was solidly surrounded by country music all throughout my childhood, somewhere, somehow I fell in love with musical theater. I ate those old movies and records like candy. I even grew up to sing professionally and participated in more musicals than I can count….all before I turned thirty. I love remembering those times..even though I was not the best actress in the world…I could sing the shit out of anything they handed me. Please forgive the ego…but really I could 🙂 just sayin. The warmth of a pin spot and the crisp sound of rippling applause felt mighty like love to me in those days….it was how I fed my soul. We all grow up…and I grew out of theater, but I still have those swinging memories with gratitude shinier than any sequin on any costume.

I love so many shows and recite lines and songs from all of them…including South Pacific.

South Pacific was never one of my favorite shows.

If you have ever seen South Pacific, it’s a show that is really about discrimination and how love should overcome those differences. The message is good…the music is good, but really there is only one part for a chubby girl….and she wore mu mu’s….no glamour there. I wasn’t really interested. 🙂

Anyway, there is a song in South Pacific that is sung to the heroine’s love after she realizes that the man she has fallen in love with has bi-racial children. In the scene, Nurse Nelly has moved past the age difference that she has with the man, but cannot seem to get past his two children and the fact that he had a relationship with an island woman. Emille, who is the man who she is in love with can’t understand how or why such a lovely and sweet woman has such a hateful spot in her heart.

This song is sung to Emille by a lieutenant who has fallen in love with an island girl and is having the same issues…

This song is running through my head today.

You know what? I get what he is saying. I understand that, there was a ton of that as I was growing up. I was born in the sixties in a small town in a predominantly white farming community. I get it. I was taught it. I grew out of it. I was smarter than that. I loved bigger than that. I had bigger issues and harder times in front of me…I learned that love was the key to most anything.

I married a nice young man at the age of 22, just like I was supposed to. We waited two years to have a child, just like I was supposed to. She came out handicapped, just like she wasn’t supposed to. That’s when the mind expansion began. By the time I came out at thirty, just like I wasn’t supposed to… I was used to standing up to people who looked at me in disapproving ways. I was used to calling out people who stared too long at my child, or other mother’s who drug their children away from mine like cerebral palsy was contagious. I didn’t hesitate to say something to them…of course in the nicest and love filled snarkiness I could muster 🙂 I wasn’t rude, but I did aim to slap a little. Afterall, they had just slapped my child…and what momma bear doesn’t slap about that?

When I came out, I worked in a hair salon. Everyone was gay. Total acceptance and love for my new relationship status was all around. Then I moved to KY. I began working at a private non-profit….and the ugliness hit me like shit to the fan. It was bad….It was really bad. I stood up to it, I moved around it and I was there LONG after the haters had left. Suzy wins, bitches…suzy wins. But I understand their hate. I was taught it too.

Here is what I don’t understand.

I don’t understand how people who have been discriminated against…people who have been bullied or made to feel less than they truly are…can discriminate against their own people. I don’t get it.

I have been bullied and discriminated against, and let me tell you right now…it is some BIG SUCK. Why on earth after experiencing something like that would you throw it on someone else? I am sure that it goes on in every group. I just don’t get it.

Yesterday, I spoke with a lovely young man who is married to another lovely young man. Their love for one another touched my heart and I could feel it clear to my toes. These two people are precious and I am grateful that I have had the opportunity to see how they love. It makes me hopeful for the world. They got married in California, and then California overturned the gay marriage law…and then they were no longer married. It shattered their world.  ( I know it was reinstated…and hooray for that…but the damage and heartbreak that it caused was done)

I walked with my friend for a few minutes, and when we passed a group of over groomed gay folk that sat on the same park bench for most of the day, he smiled and said hello.  They looked the other way. They were far to chic to speak to us. My friend didn’t notice, but I had already experienced thee same thing with that group. When I saw them sitting there as I was walking Jasper, I smiled my best loving squenchy eyed smile and said hello…..they turned their heads and began talking to one another, like they hadn’t heard me. The next time I passed, I just smiled…and again they looked away. I didn’t need to be friends. I wasn’t trying to strike up a conversation…I was just being my Susan Rushing self and saying hello…..

…but when they did it to my friend…..I became that momma bear again….

As he said hello…and got shunned…..I smiled my squenchiest smile leaned over closely and acted like they might be too old to hear…and said in my most countriest accent  ” HE SAID HELLO! Iii   HOOPE    Y’AALL    AARRE    ENJOYIIHN’   THEE    EVEEHNT!”

They all looked at me with their eyes all big in their designer frames. I smiled hard at them, and we walked away shaking our behinds.

Love everyone. I mean it. Love is love and it comes in all forms. Love doesn’t threaten you. Hate does. Hate…that is a choice. Don’t hate it makes you ugly.

🙂  Don’t be ugly.

Have a good week everyone….look in the mirror today and look right in your own eyes and say I Love You.

The world needs more plain unadulterated love. Start with you and work outwards.

It’s working for me….and so is the behind shaking thing. I find it breaks up negative energy in the grooviest way.

Smooch Out!