White, Sixty, Southern and a Stroke or Two

Are They Wrong?

I have to start by giving you all some serious background. I come from a large family of "Hers, His, Maybe His". Our mother has passed so I feel like saying that is not wrong, but maybe sounds as if I should have my mouth washed out with soap (Lava, from the utility sink), but I assure you that none of us are (currently) in jail, there are no murders (physically) and we all have jobs, well I did till recently and that is where this idea came up. I have been a writer all my life. I am actually a published paid writer, a minister (can marry or bury ya!), a nurse for nearly 40 years (I specialize in the littlest patients, but I have done from cradle to the grave in bedside care), a wife for the last 25 years and some months (the second time around), a mother, a grandmother, a sister(I have more siblings than "Carter had liver pills.") , an Aunt, a Bonus mom and a self admitted O.G. Karen.

Why do I say that? Who wants to be a Karen? And how does Karen feel about all of us and how this name has become synonymous with being INSANE, OFF THE CHAIN, RACIST, ENTITLED, EGOCENTRIC and just downright an ASSHOLE. Yes, I am a minister, but I can watch YouTube, and I see what is being recorded (I almost said "filmed"...Easter egg), there is a lot of folks losing it out there these days and with the amount of recording going on...well, it's a smorgasbord of clips, chips, chains and whips ... wait that is another blog, let me read where I am actually at in my thoughts...

I wish I could share with you all what I had deleted in the last three hours. You can call B.S. on that you want, but I can assure you I have no reason to stretch the truth yet...as we just met and you are not sure where and what you have stumbled into, you may think you do...but I have wandered into the abyss and must stumble back to where I was going and taking you with me. I am admitting I have a problem. I am a "Karen".

Or so I am told. Sure, I shared a great definition, told you all about the stats, what I like to call " the whose it and what's it of what a 'Karen" is, but what I don't understand how I became one.

Then I looked in the mirror...

Standing there, looking back at me is the Sixty year old (last September), white (since birth, tried to change it, some precancerous issues to deal with...again, another blog), Female (but that has also been challenged and now it is what I was assigned at birth. I am assuming by a DOCTOR of MEDICINE who had seen a labia a time or two in his FIFTY plus years of delivering babies!) at the time of my birth. Wait, it get's better, if you could hear the voice that comes out of my mouth, the twang and drawl of it, that makes you think and sometimes CRAVE cornbread and sweet tea. You're hearing it right now, ain'tcha? (You should see the spell check on that!!! )

I was born in a time where changing any of that was not possible, permanently, or at all. Your DNA made you female or male, your skin tone was what you were born, unless something unseemly happened or the foundation you bought was in the store lighting and not your home! And face it, we have all lied about our age.

I will be Southern until I die. However, my home is wherever my husband is, cause I still like him. But I live in the North. I speak in the North and so since those factors add into what I am currently going through, I am a "Karen". Due to my age, I am claiming the OG for myself. I have earned it! Let me tell you a story, draw up a chair, sit a spell...OG is talking.

It's about how I speak. You see (snicker, or read) how I talk is just never, EVER gonna change. I have tried. I see these actors from all over the world, you would never know were from say Chicago, no I do mean Chicago, don't ask me to attempt that one, I sound part Bostonian and part Georgia with a sprinkle of Alabama (that's a country all it's own at this point to me).

I walked into a patient's room and after saying a few things, how you could tell daddy was getting to spend a lot of time with the baby. How the baby couldn't take it's eyes off of him, how sweet it was. Then the room shifted. The dad asked me "Do you make your husband happy?" I smiled, cause I felt the energy shift but was not sure the cause yet, and then with the one question, I knew. "Yes sir I should hope that I do." Something else was said, I can probably go back to the Facebook post the mother made later and figure it out, but I knew before that happened. However, I was told not to go back in after I explained what had happened. The doctor I worked for would come later to tell me that I reminded that dad of someone who had offended him while in hospital and ALL SOUTHERN FAT WHITE WOMAN are like that. You laugh now, but at the time I was still well over the first 200 on the scale and closing on the 300 to be honest. Apparently it is offensive (racists) to say to a young black man that the fact that his child locks eyes on him at the age of 8 weeks and follows him around the room is not something he likes to hear and before I could explain how that made his child's development advanced, he assumed I WAS RACIST. In fairness, when the doctor told me what the nurse at the hospital said (or he said she said, you know, "Hello Operator") but the point being I probably would have had an ass puckering moment too. HOWEVER, I am also an adult who knows that just because she sounds like me, doesn't mean she was me! I get it though, we all look alike! And if we sound like we are talking with our mouths full of snuff, well heck, ya might be right!

Add to that I have had a stroke. Twice. So I am not the average working until recently nurse, mother of three, grandmother to more than that, caretaker of a ailing brother and sometimes really don't remember where I am parked in the Walmarts ( smile to my mom who never called it Walmart. And she worked there for a time.) Someone in my family has the picture to proof that, she won a day off for making the most creative bonnet out of an Easter Basket. She asked to have an extra day of pay instead. She had a day off without pay...Love a good win in life.

My racism is because of the color of my hair (which I pay good money for), the color of my skin (remember tired, precancerous issues) and the twang of my speech, which is never EVER going to change, I have tried and it is exhausting all day not to say "Y'all" or "Sweetie" or, truthfully whatever name I can remember past my own. I have called my grand daughters, "Lil' Mamma" before they even started playing with dolls, not because I thought they were little mamas but because I can remember that, I live in an area that you hear it everywhere all day long, so no one thinks twice about it and the grand daughter that I do that most often to tells me she is "THE MAMA"...you know the one I mean.