Spring is Here, Time to Get to Know Each Other

Washington Square, New York - westsidespirit.ocm

School choice — the right of parents to get state subsidy of the private education of their kids — was not around back in my time, my dears. Rich people could send their heirs to Foxcroft to be taught table manners and a privileged accent and the rest of us got on the bus and went to P.S. 101 and learned to scrap for what we wanted. We got mac and cheese for lunch and the rich kids got pasta à la fromage, so we learned to accept our lot while many rich kids wound up in expensive psychiatric retreats weeping about their narcissist parents who left them in the care of cruel nannies. I feel lucky to have avoided that.

And now conservatives fear their children coming under the influence of liberal teachers and being taught bad things about colonialism — and progressive parents want their kids to avoid football culture and the teaching of aggression and want to send Prairie and Sierra to Chamomile Academy where parents sit in the bleachers watching soccer games and shouting “Be gentle!” and “Respect each other’s differences!”

Myself, I have a bias in favor of public education because that was my experience. I came from very exclusive fundamentalist evangelicals who looked down on Methodists and Lutherans as Scripturally off-base, so when I left home and walked into public school, I found myself among — O my gosh! — Catholic kids, boys who took the Lord’s name in vain and told dirty jokes, girls who hung out with those boys. A nice Christian boy felt rather lonely at times.

But when it came to my own kids and grandkids, I remember the basketball coach who also taught geography and who’d never been anywhere and the planet held no interest for him. He assigned us to read the outdated geography textbooks as he perused the newspaper sports section. What a pitiful schlump he was. I’d pay money so my progeny could avoid him.

It’s a beautiful world, this Creation, and our kids have a God-given right to be awakened to it and a light switched on in their brains.

That is the great gift of May in the North, when we slip out of our cloistered lives and sit outdoors and look at each other. In winter, we read the news and complain about the cruelties of the world, but in good weather we can perch like poultry in a farmyard and observe our democratic civilization.

This is a beautiful feature of Manhattan, the proliferation of squares and plazas for people to perch or promenade in and escape from regimentation and the tyranny of social media. I pity the tourists who flood into Times Square, aka Garish Ten-Story Video Billboard National Park, a tourist concentration camp where people from mid-America are pestered by panhandlers in superhero costumes and acquire a lifelong loathing of the city, whereas if they walked south to Madison Square on 23rd Street and sat and looked up at the handsome 1902 Flatiron Building, they’d learn something about the city. You sit on a bench and people pass and if they pause, you can talk to them. It’s the theater of democracy, and it’s very civil. Nobody has posted a sign here, Your considerate behavior is appreciated, politeness is enforced by the power of the New York Stare and maybe a muttered “Get over yourself.” Back in the Midwest we lack that sarcastic stare; you step on our foot, we say, “Excuse me.” And there’s not dependable public transportation, just 16-lane freeways. So our plazas are deserted.

Social media can be ugly; mania thrives in the dark, rats and hairy tarantulas live inside your laptop. Yes, there’re billions of bytes of info, but we need the up-close for our own humanity. Face-to-face decency is at the heart of democracy. We need to talk respectfully to each other. I sit looking up at that skinny triangular tower and a man and woman sit down a few feet away; he’s wearing a sweatshirt with a big TEXAS on it and I say, “How’s the city treating you?” They’re teachers at a Baptist school. I grew up evangelical. It’s their first time in New York. Their daughter lives here, wants to take up acting. There’s plenty to talk about. They both attended public schools but now they worry about bad influences. I understand. It was good to meet them. This is why people wear clothing with writing on it: it’s an invitation to conversation.

Garrison Keillor © 04.22.24