Monster Children

Every parent, no matter who they are, wants just one thing.  They want the most expedient, obstacle-free, most easily defined path for their children to feel happiness and fulfillment.  That's it.  No politics, no agenda, nothing "woke"; just help me find a way for my child to be happy.  That's true if the child is dyslexic and prone to being overweight like I was, or autistic, athletic, or even transgender.  They just want their child to be happy.  

I've spent nearly sixty years studying monsters.  You could say I'm an expert, so maybe what I have to say is worth listening to.  Someone is writing bills to make some Mississippi children, who didn't do anything wrong, feel like monsters.  They're doing it for easy political gain, not to address any real issue the state or the state's other children are facing.

It started when cable television programmers tried to make channels dedicated to art and history, culture and science flopped.  People said they wanted to watch these things, but when presented with that choice on their home televisions, they chose more salacious programming, like wrestling and gossip shows. 

Because they'd already spent a great deal of money creating and placing these channels, their executives decided to borrow a page from PT. Barnham and started filling their channels about art and history, and science with freak shows.  One Thousand Pound Sisters.  Big World, Little People.  Honey Boo Boo, Doctor Pimple Popper, and a show about a small transgender child called Jazz.

Like the people in the other shows, The parents of Jazz, and Jazz herself, believed they were raising awareness of the issue, normalizing it, and educating people about it to help other transgender kids on their journey, but the suits back in New York knew exactly what they were doing.  They were charging people a penny a head to see the freak show, and although Jazz wasn't as successful as Honey BooBoo, the pain and trauma this child was going through made them a great deal of money.  It made some money for Jazz and her parents, but nothing compared to what the producers were taking in.

I Am Jazz, on the Learning Channel, did help raise awareness in some people, but it raised alarm in others.  The increase in public awareness of Jazz and her journey made some people afraid that these transgender children would invade their world, and very soon, you started to see legislation about where transgender children can pee, what sports they can participate in, and most recently, who can pay for their medical care and when.  

The best and most recent scientific study suggests that approximately .8 to 1.3 percent of all American children are or may self-describe as transgender.  To put this in perspective, in the most recent study, 19.7 percent of American children are obese, yet despite their much larger numbers, there is almost no legislation restricting the lives of obese children and very little legislation providing for the education and treatment of obese children, and zero legislation restricting the medical treatment of obese children, although there are some very sketchy and questionable treatments available for the condition. 

When I was coming up, there was precisely one openly transgender person at my school.  He was female to male, and to my perception, they seemed very isolated.  Hardly anyone ever talked to them.  In retrospect, I wish I had, but introducing myself to anyone without a specific business plan or purpose was pretty much just not going to happen in those days.  It's pretty rare now.  I had a teammate who liked to bully them, but in ways where he couldn't get in trouble for bullying, "Are you a dude?  You look like a dude.  Why do you want to be a dude?  Are you gonna play football, dude?"  

Watching all this was pretty uncomfortable for me.  I loved my school.  I've recently made moves to reconcile myself with it.  There was one area where St. Andrews was flawed in those days, though.  When there was a student with particular challenges, like autism or deafness, or transgenderism, nobody ever took us aside and said, "this is what's going on with your classmate, and this is the best way to respond."  Sometimes my parents would address these issues with me, and there were times when Mitch Myers would unofficially take us aside and talk about what a classmate was going through, but more often than not, most of these things we kids worked out on our own and poorly.

The legislation you see coming out of certain conservative states, states like Mississippi, has the effect of making transgender kids seem like a threat to people who may not have any exposure to them.  There are conservative politicians actively working to make parents afraid of transgender children and promising legislation to help protect their children from these monstrous, woke, transgender children.  No child is a monster, but I know some politicians that are

Making people worried or afraid of where transgender children pee or what sports they play, or what medical procedures they have is just plain evil.  Whatever else they are, they are children.  The best people to design the life path for transgender children are their parents, their doctors, their teachers, and themselves, not some fearmongering politician looking to attract votes with a meme about transgender kids.  

The parents of transgender children want what every parent wants.  They want a chance for their child to feel happy, to have friends, to feel fulfilled and accomplished in life.  They're not forcing their children on your children out of some twisted political agenda.  They're just searching for a world where their child can exist and have a chance at happiness, just like yours.  They're not monsters.  They deserve better than what they're getting in Mississippi.

 

Elephant Dinner

When I do stuff at Millsaps, people sometimes act weird when I tell them who I am, so a lot of times, I just don't tell them.  It's different with theater people.  They don't know me from my dad or my uncle or the building; they know me from Brent and Lance.  That makes all the difference in the world.  I earned that.  They know I've got paint under my fingernails, just like them.  They know I've spent midnights at Waffflehouse, running lines with a friend, or eating at two a.m. because we've been backstage since four p.m. just like them.  That's just the point.  I'm just like them; come back to support them, to help them feel like the effort they're making is appreciated and worthwhile.

 When I go to ball games, they have no idea who I am.  They don't know I've been going to basketball games at what they're now calling the Hangar Dome since before their parents were children.  They know who Anne McMaster is or Pat Taylor.  "Hey, that's that teacher; what's his name? That's pretty cool they come to the games.  I like that."  They don't know that Tommy Meriweather and I used to carry water and towels for the Lady Majors since before their parents met, but that's the point.  I'm just some random old guy, taking the time to come to their game, taking the time to show that I appreciate what they're doing, that I appreciate that they chose Millsaps.  To them, I'm just some random old guy.  But I'm one guy, and one guy matters.  One guy sees them.  One guy appreciates them.  Maybe sometimes they'll recognize that I've been there before.  "Is that somebody's dad?"

My dad accomplished some pretty remarkable stuff in life.  I was physically there when a lot of it happened, and even I don't know how he did most of it.  Daddy had a pretty simple philosophy in life.  It wasn't Mississippi "awe shucks" false modesty, either.  It's what he deeply believed.  

"Daddy, I've got this big, intimidating task ahead of me.  I don't know how I'm gonna accomplish it."

"Buddy, how do you eat an elephant?"

"One bite at a time?"

"One bite at a time."

It's not an understatement to say I have a second chance at life.  A year ago, I could barely move.  Now I move better than some of you and getting stronger every day.  One of the first things I thought about when I realized I had a second chance at life and what I was going to do with it was, "I've got to do something about Millsaps." 

We function best with around eleven hundred students.  We're not there right now.  There are reasons why we're not there right now, but reasons don't really matter; we still have to get there from here.  We have to eat this elephant.  

I don't have any of Daddy's magic.  I wish I did.  But, I do have determination and devotion, implacability, steadfastness, commitment, and intent.  I can be that old guy at every concert, every ball game, every lecture, and every time the doors open, I can be there.  I don't have Daddy's skills, but I have some skills, and I'm loading that chamber and bringing them to bear.  

I'm a big fan of Rob Pearigen.  If he gets sick, Phoebe is pretty strong herself.  Since this summer, I've been taking the time to get to know the current faculty and administration, and staff.  Some of them I knew from my own time as a student, but the others I'm learning fast what their skills and abilities are.  They're our army.  They're also people who have precisely the same goals that I have in this matter, and that's important.  I'm learning I have strong and capable allies, much more capable than I.  That matters.

"So, who's that old guy that goes to our games?"

"Just some old guy.  He might be crazy."

"Crazy?  How?"

"He says he's here to eat elephants."

"That's crazy; nobody eats elephants."

"Apparently, he does."

Learning To Fly

 As he cut the chains away from the bird's wings, the young man said, "I've freed you.  You're free now.  Aren't you grateful I've freed you?  Fly away now.  Show everyone how well you can fly."

The bird blinked and moved and raised his head to the new sun.  His wings, puny and shrunken and atrophied, never used, feathers worn away from where the chains bound him.  He stretched his neck and stretched his legs toward the new sun, but these wings didn't work or look or move like the man who freed him, and when he dared leap into the air, these wings couldn't bear him.

"I told you so."  Said the old man.  "They ain't like us.  They ain't made for flyin'.  Can't you see how he's struggling to try?  You wasted your time cutting the chains away.  They were better off the way they were."

The young man said, "Come on, little bird.  Show them you can fly.  I told everyone you could fly.  Don't make me look foolish.  Please, little bird, won't you fly?"

"I couldn't fly either, at first."  Said the child.  "I had no feathers, and you couldn't even tell my wings were more than just useless stubs on my side, but with love and patience, and time, I learned to fly.  This little bird isn't so different from me.  He'll be my friend, and we'll fly together."

"You're wasting your time!"  Said the old man.  "They're no good.  They never were any good, and they'll never fly!'

"Everyone is good," The child said.  "It's my time to waste.  You made your choices in life.  This is mine.  You may be right.  You may be wrong.  But, I'm going to find out for myself what is right and what is wrong because I'm not taking the word of a man who puts birds in chains."

Immutable

Medgar Wiley Evers was assassinated by a white man from the Mississippi delta on June twelfth, nineteen sixty-three.  Four days later and less than five miles away, I was born.   Four years and ten months later, Martin Luther King Junior would receive the same in Memphis, a three hours drive north of me.  That's the world I was born into.

Of my father's many frustrations with me (in his mind, the worst) was that I could calmly absorb any amount of energy or abuse, or effort to change my mind or change my course of action without any reaction or change on my part.  I was immutable.  I never put on a big drama or shouted, "It's MY LIFE, Daddy!" I simply would quietly not change my course, no matter how hard he pushed me in another direction.  I got this, of course, from him.

I was born into a world afire.  Afire because my home had a large population of people whose fathers and grandfathers had been field slaves and because the population of people who looked like me was determined to keep these seeds of slaves separated from the political and social power their numbers would otherwise grant them.  Closer to home, there was a fire in my personal world because my uncle left the world as I was coming in, and much of what he was then fell on my father.  

Not yet forty, Daddy was appointed to the Board of Directors of Millsaps college and then chairman of the board before I could walk properly.  Daddy's rise came not from charisma or ambition or wealth but because he put his body and his life into the jaws and gears of our society and pulled with all his might.  Even when he had no idea what he was doing, he would pull with all his might, and somehow things would move.  There was a cost to what he was doing, but he bore it so I, and my brothers, and my baby sister would have a home, a Mississippi that was better than what we were born into.  Eventually, it would take his life, but on this, he was Immutable.  

As the Methodist church became United in Mississippi, it was decidedly not united on one thing.  Some of us believed Christ obligated us to accept these progeny of our father's slaves as brothers, and love them and foster them as a matter of our christ-calling, on this they became Immutable.  Others thought this an abomination.  A destruction of the armature of the society we lived in, and a threat to our very existence, on this they were immutable.  

Millsaps College was, and is now a Methodist organization.  Many of our students would become methodist ministers.  Many of our professors, even those not teaching religion, were also methodist ministers, including men who daddy spent his childhood with.

As the American world and the American South began to consider a change in how they treated their children of African descent, forces in Mississippi began to push back with all their might against this change, even to the point of murder, of several murders, even murders of people I would now describe as children, even though they were remarkably brave and involved in a very adult adventure.  

At Millsaps, there was a feeling growing among some of our faculty to push in the other direction, that they were called by Christ to push back in the other direction.  In this, they found kinship with another Christian College, an organization of the Disciples of Christ created to serve and elevate Mississippi's black children, Tougaloo College.  Their symbol of the Star and our symbol of the Maple Leaf became entwined in an effort to make a basal change in Mississippi, a change many would do anything to prevent.  

Daddy's opinion of the Civil Rights Movement was built around his exposure to Ivan Allen.  Allen was the Mayor of Atlanta, even more importantly, he was a stationer, a purveyor of office and school supplies, like my father, and that's how they met.  Since the end of the war, Allen had a simple proposal:  Atlanta had too many negros for the city to prosper so long as we held our foot on their necks.  For him, this wasn't a matter of radical or even Christian thought, it was simply a matter of business.  There's no way for Atlanta to prosper if seventy percent of the city did their best to keep thirty percent as poor and as powerless as they possibly could.  That'd be like trying to run your car with two of the six cylinders welded to the engine block.  This was the course my Uncle Boyd, and my Father took.  They weren't radicals.  They weren't even particularly interested in Mississippi-African culture beyond their cooking, but they were interested in elevating the opportunities and activities of Mississippi, and there was no way to do that if we kept our foot on the necks of a third of our citizens.

There were people at Millsaps who were much more passionate and active on these issues, and as the sixties opened and Kennedy and Johnson began to open new opportunities, some of Millsaps faculty and several of our students began to move with energy in that direction, and they did it where they could be seen, and they did it knowing there were those who would see and know and say "That Millsaps Professor was in amongst 'em!  He's agin us!"

I was a child when all this began.  A small child at first, but I grew.  A small child but an extraordinarily observant child, and I grew, and I watched.   Daddy was not one for broad or loud statements of political purpose, but he was determined.  At his office on South Street in downtown Jackson, the first person you saw when you entered the building was a black woman Daddy hired as receptionist.  There were plenty of white women who could be our receptionist; by the time I was old enough to work, they all were white, but Daddy was making a point.  A point he would never articulate but a point nobody could miss.  A black woman answered our phone.  When angry men would call my father at work with a mind to force him to force these Millsaps professors to change their ways, a black woman would answer the phone.  "I'm sorry, but Mr. Campbell isn't in right now.  Can I take a message?"  She was immutable.

At home, both when we lived on Northside Drive, and when we lived on Honeysuckle lane, our house phone was in the kitchen.  This was fairly common in most homes.  It was separated by a door from the breakfast room where were ate most of our meals, one of the few places where I'd get to see my father in the early days of his career.  The world would pull him to other places, but he made every effort to eat with us, when he was in town, but until I got old enough to work with him, that was often the only time I had with him.

Most people, in my part of the world and in my generation, had dinner between six and seven o'clock.  Most people in my generation and in my part of the world never used the telephone in those hours.  It was rude.  Men who were very angry with Millsaps, and believing they could force my father to change things if they spoke to him strongly enough, but couldn't reach him at the office, didn't care about being rude.  They would call during dinner hours and continue to call until someone answered.  

In most homes, children were encouraged to answer the telephone because it taught them to be courteous and well-spoken.  Because of my stammer, it would be several years before I became well-spoken, but that's not why I wasn't encouraged to answer the phone.  Sometimes the people on the other end had no concern that I was a child.  They had an angry message to deliver, and if I was the one they had to deliver it to, so be it.  I would tell you what they said, but my Aunt reads these, and it makes her sore when I use those words.

When the phone rang during mealtime, a look passed between my mother and father.  Mother's chair was closest to the kitchen door.  I sat to her left, my sister to her right.  Mother would answer the phone.  "Hello?"  If it was family or a friend, her face would light up, and she'd have her conversation, usually with women who were also feeding their family but had news that couldn't wait, usually her sister or her niece.  If it was a salesman, she'd just say, "we're not interested." and go back to dinner.   Sometimes, though.  Sometimes she'd hold the phone out and say "Jim," and everybody's face would change.

When daddy took a call during dinner, it wasn't a good thing.  If they were saying to him what they sometimes said when I answered the phone, it wasn't a good thing at all.  He never betrayed what was said.  If it was angry or cruel, or just stupid, he would calmly say, "thank you for your call" and hang up.  Sometimes though, sometimes the call wasn't somebody he could just dismiss.  Sometimes the call was from somebody who was important to our business or somebody who was important to our state, and Daddy had to listen closely to what they had to say, even if he had no intention of doing what they were trying to make him do.  He was immutable despite incredible pressure to change him, but he was polite.

Tonight I put on a tie and shaved my head so I could attend a celebration in honor of Martin Luther King Junior at Millsaps college.  An event put on, appropriately in tandem with Tougaloo college.  Soon, it will be sixty years from the day Medar Evers was shot, then sixty years from the day I was born.  Millsaps celebrates by making the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Institute part of the Millsaps Family and giving them space in the John Stone house a few steps away.  Young people from Millsaps and Tougaloo stood and spoke and sang on the very spot where I performed or administered many plays and performances in a new structure for a new century. 

Even though it's been sixty years, I'd like to be able to say the issues Medgar Evers gave his life for were no longer a concern in Mississippi, but they are.  I'd like to say that the issues that made people angry at my father and angry at Millsaps were no longer a concern, but they are.  The only faculty members left from those early days in the sixties are T.W. Lewis and Charles Sallis.  They weren't there last night, but they were on my mind.  

I cannot tell you what the future will bring.  Millsaps and Jackson, and Mississippi are all struggling right now.  We're fighting for our lives, not because it's our lives so much as it's the lives of those who will come after us.  There's a secret that I know, that I was taught as a child.  I am old.  Millsaps is old.  They are.  We are.  I am, and will continue to be immutable.  We remain because if we don't, others will suffer.