Thoughts from the ammo line

Ammo Grrrll has learned that YOU ONLY SEE WHAT YOU’RE LOOKING FOR. She writes:

A couple of weeks ago, I was planning a small, informal dinner party which would include an awesome lemon pie. I bought whipping cream in lieu of making meringue. One of my Guiding Life Principles is that there are few foods which are not improved by the addition of either whipped or sour cream. If there is leftover whipped cream, I like to top off my coffee with it as a special treat. So I bought two containers.

Fast forward to the day of the party. I open the fridge and look for the containers of cream. Where are the squatty little pink and white cardboard cartons? Nowhere in sight. What the heck, or words to that effect? Oh, maybe I put them in the “beverage fridge” in the laundry room? Nope. Try the kitchen fridge again, moving some things around, looking behind the 20 yogurts and depressing Rubbermaid containers of leftovers not getting any younger. Nope. Back to the laundry room…at least I’m getting some extra steps on my pedometer.

This went on four more times, until I employed the old Sherlock Holmes logic: “Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.”

I knew the following to be true: I had bought two containers of Heavy Whipping Cream. I refrigerated them. Therefore, they MUST be there. And to my shock and delight: there they were! In plain sight! But here’s the kicker – they were NOT the small squatty pink and white cardboard cartons; they were taller green and white plastic bottles. Which I eventually recalled I had chosen because they were bigger with a later “Best by” date.

My eye had skipped right over them. I could not “see” them because they were not what I was looking for. Whoa! And stumbled upon an important truth about us: we often only see what we are looking for, not what is right in front of us. (Move over, Marianne Williamson…here comes Ammo Grrrll, the Accidental Philosopher).

I thought about all the lonely women I had known who had really kind, smart, average-looking guys who clearly liked them, but they had their eyes on either rich guys or “hotties” who wouldn’t give them the time of day. They chose loneliness over companionship with someone who didn’t meet their superficial standards. Men, too, are kind of famous for that; it is a theme of at least 90 percent of romantic movies, including such classics as When Harry Met Sally. (Though one would have to wonder about the romantic discernment of a fella who has Meg Flippin’ Ryan right there and can’t see it…oh well, to each his or her own.)

Let me give you another example, even more important. Long ago, I had read a nice little parable about a river ferry operator who took Northerners and Southerners back and forth near the Mason Dixon Line. One lady going South said, “I hear Southerners are very polite, gracious hosts and fun-loving souls.” The operator said, “Yes. That’s what you’ll find there.” When a second lady making the same trip said, “I am told that Southerners are rude, cold, clannish and uncouth,” the operator said, “Yes that is what you will find there.”

How true it is that we only find what we are looking for. I had been hired to speak at a women’s conference in Macon, Georgia. My initial problem was learning – after I had cut a little radio spot advertising my appearance – that the town was MAY-con, NOT Ma-CON. Duh. Back to the studio. My second lesson was that no matter how much trouble I had taken with my hair and makeup and outfit, it wasn’t even close to enough. Lordy, Southern women are beautiful and pulled-together! Must be something in Sweet Tea.

But the most important, most shocking lesson – and this was way back in the mid-’80s – was how much more friendly and “normal” were daily relations between black and white Americans in the South than in the North. It turned out that, however wretched and sad the long history there, people seemed to approach one another as individuals much more readily. And long ago I wrote a column about going into downtown Macon, seeing two young white “rednecks” approach an elderly black man, and with my own two disbelieving eyes, seeing the young men remove their caps to chat respectfully with the gentleman for several minutes. Boy, THAT never happened in any of the Hollywood movies I had seen about the South!

And here we are in 2020, three years after a landmark election and the ever metastasizing Professional Grievance and Victim Groups refuse to admit or “see” that they are absolutely awash in liberty and opportunity. All they can see everywhere they look is racism, bigotry, and Hitler, without a shred of evidence for any of it. It is surreal. They HAVE to find oppression or lose their Special Victim Privileges. If it ISN’T hatred and bigotry that is holding them down, then they would be forced to look in the mirror and examine their life decisions. Personal responsibility is a thread that cannot be pulled on! (A sign on my desk about my fitness efforts: “Don’t be upset by the results you didn’t get with the work you didn’t do.”)

Linda Ronstadt, whose concerts I attended, whose albums I bought, has declared that not only is Trump Hitler — oh for Pete’s sake, Linda, you are infringing on Joy Behar’s copyrights here — but that it’s “the Mexicans who are now the new Jews.”

I do not expect actors and singers to be rocket scientists, especially one who has had the cartilage in her nose operated on multiple times because of perpetual cocaine use. But, that is offensive on so many levels that I can barely rebut it without my head exploding all over my keyboard. If Linda is too addled or dishonest to understand that there is a profound difference between being dragged from your soon-to-be confiscated home, put in cattle cars, and either enslaved or murdered, and sending invading freeloaders BACK to their own homes, well, then there is no hope for her, morally or intellectually.

Enough already with the stupid Hitler BS. Yeah, it’s amazing how many “new Jews” we have, and yet it’s still the plain old original Jews who seem never to fall off the bottom of the okay-to-hate list.

Never in human history have so many rich, pampered, cosseted people of all colors steadfastly refused to see how good they have it, or been so unwilling to defend the very system that gave them every single privilege and comfort they enjoy. They are still looking for the Magic Victim Lotto Win, even if they have to pay their own attackers, deface their own property, or put vulgar epithets on their own birthday cakes.

I think I will have another piece of lemon pie with whipped cream. It is only sexism that keeps me from my ideal weight. That, and that time 15 years ago in a private conversation where Trump said “pussy.” With trauma like that to endure, who wouldn’t be overweight?

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