Musings of a Liberal Texan

Finders Keepers - a child's story My parents are divorced. They got divorced when I was only two and my brother was three. I don’t really remember them being together. Now we live with mom and visit dad. On one of my dad’s weekend visit, I went with my dad and my brother to the video store to get a movie. While my dad looked around, my brother and I went to the kids’ area and played. I found a stuffed dog on one of the chairs. There were no other stuffed animals there. Just chairs, a Lego table and Legos. I picked it up. It was cute. It was soft. I carried it around for a while. My dad called us over because it was time to go. He saw the stuffed dog. “Where did you get that?” He asked. I told him that I had found it in the kid area on a chair. I asked him if I could keep it. He looked for a price tag and saw that it was a little worn around the ears. He paid for the movie and we walked to the door. I asked again if I could keep it. I had started to really like the dog. It’s eyes al...

Shoes - a child's story I like to walk around in my family’s shoes. In my mom’s high heels because then I know what I’ll look like when I’m tall. And my dad’s shoes so I know what I’ll look like when I’m the dad. Even sometimes my brother’s shoes so I can pretend to be him. Nothing ever happened. I mean, nothing ever changed. Until one day. Our neighbor is old Mrs. Smith. She’s mean. Her left leg drags like a monster. She never smiles. She is nice to cats but doesn’t like kids. Especially me. That one day I was talking about, I went out back and saw some slippers. I put them on. I became like an angel on Mrs. Smith’s back. I saw her kinda young. She was smiling and hugging a man in a uniform. She was getting married. She was laughing and dancing. I saw her playing “ring around the rosey” with two little girls. I see her waving with her girls to her husband in the uniform. She is crying when she reads a letter. She is so sad. He was killed in the war. She is in a cemetery. There are...

I suppose I have started writing out of sheer frustration. I am surrounded by people, nice, ordinary, kind family people who for the most part are absolutely blind to what goes on about them. I guarantee that if these people knew what was being done in the name of the "conservative" label, they would absolutely flip out. Because they aren't stupid. They're busy. And they trust that the people who say that they hold the same beliefs are speaking the truth. They hear a lot of background noise (i.e. corruption, deception, money laundering, law breaking, manipulating, etc.) and from time to time they look up as if to question what is going on. But then they hear the leaders and the talk show guys and they nod knowingly "ah ha! liberal media. sour grapes. persecution.." hmmm. And back to their lives they go. They support the war because they support the troops and they honestly believe that releasing the citizens from the mania that was Saddam was a good thing, ...