My Twitter feed has been piled high with stories of aggression against women, minorities, and the LGBT community. I've been reading them and shaking my head, but it just hit close to home. I was telling my husband, who cannot bring himself to read the newspaper*, about the men on Villanova's campus who ran at a black woman and knocked her down while chanting "Trump! Trump! Trump!"**
*my husband who always, always reads the newspaper
**hey, you guys obtaining the expensive Catholic education, you seem to have forgotten. The gang shouting the political leader's name in an attempt to intimidate a brown person -- they're on the wrong side in our particular story.
"You saw what happened to the guys across the street, right?" he asked me. "No," I said, "I haven't looked at Facebook since Tuesday night."
The gay couple across the street posted in our neighborhood Facebook group to ask if anybody else had had strange visitors. Two nights in a row, someone rang their bell after dark -- wearing a mask, carrying a baseball bat. Does it surprise you that the only gay couple on the block received the only visit from the masked bat-wielding guy? No harm done (yet?), so I am assuming this is a cowardly attempt to intimidate.
But it is a cowardly attempt to intimidate on my block. They live across the street. How many times in my Sane Mom Revolution posts have I bragged about my lovely quiet tree-lined safe friendly block?
Safe and friendly if you're straight, I guess.
I went straight to the kitchen and made a batch of pumpkin bars* for them, and I wrote them a note that says "You are welcome on this block." I am still shaking. Stella is still curious about why I am shaking.
*a poor defense against a baseball bat, I know
What do I tell my daughter? I am not prepared for this.
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