I remember once when Lolo, my stepfather, rolled up one of his pant legs to scratch his calf. I noticed a series of indented scars that ran from his ankle halfway up his shin.“What are those?”
“Leech marks,” he said. “From when I was in New Guinea. They crawl inside your army boots while you’re hiking through the swamps. At night, when you take off your socks, they’re stuck there, fat with blood. You sprinkle salt on them and they die, but you still have to dig them out with a hot knife.”
I ran my finger over one of the oval groves. It was smooth and hairless where the skin had been singed. I asked Lolo if it had hurt.
“Of course it hurt,” he said, taking a sip from the jug. “Sometimes you can’t worry about hurt. Sometimes you worry only about getting where you have to go.”
We fell silent, and I watched him out of the corner of my eye. I realized that I had never heard him talk about what he was feeling. I had never seen him really angry or sad. He seemed to inhabit a world of hard surfaces and well-defined thoughts. A queer notion suddenly sprang into my head.
“Have you ever seen a man killed?” I asked him.
He glanced down, surprised by the question.
I asked again, “Have you?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Was it bloody?”
“Yes.”
I thought for a moment. “Why was the man killed? The one you saw?”
“Because he was weak.”
“That’s all?”
Lolo shrugged and rolled his pant leg back down. “That’s usually enough. Men take advantage of weakness in other men. They’re just like countries in that way. The strong man takes the weak man’s land. He makes the weak man work in his fields. If the weak man’s woman is pretty, the strong man will take her.” He paused to take another sip of water, then asked, “Which would you rather be?”
I didn’t answer, and Lolo squinted up at the sky. “Better to be strong,” he said finally, rising to his feet. “If you can’t be strong, be clever and make peace with someone who’s strong. But always better to be strong yourself. Always.”
~Barack Obama
Please vote for your choice of Barack Obama's WORLDVIEW in the poll to the right. Thank you for participating!1. Stay out of the swamp
2. Clever trumps strength
3. Men need to be strong
4. Don't commit
NOTE: Voting results for this poll (now closed and removed) are the following: Stay out of the swamp - 2 votes (10%); Clever trumps strength - 3 votes (15%); Men need to be strong - 10 votes (52%); Don't commit - 4 votes (21%). See the post entitled "Renegade: Obama's Early Memory" to learn the correct answer.
7 comments:
I'm going out on a limb here, and voting for "stay out of the swamp." I know what his daddy told him about men needing to be strong, but if I were a kid who saw those leech scars, I would just not want to not get into that kind of situation in the first place!
Sorry about the muddled grammar of that last sentence. I meant, "I would not want to get into . . . "
The obvious I see is men need to be strong but I didn't vote for that but instead voted for clever trumps strength. Maybe even as a child Barack sees that being clever you can have them both...clever and strength. One thing we can all probably agree on is Barack is indeed very very clever. And with that he has become very strong as he races for the nomination. Interesting early memory though especially at this time.
I vote for "Don't Commit". Obama is sitting with his stepfather and asking him one question after another, but does not answer the one question asked of him. He seems detached, gathering information, but not "buying into" what his stepfather is saying.
Jim
That's an interesting observation from Jim, that Obama does not answer the one question he is asked. But then again, that is only one element of this whole memory. I'm going to have to think about this.
I have been pondering over the fact of what if Barack's worldview is "don't commit". That seems scary to me especially if he should win the nomination. Of course, I'm thinking on the negative side and maybe there is some positive that I'm not seeing. That is, if that should be the correct answer.
Jenny, I like what you said about connecting the worldview with how Barack is behaving. That's one reason I voted for "stay out of the swamp." I could see several "swamps" which he might be avoiding or getting out of rather quickly such as negative campaigning and even the destructive behavior of his youth. But whether this is THE WORLDVIEW, we'll see.
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