SILENCE IS GOLDEN, THEN IT’S NOT

Now and then I’ve had to speak up. It started when I got married.

Up until then I was a wallflower, a gentle person of meek disposition, always looking for others to give credit to. You know, that kind of guy.

Then I got married in a downpour so loud I could barely hear the preacher standing in front of me under the wedding tent.

He asked me if I took Elaine, yada, yada, yada, and since the congregation was huddled under roof eves on the other side of the front yard instead of near the well cover I got married on, I wanted them to know my answer.

It’s a moment Elaine remembers in loving memory. I yelled, ” I DO,” so loud and unexpected she nearly dropped her bouquet.

And I still I DO. To me marriage meant something important, something to defend. I spoke up for marriage. It wasn’t a moment for silence.

Silence Ten Years Earlier, more or less

No one expects silence when they join the Army. In fact the noise starts before the bus from the airport even stops on base. Drill sergeants stormed aboard and woke everyone up the beginning of a new day for all.

Those guys were all part of a tradition of screaming and they were well practiced in the arts.

Individual silence then was based on not saying shit if I had a mouthful, a useful expression to navigate boot camp.

It was a good time to learn quietly.

Silence Today

I had a moment, maybe more than one, where silence wasn’t right. It was a personal choice, probably the same sort of choice we all make when we decide to speak up.

One happened on Christmas Eve. I was showing a party trick to a guy I didn’t know at a Christmas party. He didn’t like my party trick so karate kicked my knee.

We talked it out it out like adults, more or less.

Another time happened in a cancer radiation waiting room when a man verbally abused a woman until she left the room. The other man and I sat alone.

We discussed the issue of verbal abuse like adults, more or less.

The silence used to cover wrongs isn’t golden, it’s deafening.

The sound of that silence isn’t written on subways walls or tenement halls, it’s written by people who exercise their voices for other causes.

If it’s wrong, speak up. Is it wrong to dehumanize people to make a point? Yes, it is. For instance, the future toll for locking people up will be paid by those on both sides of the cage.

Like a new flu virus, or anti-bacterial hospital disease that gobbles up victims, a new strain of PTSD is brewing. It will be related to the problems people have from living in refugee camps around the world.

Last thing, can anyone say for certain that the US southern border conditions are on par with UN refugee camps?