Instead of Celebrating MLK, I Chose Cowardice

I was subbing in a local school on Thursday, the day before this particular school system was off for four days, Fri-Mon, due to the state’s Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  Day holiday on that Monday. 

A teacher who pulled kids out from classrooms to work with them in small groups was talking with three students as they all entered her work area.

“When did Martin Luther King die?” The student who asked this was maybe seven years old. 

“1949, I think,” the teacher said. 

I was packing my book bag. Immediately, my head shot up. “It was 1968,” I said. “Not that long ago. I was eight years old. That year. . . It was a dark time for our country.” 

The teacher barely blinked an eye. “Oh, maybe he was born in 1949, then,” she said to the students. She started passing out worksheets. 

I was in the process of leaving the classroom to head to another location in the school. I stopped, stood there paralyzed. 1929. I knew this.  He was born in 1929, the same birth year as my dad, my dad who wasn’t murdered at the height of his humanhood, and who went on to live a gorgeously full and remarkable existence until he passed at age 88, all this living stolen from the great Dr. King by an assassin’s bullet.  

I said nothing. 

My excuses washed over me. I was a visitor to the building. I was not even supposed to be in this room at this time. This teacher was starting her lesson. Already, I was in the way and out of place. 

I taught about Dr. King, his life, his necessity, for thirty years. If asked, I could have stepped in immediately and led an engaging lesson right then and there, no materials necessary, on this heroic hero catalyst for good. 

I wasn’t asked. So I didn’t. 

I continued packing up my things and as I headed to the door, the same student said, “Why did he die?” 

I stopped and waited to hear the teacher’s response. 

“He wanted everyone to be good to each other,” she said. Could she have been any vaguer? 

“But why did he die?” 

“I don’t know,” she said.  That was verbatim. 

She started passing out books and papers to the kids. 

Before she could change the subject, I had to say something. But what? How? I didn’t have the courage inside me to convey what I wanted to say – “You need to talk about this with these students right now.”

What I said instead was almost worse than saying nothing. From across the room I called out, “Does the district not want you to teach about Dr. King?” 

“That’s their classroom teacher’s job. She read a book to them.”  

I nearly stroked out. This was a classic teachable moment, and this teacher fucked it up big time. She should have dropped everything - EVERYTHING - and talked with the students about Dr. King. To hell with lesson plans. To hell with any excuses. 

Here’s what I would have done. 

Nope. Just deleted all that because that's just excuses. Any words about would I WOULD HAVE done muddy the waters and distract from this fact: I did nothing. I turned around. Left the room. 

There’s no coming back from that. I did nothing. That’s a moral failure on my part and I need to own it. 

Tact. Self-control. Courtesy. Diplomacy. Those are some of the terms that came up when this morning I googled “saying nothing when someone else says or does something wrong.” That’s proof right there that google isn’t the end-all-be-all of human understanding. 

I know in my gut exactly what I am – a coward. I could have seized that teachable moment and, with just a few carefully chosen phrases have changed a kid’s life. Because it was obvious to me then and is even more acutely obvious to me now that that young student wanted to talk about Dr. King. It was obvious he was still processing the story his teacher read to him. He had questions. Good questions. He wanted answers. Good answers. Possibly life-changing answers. 

And I could have given them to him. 

I chose cowardice. I took the easy road. 

This week my being is consumed by the events unfolding in Minneapolis and the protestors who are doing all they can in freezing, dangerous conditions, to protect the Constitutional rights of their friends and neighbors. They are heroes. They are everything I am not.

And here’s me, in my nice warm house, choosing passivity and comfort when, with just a few words I could have done so much. 

They put me to shame. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My story (a tiny part of it): When sexual harassment was the norm

 It’s taken me decades to realize how much of life I’ve missed out on because I was born female in a male-dominated society. 

I’m retirement age now, born a decade and a half after the end of World War II, a paltry four decades after the 19^th Amendment – the one giving women the right to vote, was ratified by Congress. Put that in perspective. Forty years ago from now was 1986. Music, fashion from that  time is still popular even today. It’s the time period in which the hit show Stranger Things is set. Forty years passes in seconds. 

Compared to today, women’s rights in the 1960s, just four decades after women got the vote? They were practically nonexistent. 

The things that were considered normal behaviors in my childhood? Today you’d be arrested. I could talk about lots of things, but today I’m talking about sexual harassment.  

I was in first or second grade at recess on the playground at my Catholic school the first time I was sexually harassed. I want to say attacked, but based on what I’ve googled, “attacked” might not be the right word. At the time, it certainly felt like an attack. I remember feeling shame and humiliation. I remember crying. The fact that I remember the exact circumstance almost sixty years later certainly says something. 

While I don’t know the right term, I DO know this. If what happened to me back then happened today, there’d be social services involvement, parent meetings, court. I was six. I was six and I was sexually harassed. 

Daily sexual harassment was the norm by the time I was in junior high, though there is nothing normal about gangs of boys following girls around the playground, making fun of their developing bodies., and giving them obscene nicknames. At recess, teachers ignored us when we complained about boys making games of lifting our uniform skirts to expose our underwear and snapping our bra straps. We girls had no choice but to either ignore what the boys were doing or laugh it off. If we didn’t, we weren’t good sports. 

Sexual harassment was normal outside of school too. I clearly remember walking down the bustling main street of my city, book bag on my shoulder, heading to the bus or to piano lessons, minding my own business. There were cat calls always. I was twelve, thirteen, fourteen years old. These were men ten, twenty, thirty years older. 

This bothered me, yes. But this happened ALL THE TIME. To me. To my friends. We never talked about these things. Why would we? There was nothing to talk about. This was the norm. 

“Today I breathed air.” Why would I feel the need to say that to anyone? 

“Today an adult male told twelve-year-old me that he wanted to fuck me.”  So what else is new? 

High school and college, things calmed down. Maybe I wasn’t as appealing once I was legal? Who knows. 

That’s not to say there weren’t stories. I have some. Plus, I heard all kinds of stories from other girls my age. Those aren’t my stories to tell though, so I won’t talk about them here. 

Things heated up again after college. For one, I started running. Whistles and obscenities as I’m running the streets around my neighborhood. Every. Run. Normal. 

I started working at a big company. My first professional job. It was the 80s. We women on the executive track had an unspoken dress code. To be taken seriously, you had to wear a suit. So every day: jacket, modest skirt, silk blouse, some sort of tie/cravat at my neck, heels, nylons. One day I wore a dress to work, not a suit. It was pointed out to me by a co-worker that this faux pas could cost me. A dress? Did I not want to be taken seriously? 

My first day at work, my boss introduced me around the office. It was a forgettable experience except for the one gentleman who misheard who I was. He told me I was a lovely young thing and told my boss he had a pretty daughter. I laughed it off, good sport that I was. Yes, I know that’s not sexual harassment, but it absolutely is telling in terms of how women were viewed. 

I’m writing this today because recently I read an obituary that brought all this back and more. “More” because I’m only skimming the surface here. I’m leaving out a lot. 

The obit was for a guy who was a department supervisor at the company where I worked. I met him a few months into my job. I was one of a handful of folks who ran at lunchtime. He was a runner. Like me, every day he’d run two miles out, and two miles back. We’d wave to one another. Lots of us would wave to one another. 

When winter arrived, the roads were awful. Some folks still ran outside, but I joined others who opted to run in the company garage, a huge, quarter mile loop. The garage was just a short stairway up from our changing areas. Running in the garage was boring, a little dark. But it was a safe alternative to the icy roads. Plus, we didn’t have to pile on the layers. We could run in just a T-shirt and shorts. 

Sometimes I’d run alone. Sometimes I’d see others. This guy ran at my pace, and we’d often run together and chat. I found him a little irritating in truth. I was fresh out of college and had big plans to travel the world, explore new things. He was older, deadly dull in my opinion --  loved to drone on and on about his wife, kids, elderly dad. 

He had a short stride. Though he had a good eight inches on me, his feet hit the ground at about twice my rate. The sound of his foot striking the cement floor drove me nuts. 

I tolerated him because I had to. He was one of my boss’s friends. We would occasionally interact with him and his department.  I tried to avoid him --running a little earlier/ later. He always found me. 

It was still snowy and icy the last day I ran indoors with him. When we’d gotten in our four miles, as was his custom he gestured for me to go first up the stairs to the first-floor changing areas. 

As I did so, he grabbed my rear end. 

My response? Nothing. I did what was the norm. I pretended nothing had happened. I acted like everything was okay. Without saying another word, I went to the changing room, showered, put on my suit, and went back to work. I told no one what happened because why would I?

The next day I brought my outdoor running gear and headed out onto the ice. I never ran in that garage again. Thankfully, I was never alone with him again either. I honestly don’t know what I would have done. Our departments did have meetings together, but I avoided him. I don’t think I ever spoke with him again. 

At work, I became increasingly disillusioned. I was bored. Fed up.  I realize now that what I was experiencing was likely anger and disgust. The idiot guy was the only one who physically harassed me. But the whole male as dominator environment was just overwhelmingly depressing and I didn’t care enough or know how to fight it.  I left that department a few months later. I left the company a few years later. 

I learned from his obituary that he was 17 years older than me and that he’d been happily married for almost sixty years. He was also a faithful, active, prayerful member of his Protestant church for the last fifty years. 

Raised an eyebrow at those factoids. He grabbed me forty years ago. Happily married? Religious too? His idea of do unto others doesn’t exactly mesh with my understanding of that Golden Rule. Wow. Hypocrite much? 

This story about the asshole, supposedly deeply religious and prayerful, who grabbed at me? That’s a story I’m okay with sharing. Why? Because it’s so common. What I just wrote about happened all the time. Still happens all the time. It’s not super personal to me. Doesn’t change the fact that it’s wrong though. Doesn’t change the fact that that grab absolutely changed EVERYTHING for me, as far as wanting to stay at that company and totally annihilated any interest I once had in being part of a corporate environment. 

And add to that that our nation elected to the highest office a loser proud of the fact that he can grab whatever he wants whenever he wants.  I’m so disgusted with every single human being who didn’t think this should be a dealbreaker and went ahead and voted for him anyhow. It’s like being grabbed all over again, only now I'm not shutting up. 

 

 

By the numbers: 2025

Random list. No particular order. 

3 – Roundtrip drives, Mass/Midwest. 

2- Roundtrip flights, Mass/Midwest.

4 – Protests. 

3- States protests were in.

20+ - People I defriended on social media because they continue to support adjudicated rapist/ felon and I can’t even.

5+ -People who defriended me over politics before I defriended them. 

10+ - Times I asked businesses/ vendors what political party they supported before I decided whether they deserved my business.  

3,000,000 (feels like) - Times people in other countries offered condolences to me over present US politics. 

200 (and this is not an exaggeration and might even be on the low side) - Times called elected representatives demanding action be taken against adjudicated rapist/ felon and his enabling staff. 

50 (also not an exaggeration) - Times I was nearly incoherent with rage on phone calls with those reps. 

10 + -Physical therapy visits.

20+ - Long runs on anti-gravity treadmill.

365 -Nights I woke up at least once, stressed about my country’s politics.

10 – Number of pounds I gained stress eating. 

20 – Daily mg dose for high blood pressure. 

18- Hours spent on longest flight. 

4 – Continents visited. 

9 – Marathons

2- Official half marathons (not including half marathon distance or more training runs).

100 – Total number of marathons to date.

343ish – Days I doomscrolled. 

6 – Books read. Shameful. 

365 - Days practiced Duolingo for at least 30 min. 

300+ -Days doing NY Times games online for 10+ min.

 2- Months I took off from doing any kind of physical activity after hitting 100^th marathon. 

 0-Regrets I have for taking that time off.

1- Times I rewatched every episode of Stranger Things.

1-Times I watched the Stranger Things Finale (and already once in 2026).

30+- “Will Steve die in Stranger Things finale” google searches. 

36 – Blog posts.

36 – Number of blog posts that could use rewriting. 

78.2k – Number of visits to this blog to date. I’m stunned. 

0 – Resolutions made for 2026 that involve running. 

3- Resolutions made for 2026, tentatively.  

That time someone thought they could get away with insulting my state

 At a marathon last summer, a runner responded this way when I told her the state I was from: “The people’s republic of Massachusetts.” I’m guessing she thought she was clever. Rather than comment, which I badly wanted to do, I smiled politely then walked/ jogged away. 

Why did I choose to not respond? 

1.     We were on a loop course and were running into each other – figuratively – every mile or two. If I told her what I really thought at the time – which was that she was an asshole – that would make for a super uncomfortable day, plus make me look like an idiot. 

2.     I wasn’t sure if she truly was an asshole or if she was just being socially stupid. After all, it was a pretty stupid thing to say and a pretty stupid time during which to say it.  

3.     I am often stupid. I tend to give people who say stupid things the benefit of the doubt when I can, because people tend to give me the benefit of the doubt when I say stupid things, which is every day. I say stupid things every day. Every. Day.

Finally, my brain wasn’t working right. We were at a marathon, not at a political debate. I was tired, sore, hungry, thirsty. My knee jerk reaction? To name call? That’s all I had in me at that point and I used what little self-control I still had to walk away. 

After thinking things through, talking with friends and family, and doing some research, here’s a sampling of how I’d respond now if someone called my state “the people’s republic of Massachusetts,” even if they did so during a marathon. And yeah. She was trying to bait me.

It’s actually the COMMONWEALTH of Massachusetts.  

I get it. 

We are hundreds of miles from my state. You are putting me in my place. You are calling out my otherness. 

And you think maligning my state because we tend to vote left of center is hilarious. 

And you think I’m a killjoy or maybe that I'm stupid because I’m not laughing at your miss of a joke and not reacting at all. 

See how I was able to deduce so much about you and your motives from that one comment? I know how to get to the guts of your sentence because I'm from Massachusetts. The layers of meaning hit me as soon as those words left your mouth. I could write reams. I'll try to keep this brief though. 

You don’t understand me or my state. Where to begin? Let me give you some basics. 

First, what’s a commonwealth? Let’s start by looking at what you know, and using some rudimentary inference skills, which you would have if you’d gone to school in Massachusetts because teaching students how to infer is one of the basic tenets of our reading curriculum which is one of the most challengingly rigorous in the entire United States.  

‘Common’ means something everyone has, right? As for ‘wealth?’ You can apply that to lots of wicked awesome things, like money, health, good fortune. So, you can infer with some certainty that a state that is a commonwealth has, at its core, values that involve good things for all, and you’d pretty much be on the nose. 

Now here’s the nitty gritty real stuff behind the word ‘commonwealth.’ My state’s constitution was primarily drafted by none other than THE John Adams. In the fight of good vs evil/ colonies vs. England/ self-rule and freedom vs. taxation without representation, he was one of the supreme hero guys. We have our Declaration of Independence, our country, because of him. 

Adams drafted our state constitution back in 1780.  Using the word ‘commonwealth’ rather than state was a massive game changer. When he used that term he intentionally bitch-slapped stodgy, stuck-in-the-mud England, because that one word was a trigger, signifying a rejection of the British monarchy and aligning our new state with the republican ideal of a citizen-led society that put first and foremost the collective welfare of its people. This was huge in 1780. This was not how things were normally done. 

John Adams was a bad ass. ( Granted, the dude was complicated. He had his pluses and minuses like the rest of us. But bottom line: He was Greek god heroic integral to our nation's quest for independence. Read a book.) 

Collective welfare is bad ass. (England at the time was rooted in the belief that the monarchy was the end all be all, that there was a strict social hierarchy that most citizens were not worthy of being part of, that poor people should stay poor. Seriously, read a book.)

If you grew up in the state of Massachusetts, you would know all this. You would know this and you would know so much more because my state is number one – always or almost always -- in education. 

Did you know that John Adams was a school teacher before he became a lawyer? Off-track a little, I know. And by his own admission, he wasn't all that talented as a teacher. (BTW he taught in my hometown -- yes I'm proud of that.) I have to wonder if the fact that one of our greatest founding fathers had a background in education  is one reason why we as a state are so frickin' proud of and diligent in maintaining our  #1 rank in education.

Now back to it. 

We have the top elementary, middle, and secondary schools in the country. And no, that's not an opinion. Google. And you can’t throw a rock without hitting an internationally known college or university. People come from all over the world to go to school here. And you know what? That diversity helps us learn more about foreign nations. Teaches us compassion for others. Gives us a better understanding of our role in our global community. 

And you know what else? Lots of the people who graduate from these schools love my state so much that they choose to stay. And here’s something else. Smart people tend to make smart people, so there’s no stopping Massachusetts. We are epic. 

At this point I tried to add in all the lists that Massachusetts tops, like most educated state, best health care, environmental protections, museums, historical sites, beaches, ski resorts, restaurants. It got overwhelming because each time I’d find one #1, I’d see another three or four lists with Massachusetts ranked #1. I don’t have all day. Google if you want to see some more of my state’s awesomeness. Prepare to get lost in a maze of amazing.   

And while you’re at it, google our neighboring states. New England is a tiny region compared to the rest of the US. Massachusetts is about three hours wide, not including a trip to P-Town, which is gorgeous and loves everyone. Everyone should visit P-Town.  A visit to P-Town WILL make you a better person. You can cover all of teensy Rhode Island in, like, five minutes no lie. Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut are all a little larger, but the scenery is so spectacular any road trip through those states feels like a few heavenly seconds that you will want to play on constant repeat.  

We’re all so close we can’t help but be connected. We regularly cross borders for school, work, restaurants, shopping, sports, vacations. You name it. Like Massachusetts, these states regularly rank in the top ten of any list you’d care to search out. We have so many opportunities here. So much beauty. It’s insane. New England, and Massachusetts in particular, always top every Best Places to Live list. It is almost ridiculous how number one we are. 

And I know you originally slung that weak ass insult at me mostly because of our politics. Love or hate our politics, know this. Joke’s on you. Sometimes we hate our politics even more than you do. 

Also, many of us voters are only one or two generations away from our wretched refuse descendants who arrived here from distant and often cruel lands that denied our parents, grandparents their basic human rights. We know too well their stories of poverty, famine, victimization. Because we know our history – thank you education system and family stories, and because many of our families once had no rights, we absolutely know our rights are precious. 

We take our rights seriously. If you did any research, you’d know that. 

Another great Massachusetts citizen, John F. Kennedy, almost two hundred years after John Adams wrote our state constitution, had this to say about learning: “The goal of education is the advancement of knowledge and the dissemination of truth.” 

I know that you voted for president someone most of my state didn’t, and you think it’s funny to call me out on that because you ‘won.’ (That’s a story for another day, that some people think elections are like sports teams winning.) 

There’s a basic reason most of us in Massachusetts never voted for president an adjudicated rapist and a felon. Because we’re educated – remember we’re number one in education and have colleges and universities in our literal backyards -- we know how to deduce and infer. We can look at the cumulative actions of one person over time and see the patterns: the lies, the inhumanity, the criminal, the black hole where there should be integrity. We saw and continue to see the truth. 

We're not perfect. (Don't even get me started on our overpriced housing, crappy roads, crappier weather.)  But we're not a people’s republic either. We’re a commonwealth. Common. Wealth. Common. Good. And we’re smart. Wicked smart. 

Oh. One more thing, running related so if what I wrote above doesn't resonate with you, this should. 

After the Boston Marathon bombing, anyone who didn't have a clue of who we are as a state quickly got schooled. 

Not one CEO, business owner, politician, parent, child  complained in the days following the bombing when Boston and the towns nearby shut down completely while our fearless citizens searched out the scum who attempted to defile our beloved marathon and destroy our community. 

Common good.

Here's a quote from New Hampshire guy Adam Sandler that I think does a good job of expressing how we in Massachusetts watch out for each other: "Boston is pretty much the only major city that if you fuck with them, they will shut down the whole city. . . stop everything. . . and find you." 

Common good. 

Here's another, from Massachusetts resident/ Red Sox player David Ortiz,  right before starting  the first game after the city re-opened:"This is our fucking city and nobody is gonna dictate our freedom."

Common good. 

And finally this: "No more hurting people. Peace." Martin Richard, age 8.  Youngest Boston Marathon bombing victim. 

Heartbreaking.  

Common good. 

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to brag about my state. Insult me and my home state any time, but preferably not before, during, after marathons. This is only the tip of the awesomeness iceberg.  I'm willing and ready to share so much more. Plus, seems like you've got a lot to learn. Have a wicked awesome day.