I'm Sure I Said Something

I don't remember any of those unpleasant shopping trips to buy clothes. We bought all our clothes at Glazer's (not sure about the spelling) on Kedzie  Avenue. They had a kid my age, Victor, and I seem to remember he was the one who told my mom about the pants. Glazer's had all our sizes on file, so anybody could go pick up clothes for anybody else in the family. I suppose my mom was in the store for some other reason and decided to pick up some pants for me while she was there, otherwise I would have bought them myself. I don't know where Victor got the idea that all the kids were wearing those new fangled wash pants (perma-press). I didn't even know they existed until I heard about them at that meeting. Maybe Victor was in on the plot himself, and you wonder why a guy gets paranoid!

Anyway, I came home from the meeting full of outrage and said, "Mom, you're not going to believe what happened in school today." Mom said I could tell her all about it in a minute, but first I should go try on the new pants that she had lain on my bed. I went into my room expecting to see blue jeans because that's all I ever wore except to church. All I could think of when I saw those wash pants was that my own mother had conspired against me. How else could she have known about those new fangled pants when I had just heard about them myself that very day? Well, I'm sure I said something to Mom, I don't remember what it was, but I'm sure it wasn't pretty. Decades later, when she read my story, she remembered that I had been really mad at her that day, and now she knew why. Funny that we didn't discuss the subject more at the time because my mom and I always had good communications. Maybe she had a bad day herself and wasn't in any more of a rational mood than I was.

When I have a moral decision to make, I think it out in my head if there's time. If there isn't time, I just act on reflex but, by this time in my life, it would be a conditioned reflex. All that stuff in my head must have come from somewhere, maybe the Bible or maybe from somewhere else, but it's internalized by now, so it's unlikely that I would have to look it up anymore. I suppose the only thing we would need the Bible for in this discussion is if we come across something and want to determine its historical origin. There may be other sources of that information, but the Bible is familiar and close at hand, at least for me. I suppose we could use Wiki for that purpose, since it's a source that both of us consider relatively credible, although chances are that Wiki got it from the Bible anyway if it's about morality.

I'm not familiar with the proposal to build a wall along the Canadian border, but I understand that Donald Trump wants to build one along the Mexican border. He's not the first person to say that, but I believe he's the first one to say that Mexico should finance it. You know, if that guy gets the nomination, I might have to vote for the Libertarian candidate. It won't do any good, but it won't do any harm either, and I'll feel better about it.

The 14th Amendment covers a number of topics, but you are probably talking about the first part that says "All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens........" I think what some people want to change is how children born to illegal immigrants while they are here automatically become citizens. At first glance, it would seem to require a constitutional amendment but, now that you mention it, there might be a loophole in the "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" part. Is a person here illegally subject to the jurisdiction thereof? It seems like, if he was, he would have been rounded up and deported by now. Then again, if he hasn't been deported by now, and is therefore not subject to the jurisdiction thereof, how do they propose to locate his children so that their citizenship may be revoked? Maybe Trump can get the Mexican authorities to do that for him too.