Sitting Ain’t Just about Taking a Seat

By Tia Creighton

Medical Note: My name is Annabelle Schultz. I’m a licensed speech and language pathologist. I met Patient WK in 2017. He was an 85-year-old black male who suffered an ischemic stroke which caused him to fall naked down a flight of steps, landing in his home’s foyer. He lay unassisted for three days till his mailman heard his cries through the mail slot. I was dispatched to Patient WK’s home after his hospital discharge as part of his outpatient-services team. My job was to assess and improve his speech and language skills.

Quickly, it became clear that Patient WK did not need my services. His speech was flowing, flowering, sharp, and colorful. He easily pulled up both long- and short-term memories and showed no impediments whatsoever. But Medicare kept sending me out, so I kept going.

Standard practice as a speech therapist is to use articulation cards to prompt clients to speak. This practice allows therapists to see where patients need improvement and to help them develop language.

Patient WK immediately picked up on the outdated and racially tinged nature of my articulation cards and maligned them constantly. I emailed my supervisor to let him know I was running into problems. My supervisor responded to my “insubordination” by telling me he and the steering committee were experts in content development, and it was my job to do my job without question. So Patient WK and I worked through the cards day after day, often laughing, sometimes over wine.

Below is a brief compilation of some of our work together. I pulled the sessions that referred in ways to The Stoneslide’s current theme of “Sit Your Ass Down.” My name is Annabelle, but Patient WK often referred to me as A.B.

Look like a toy. Play like a toy. But it ain’t no toy when a cat who knows what he’s doing taps out “Crazy Army” or “Iko Iko.” If I ever did play an instrument, I’d like to play drums. I just never had the talent for music. I love music though. Maybe I would have played a horn of some type. A sax. “Maceo, blow your horn!” James Brown used to yell at Maceo Parker. Apparently, it’s not really considered a horn, it’s a reed instrument but since James Brown called the sax a horn, you can’t be wrong calling it that neither. People be saying, “It’s a woodwind.” Those people can’t possibly appreciate the music coming out of — nor play the music I want to hear coming out of — that instrument. I don’t care about instrument taxonomy, Poindexter. I just want to hear the notes. Now, sit your ass down!

The first time I had my own washing machine in my own place — that was something. That was heaven. Really and truly. I know it seems like nothin’, but coming out of the military where sometimes you just wash your clothes in a bucket or have to take your duds to a laundromat when you’re off the ship and fight for a machine? Or when you live in an apartment and got to share the machines in the basement or lug your ditty bag to the corner laundromat? A.B., it never went smooth. I got in more dustups in laundromats than on the streets on leave in Naples.

First off, someone always claims they ahead of you, even though you saw them walk in. They come in, they put they basket on a machine, and stand there. And the first machine that opens up, they snatch up they basket and march right over. Not even glancing at the line of people they know is waiting and put they clothes right in! Stone cold daring anyone to say anything — not looking around or nothin’, even though the rest of us is sitting orderly on chairs, waiting for the next machine to open up.

Another move is if you leave the laundromat, you can expect your wet clothes to be out on top of a machine, or on the floor, when you come back and someone else’s clothes to be in the machine you was using.

And if you even get a turn at a machine, you got to make sure you have the right change cuz the change machine is always broken — you can count on that. If you don’t bring your own soap, which I never did — didn’t want to tie up the little money I had in a big old box of soap — you got to buy the minis.

Them little soap boxes — and I don’t care how strong you are: a sailor, a marine, an Olympic deadlifter — them boxes, hey, you might as well be trying to tear the San Francisco phone book. And when you do get them open, you have to use so much force on such a small surface area that when the box finally gives, the soap explodes into the air. A third of it covering your wet hands; a third of it staying in the box; and a third of it falling onto the floor.

You try to scoop some of that soap up off the floor cuz you don’t have another damn quarter to buy another tiny box, so you throw whatever soap you can collect up into the machine along with some dust bunnies, several strands of hair, and some what you hope is mud out of someone’s keds and then you sit your ass down on a chair and you wait, cuz by this time in your laundromat career you’ve learned that if you leave, someone will steal your damn clothes or as discussed, throw them wet onto the floor.

One time — muthafucka — one time, I was in the laundromat and a damn vagabond come in, took his shirt off, took his pants off, put a towel ’round his waist, and stripped off his drawers! Gathered what clearly was all the man had to his name, gathered those things on up, bought himself some soap, and ran a damn batch of clothes, dried them, too. Slept across three plastic chairs in a towel while his clothes went through all the cycles. Refreshed his mind and his wardrobe all in one afternoon. Put them rags back on and walked on out the laundromat.

Now, I tell ya — hey, if I saw a homeless dude with a sign that read, “Need money to wash my clothes.” That dude? I’d give money to that dude, cuz at least he’s maintaining his pride out there on the street and being honest.

Shit. Your own machine in your own place where nobody comes along and messes with your drawers and lays naked and stinking in a bedraggled way near you? That’s a little slice of angel food cake. That is a moment of arrival. I dreamt of big milestones when I was a boy — owning an Astin Martin or a Ferrari; living in a gated Southern mansion with a ballroom and a pool and a long, cedar-lined drive; being president of American Broadcasting Company. But it turns out, signs of success are much more modest. Hooking up your own washer and dryer to your very own washer-dryer hookups — that is a true moment of arrival.

You not gonna like my thoughts on this one, A.B. The American flag. It’s the flag of a country that has left me out. It’s the flag of a country that makes proclamations about equality, that lectures on equality but leaves many of its people sitting on the bench waiting for a chance that’s never gonna come. This country has given me a lot, but I’ve given it a lot. Eight years in the service. Paid my taxes. Built a business. Employed people. I expect more from this country than watching it lock up our young black men, keep black families uneducated and in poverty. Sick cuz they homes is built on contaminated land or near factories or refineries.

I love this country, but I’m conflicted. I expect so much more. I expect this country to do better. I’m angry about what it hasn’t given me — given me is the wrong way to put it. I’m mad at what it has withheld from me and all black people. What should have been easy to receive has been a damn rip-and-tear struggle. And for what? For what?

The struggle usually yields a half or maybe a quarter of what white folks receive regularly, easily, and obliviously. They don’t even know what they get just for being white. Whatchyou think we gonna do if you give us equal access? Equal treatment? You afraid we gonna take our revenge? Turn the tables on you? I mean, hey. White America would deserve it. But that’s not what we want. We just want to put all this hate and discrimination behind us and move on and build our lives now. It’s not a zero-sum game. I think white people think if they give black people opportunities and a chance, they themselves will lose out. This country is big enough and wealthy enough for everybody to succeed.

The whole “stand for the anthem” bullshit? Hey! You don’t want a protest, don’t play the anthem at a sporting event. You’re politicizing the event by playing the anthem. We don’t play the anthem at the New York Ballet or at the beginning of a movie. Jazz at the Lincoln Center don’t open with the “Star Spangled Banner.” I don’t hear it played at no annual shareholder meetings neither. Makes no sense. If I want to sit during the anthem, I should damn well be able to sit my ass down during the anthem. Too old to stand up that long, that fast anyway. Shit.

I been on enough watercraft in my life. I worked like a dog on ships and boats. Cruisers, destroyers, frigates, carriers, dinghies, lifeboats, rafts. Now, I’m more of a yacht or a cruise-ship man. Sailing? Running back and forth ducking the boom? Trimming the jib, tacking and all that fuss? That’s too much work for me.

No, I like me a nice jazz cruise on the bay. Or a superyacht with staterooms and a sun deck; an elevator, a movie theater, a dining room, and a plunge pool. Don’t have to do nothin’ but sit on my ass and watch the world go by, meditate on the white caps, listen to some piano and sax stylings, and sip champagne. Relaxing is the only thing I want to be doing on a boat now. Done done my work on ships.

Santa look like he had a few. His cheeks are very rosy. I mean, hey, let’s face it. You’d have to drink after work — or maybe during it — sitting for eight hours listening to kids babble on about all the shit they want. “I want me a puppy. I want me a dolly. I want a ball, a Playstation, a go kart. I want me some mass muthafuckin Star Wars Lego set I can’t even build myself and my pop’s gonna have to spend every microscopic moment of the weekend working on while I whine that it ain’t done yet. I want me a horn and some candy and some Jordans.”

Accepting pages outta magazines and screen shots off the Internet? Let kids come and sit on your lap, piss all over your leg or worse?! Cry? Shriek in fear in your eardrums? Terrible.

We used to have a guy who came by our house when I was a kid. I didn’t know this then, of course — I thought he was the real deal. But my dad used to leave a plastic bottle of Old Grandad on the front porch for him as payment. Dude wanted a plastic bottle cuz he used to drink in his truck. Used to hide his bottles under the seat, and if they was glass, they’d break rolling around on the floor or bumping into the firewall or all the other bottles he had stashed and rolling around in there.

“Degenerate Wanted for Seasonal Work. Must be soiled, foul-smelling, cross-eyed, leering, hard of hearing, immature, show early stages of dementia, and showcasing a spotty work history.” That’s the help-wanted ad for a Santa. Hey, at this point — that’s me! Gonna get me a suit.

Now, my first thought on this, A.B. — it might sound a little strange but hear me out. There’s a lot of talk of sexual harassment these days. So, a friend of mine and I was talking about it, too, and she said, “Winslow, you’d be surprised to hear how young girls are when they first get harassed by men.” She said specifically in the form of flashing. You think this stuff only happens to adult women, but she told me about 80 percent of the women she knows was flashed by men by the time they was 12. You probably ain’t shocked by that, cuz with those numbers it likely happened to you, too, but I was clobbered by it.

Now, what the hell does that say? What is going on? That a girl as young as this, playing hopscotch — just out having fun, out playing a kid’s game — could have some pudwacker sit his ass down on a bench across from her, get into a man spread and pull his dick out?

Guys get off on that? Exposing theyselves to young girls? Seeing them disgusted and scared; panicked and frozen? That certainly teaches little girls to be scared of men, to know they place around ’em, to keep they guard up and that they ultimately powerless.

Another friend told me she was getting shoes at JC Penney with her mom, and the shoe man put his hands all over her body — on her legs, up her legs, over her buttocks — Yeah! Way more than was necessary for a shoe fitting. Her mama seeing all this, took her daughter by the hand and said to the man, “Turns out, we don’t need no shoes today” and walked off with her daughter in tow. When my friend asked her mama why the man touched her like that, her mom said, “Some people don’t know how to fit shoes properly. We going someplace else.” And that was that. Never explained nothin’ to her daughter about what just happened.

Well, what does that kid walk away with from that experience? Fear? Confusion? Acceptance, like, oh that’ll just happen sometimes? A man’ll stick his hands up your dress.

Well, apparently it happens all the time with 80 percent of girls experiencing it. There are some weirdos out there. Not much we can do about it. And that’s how girls are taught to deal with those kinds of situations — accept it and move on — and then these situations continue and continue and continue. And the girls and women have learned the lesson on how to deal with it, and so they say nothin’, pull theyselves together, and move on to the next errand.

Men. You know? We sick. We sick muthafuckas. We disturbed donkeys.

“Sitting Ain’t Just about Taking a Seat” is an excerpt from a forthcoming book by Tia Creighton.

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“Sit” — Photo by James Mckinnon, FlickrCC https://tinyurl.com/y4crfkaw

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