I grew up in a small town in Texas & started school in 1958; my school was an old red brick building, & we first-graders got the "new" annex, a special building with 3 classrooms & our own bathrooms, built to accomodate the flood of boomers. (We got "new" books when the more affluent schools got brand-new books & we got their old ones!) I went to school with kids from the state home, a vast institution where children were housed when their families couldn't take care of them (such as when mom's boyfriend assaulted the kiddies, dad was in prison for bank robbery, etc). Some of the kids were there because their families simply couldn't feed all those hungry mouths. Our school was the one where the "Spanish" kids went, "Spanish" being considered the polite description in 1958, & we never had a black schoolmate until we were in the 7th grade, when our school district was faced with the decision to integrate or lose federal funding. The school board decided to integrate the 7th graders rather than the 1st graders for some reason (my cynical adult self thinks it might be that they felt that 7th graders' attitudes were already jelled; we were less likely to accept black children into our groups & maybe, horrors, date a black boyfriend, than kids who by 7th grade would have been in the same classrooms for 7 years). In elementary school, Spanish kids hung out with Spanish kids, state home kids hung out with state home kids, rural kids who rode the bus hung out with rural kids...etc. Junior high was different. It was 1964; change was in the air, (& we were 7th graders for heaven's sake; adolescent rebelliion loomed large), & those of us who weren't in the elite group saw ourselves, I guess, as social pioneers. We, black & white, were the first ones to do so many things; first to have classmates of the "other kind" first to hang out in the lunchroom & compare notes & be kids together first to (heatherns that we were) have gym together & spy in the showers to see how those very "other" girls looked; We were the first to see each other, in that little town, as individuals & not stereotypes. Example: The "main" high school was heavy into college prep, since it was the "white" one, attended by affluent college-bound kids as well as every other white kid in town, & the other high school, the "black" one, was heavy into teaching hairdressing & other trades. If you were a white kid & you weren't academically inclined & you wanted to learn a trade, you were out of luck. If you were an academically inclined black kid & you wanted to be an accountant or a lawyer, you were out of luck. (I threw a fit one summer & told my mother I wanted to go to Jackson High so I could learn to fix hair. She forbade it. To this day I don't know how to fix hair.) Until the mid-sixties, there were separate fountains in the courthouse & in some but not all of the stores. The main divisive factors, I think, were schools & housing-in the past, family & societal conditioning would have been main factors, but with Civil Rights being a hot issue & us being boomers & all...) Until my generation, black kids went to school on the East Side, white kids on the West Side, & black folks lived on the East Side, white folks on the West Side. People didn't interact with each other, didn't *know* each other. When people rub shoulders every day, they see each other as peers & treat each other as peers.

Wow! I've been away for quite some time, no I haven't been cought or having any problems with my wife. Actually we have just celebrated a milestone anaversary above 10 years. First I want to say I appreicate parallaxerror & Jimmy71's comments. I have always felt that I belong in an open marrage, and there are a few escorts that I know are married, actually I know a few husbands as well. I am not bi-sexual, but I have been involved in a few orgies and a couple threesomes with the ladies. what memories I have too.... all done safely and without remorse because I enjoy the times I have and I don't want the drama of say going out with the neighbor lady. I have an addiction to sex, and I am willing to pay for my fun. I also have been lucky enough to know a few ladies that like to have fun like me too.

How fun! My daughter also does this at the grocery store she works for - Publix. They call it Aprons. She has to prepare a meal predetermined by the store and hand out samples. They hae a cooler with all the ingredients they use to make this meal so people can just grab what they need to make it, right there. She has told me stories about the people too. The most rude ones are from a retirement community that are bussed there on certain days. The biggest problem she had was people asking for more and more samples. Then one guy takes all the samples and others are left standing there and have to wait for another batch to be cooked up and then they may miss their bus back home. So she has to limit the samples to one to a person. They try all kinds of tricks, a) my wife is in the bakery, let me take it to her, b) my husband is in the car, c)it's not enough for me to know if I like it or not..... it goes on and on! I hope you have fun with this. My daughter is quitting in May when she graduates college and she will go into teaching elementary school. My guess is that she's gonna wish she was fighting off the old people again! hahahah! Good Luck to you~

From Lupita Nyung'o's (that was fun!) article. I find it quite prescriptive! She took the hit and survived because she was surrounded by a supportive community. "I was part of a growing community of women who were secretly dealing with harassment by Harvey Weinstein. But I also did not know that there was a world in which anybody would care about my experience with him. You see, I was entering into a community that Harvey Weinstein had been in, and even shaped, long before I got there. He was one of the first people I met in the industry, and he told me, “This is the way it is.” And wherever I looked, everyone seemed to be bracing themselves and dealing with him, unchallenged. I did not know that things could change. I did not know that anybody wanted things to change. So my survival plan was to avoid Harvey and men like him at all costs, and I did not know that I had allies in this. Fortunately for me, I have not dealt with any such incidents in the business since. And I think it is because all the projects I have been a part of have had women in positions of power, along with men who are feminists in their own right who have not abused their power. What I am most interested in now is combating the shame we go through that keeps us isolated and allows for harm to continue to be done. I wish I had known that there were women in the business I could have talked to. I wish I had known that there were ears to hear me. That justice could be served. There is clearly power in numbers. I thank the women who have spoken up and given me the strength to revisit this unfortunate moment in my past. Our business is complicated because intimacy is part and parcel of our profession; as actors we are paid to do very intimate things in public. That’s why someone can have the audacity to invite you to their home or hotel and you show up. Precisely because of this we must stay vigilant and ensure that the professional intimacy is not abused. I hope we are in a pivotal moment where a sisterhood — and brotherhood of allies — is being formed in our industry. I hope we can form a community where a woman can speak up about abuse and not suffer another abuse by not being believed and instead being ridiculed. That’s why we don’t speak up — for fear of suffering twice, and for fear of being labeled and characterized by our moment of powerlessness. Though we may have endured powerlessness at the hands of Harvey Weinstein, by speaking up, speaking out and speaking together, we regain that power. And we hopefully ensure that this kind of rampant predatory behavior as an accepted feature of our industry dies here and now. Now that we are speaking, let us never shut up about this kind of thing. I speak up to make certain that this is not the kind of misconduct that deserves a second chance. I speak up to contribute to the end of the conspiracy of silence."