"Don't count the days. Make the days count." - Muhammed Ali
I get a lot of mileage from this story and people seem awed by the very idea, but the truth is I didn't really think it that big a deal - more of a young woman's fancy than anything else. Just goes to show you how the filter of history can magnify things over time. But the truth is that in the spring of 1982 under a warm sunny southern sky, I kissed Muhammed Ali.
Muhammed Ali aka Cassius Clay, as my parents were always very careful to name him, was part of my childhood. Boxing was a regular TV occurrence because pay-per-view had yet to be invented and Ali WAS boxing until I was in college. So, like I said Ali is part of the stage in which my childhood played out.
My parents loathed him, I never could figure out why. When I was little, I thought he was funny and sassy. If I had followed his lead, there would have been a spanking at the end of it for being fresh. I loved to jump rope to the 'floats like a butterfly, stings like a bee" patter, but always quietly so as not to be overheard. Because like my parents, all the parents in my neighborhood loathed Ali. He was vilified more than any single person I overheard them speak of. As I grew older, I found him to be smart and attractive in both his brash and soft-spoken moments. He was the first black man I can remember recognizing by sight. I loved the impromptu poetry of his patter and the poetry of his body in motion. To say that I crushed on him in a big way would be less than truth. Not that I would ever have said that out loud in that house at that time.
His decision to become a Muslim and a conscientious objector to the Vietnam war seemed right to me. I mean, who in their right mind would go to that place that Walter Cronkite took us to every night during dinner? Who would go of their own free will? And just why WERE we there? Ali, in his own way, introduced me to the concept of social justice although I doubt it had a name then. It was an idea that took root in rather poor soil and flourished. Not that I can claim to be an activist in that regard, but I know the truth in my heart of what equality is. Always have. And I will always choose that side.
My dad used the N-word liberally along with a number of other racial or religious slurs. That's kind of embarrassing to admit and as much as I would like him to be perfectly PC, he wasn't. He didn't know any better. He didn't graduate high school and worked a factory job his whole life. Sadly, in his world that word was still acceptable. One should never feel the need to apologize for someone, and yet I still do.
My mother never used that word, but then why would she? She had grown up in a place where the only black person she would see in 20+ years was a porter who got off the Chicago and Northwestern train in Fargo for medical treatment. My mom probably disliked Ali because of his swagger. In her battened-down upbringing there among Garrison Keillor's Lutherans, self-deprecation was the norm. Self-loathing was rewarded. As much as I don't want to think about it, I suspect that this self-confident young black man stirred her own feelings of inadequacy and that resulted in her dislike. She's still not too keen on self-confidence when she encounters it, choosing instead to always see it through the filters of her own childhood.
That is the environment of my home in the 1960's, the subconscious hum of race always there but never spoken of. I describe it, because the world today has changed so very much that I can't imagine a child today recognizing only one African face at the age of ten or twelve. Most today will know dozens of atheletes, musicians, TV actors, neighbors, classmates, etc. I envy them that, not much else, but I envy them that balance of role models of infinite color. There were none of these for me growing up. Everyone in my hometown was of the same race and socioeconomic class. The neighborhood I grew up in was populated by roving hoards of Catholic kids with whom I attended school. My world was ever so small. I would have to deliberately seek out something different if I wanted that experience. So, while I saw people of color on the downtown streets, my life was not that different than my mother's. My first non-Catholic, my first non-Caucasian friends, my first poor friends, my first wealthy friends, pretty much my first everything would be found in college.
In 1982, I don't think most of Louisville thought that much of Ali, not the college age part anyway. He had retired from fighting, the patter had grown stale. It would be another two years before he was diagnosed with Parkinson's. I'm not sure when the tide turned for Ali, but 1982 was definitely before that. Retrospectively, I'm pretty sure my classmates viewed him as a washed up, rather loud-mouthed, has been boxer. Maybe that explains why his visit to campus with then govenor John Y. Brown, Jr (who I thought and still think of as a compete fucktard) garnered so small a crowd. Perhaps twenty or thirty people turned out for the speeches. I was there for one reason only - to see Ali.
"He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life" - Muhammed Ali
That co-ed dared to give the The Greatest a peck on the cheek.
I kissed Ali.
I like to imagine a little of his magic rubbed off on me that day
has rubbed off on all of us
and that as a result I am the Greatest
we are all the Greatest.
I like to imagine a little of his magic rubbed off on me that day
has rubbed off on all of us
and that as a result I am the Greatest
we are all the Greatest.
And what a great picture of him! He has always been one of my heroes! A Perfect Person to me, as Roger Federer is now. : >
ReplyDelete