Changing Rules

I had a small surgical procedure on one of my eyes a few hours ago so posting on some of my blogs is a bit reduced. I put up below something I wrote a few days ago

Back in the '70's, I was with a few friends in a certain club in Sydney when we were introduced to another club member of Indian origin who was distinctly dark of skin. His name was "Dan". A jocular friend of mine (now a retired Professor) shook his hand and said: "You've got a good suntan there, Dan".

It was obviously a joke and everybody had a laugh, including Dan. But if my friend had said the same in the America of today, he would probably have earned Dan a payout of a million dollars from the club.

Going even farther back, my father liked the music of a black American group of singers who called themselves "The Inkspots". They did have a very mellow sound. But call a black American an "Inkspot" today and you would again be likely to make him a millionaire.

Something else that seems rather strange in retrospect is that in my grade-school days, the TEACHERS used to call me "The little white cloud that cries". Why? Did I cry a lot? Not at all. I was good at schoolwork and was well-regarded by the teachers and generally had little trouble at school other than boredom.

I was called that name because there was a popular American "crooner" at that time named Johnny Ray -- a similar name to mine -- and one of his popular songs was "The little white cloud that cries". These days the teacher would no doubt be disciplined and I might be much richer. But, as it was, I didn't like popular music much even in those days so I had no clue what it was all about and just stared blankly.

So nothing whatever came of it and no harm was done to anybody. I guess that the teachers just thought it was funny. There was not a lot of entertainment in the small town where I lived in the 1950's.

And my parents just dismissed it as nonsense too. My father was a fiery-tempered red-headed lumberjack with quite a reputation as a bar-room brawler so if he had taken umbrage the teacher concerned would have rued the day.

I think I spent my childhood very much under my father's aegis (protection) in the small town of Innisfail where we lived. Everybody knew I was the son of "Bluey" Ray and nobody wanted to tangle with HIM! Yet he was in his way also a great gentleman -- in one of those complex bits of reality of the sort that that Leftists never can understand. For instance, he never once got up from the dining table without telling my mother how much he enjoyed the meal. I am kind to women, children and dogs and I am quite sure that I get that from my father -- though I will never be half the gentleman that he was.

Something I noticed recently: My local Indian restaurant still has some small plastic Father Christmases up on its walls. They put them up before last Christmas but seem not to to realize that you take then down after Christmas. They are Sikhs by religion but Christmas clearly does not "offend" them, as Leftists so often claim.