Blank Privilege

There's a lot of talk about privilege as if it was some kind of disease. As I thought about this class of people, the privileged, I confess that I myself am one. I cannot deny it. In short, I was privileged to have a dad that worked as a truck driver and kept us in a home and took us to church every Sunday. I was privileged to have a mother who was a housewife (it wasn't a derogatory label then) staying home with us kids ( no day care then), and would sing us lullabies that sweetened our dreams. We got to ride bicycles and play stickball and all manner of unsupervised play; and we went to school where reading, writing, arithmetic were the subjects, and where we even started the school day with the Pledge of Allegiance and the Lord's Prayer (in those days God was still allowed to attend) and we didn't have to burden our brains with thinking thoughts that were too heavy for us. And on Sundays we got to ride in old pontiac station wagons all crammed with cousins and grandmothers, sisters, and fathers and mothers all the way to Concord on old route 1 A. I don't think Magellan in his circumnavigating the Cape of Good Hope felt as invigorated as I was on those Sunday afternoon trips out to Concord where there were horses and farms and the smell of hay. Yes, mark me down as one that was privileged...because I was.