PRISTINE LIFE EXPERIENCES

PRISTINE LIFE EXPERIENCES

Sometimes we take for granted our experiences - most of which many folk say we don't control or expect. As I review my own chaotic life, I'm forced to let loose a huge guffaw realizing that, viewed all together, my activities form a unique pannoply resembling the life of a Black 'Perils of Pauline!'

Have you ever:

• been kicked in the chest by the back legs of a friskly horse which'd just had water right after eating oats? (Lucky for me the kick merely lifted me off the ground: it's a farm 'no-no' to give water to a horse right after feeding it oats!)
• at age seven, received a response-letter from Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt in the White House?
• harvested black walnuts, spread 'em out to dry for later use in deelishious dark chocolate fudge your Mother made?
• become a Boston, Massachussetts Debutant at the Sheraton with Sir Arthur Fiedler at the scene?
• had your middle fingernail - right hand - permanently disfigured by the tusk of a big black boar named (by yer Dad) "Joe Louis," as you were feeding him (the boar) a banana peel? (Careless, careless - it coulda' been worse!)
• milked cows? - placing a crudely-made wooden stool under a cow, dodging her smelly, poop-stained swinging tail and fidgety back leg; balancing the metal pail under her teats and, leaning yer head on her warm stomach, pulling on her sometimes sore teats and directing the hot milk flow into the pail (or sometimes into the nearby cat's mouth) - listening to the welcome 'squish-squish' sound of the spray hitting the pail and the rising milk? (I am smiling - almost back there remembering - it's something you'd never forget and you'da' been lucky if that durn cow didn't step right into the bucket and turn the whole mess over!)
• proudly plowed an entire field - driving the family tractor - all the while breathing in the unforgettable aroma of clean, fresh, newly-turned dark earth? (I can smell it right now!)
• learned to shoot a .32 caliber handgun in a deserted field in Barbados, West Indies?
• dug up a basket of asparagus - it's planted in beds and you use a V-shaped cutting tool to harvest it under the ground - it grows right back the next week!?
• prepared chicken for dinner from A to Z: catching it after a hectic farmyard chase (bird cackling in terror all the while); wringing its neck (or using a short hatchet to chop off its head); sticking it into a bucket/pail of steaming hot water, then (pee yew!) plucking the soaking wet feathers off the body (you'll know first hand what's meant by 'bumpy chicken skin'), butchering the bird with a sharp knife - separating the parts at the joints, seasoning the meat, frying the bird, serving it to the family, washing the dishes afterwards and then disposing of the bones later? That's 'A to Z!'
• journalistically-covered The March on Washington - in 1963 - for your British-based Afro-Caribbean magazine, "Flamingo;"?
• gone through 24 hour 'natural childbirth' labor on Guy Fawke's day in London, England?
• called out BINGO! numbers on your own TV Show in Barbados, W.I. for the Lion's Club?
• given birth to a fat healthy baby boy after 8 hours of labor?
• crashed the White House in Washington, D.C., met and shook hands with JFK as the White House Photographer, Cecil Stoughton, captured the exciting interaction on film? (Two different shots)
• been rescued in Central Park, New York City, by a mounted policeman ("Hold on! I'll save you!") as your own horse bolted with you rendered incapacitated with uncontrollable laughter?
• walked into a NYC Bellevue Hospital operating room with four or five masked, gloved, robed doctors - hands up - standing facing you - behind an anesthetized, gigantic, reddish Black male lying prone on the operating table - huge exposed erect blood-engorged penis standing straight up in the center of the draped bright green sheets? (A Head Nurse compassionately steered an embarassed student nurse - me - quickly away from the guffawing MDs who'd set up the entire scenario as a joke)
• joined a fast-walking group of Trinidadian/Tobagonian males to tramp across the jungle in Trinidad, searching for orchids? (I was the only female - and was hoping to stumble across a 'mackawell' - a huge boa constrictor - I like snakes!)
• planned and implemented the first Women's Polictical Caucus in Barbados, West Indies (Although American citizens are not supposed to be involved in the politics of other nations)
• testified at the New York City Human Rights Court of Judge Maldonado as an Expert on racism/colorism;
• been written up by the Harvard University Professor 'Skip' Gates African American National Biographical project? (available in its entirety elsewhere on the Blog: www.caroltaylorword.blogspot.com )
• ridden a cow?
• in 2010, received a personal note from President Jimmy Carter in response to your letter to him praising his anti-racism/colorism remarks made by bigots about President Barack Obama?
• rescued a Canadian citizen from the clutches of the police when she was snatched up at 6 in the morning and had called you for help?
• invented the http://www.racismtest.org? (which every hueman being should take)
• landed with your hands wrist-deep in two smelly cow-poop patties and been unable to move (with your Mother howling with laughter at your unenviable plight)?
• threatened by the U.S.A. State Department (which'd compiled a foot-high file on you - retrieved copy with huge black redacted items marring the pages - under the FOIA) with the loss of your American citizenship at the same time as another country was asininely-giving you an oxymoronic 'opportunity' of 'registering as a Barbadian citizen' or 'you may be declared a prohibited immigrant!' (talk about the fear of becoming a 'woman without a country!')
• invited to lunch with an American Ambassador; tea with Harry Belafonte at the Russian Tea Room in NYC; dinner at NY's Waldorf Astoria with the Premier of Guyana, Dr. Cheddi Jagan; Indian cuisine in London, England, with Grenada Prime Minister Eric Gairy's Attorney General, Keith Alleyne, Q.C.; an interview with boxer Sugar Ray Robinson at London's posh Cumberland Hotel; London dinner with Guyanese writer Professor Ian Carew; supper with famied sociologist Lionel Tiger, London again; drinks at your home in Barbados, with Prime Minister of Barbados, The Hon. Errol Walton Barrow, Esq.?
• flown in a tiny beechcraft plane up to Albany, New York to meet with Governor Averell Harriman?
• invited to the Merv Griffin Show in Cleveland, Ohio - by Caravel Jet, after saying publicly that "Integration is the quaint conceit of the white man that all Blacks wanna' be white!"
• coined the term "colorism?"
• met and spoke with Malcom X the night before the 1063 March on Washington?
• sat at the feet of the famed Trinidad/Tobago Historian/Political Commentator C.L.R. James?
• played on a soccer team - half male, half female?
• water-skied on a circular table top?
• been arrested in a Broolyn, New York courthouse with Rev. Al Sharpton, Attorney William Kunstler and others (held overnight - rescue-represented by Attorney-at-War Alton H. Maddox, Jr.)?

Whoa! Lemme' stop with this next one - although there are loads more of my experiences you might be able to read about when I publish my (completed) controversial Autobiography!

• been invited by the emminent Black Congressman Rev. Adam Clayton Powell to "come and speak at the Church!"? (I'm done for now!)