It Was A Sit-In

It was the late 1960s, so there was nothing new about a sit-in. They'd been on the news for a few years. They disgusted most people I knew who were over 30. They weren't anything we bothered with where I was from. We didn't like things, we said so, we were ignored, and life went on. Like every generation, we learned things from the one before us, then went cheerfully into adulthood making our very own mistakes instead of the ones our parents made.

I'm not sure where the idea for a sit-in came from in our little high school in the cornfields. I need to ask classmates who might remember better than I do. I'm not all that sure what it was about, other than we felt--and I believe we were right--that the election of cheerleaders should be in the hands and votes of the student body and that the administration was overstepping its bounds in deciding whom we had to choose from.

So, one afternoon, we didn't go back to class after lunch. We went into the gym and sat in the bleachers. The junior high kids sat in the balcony above us. We were invited to go back to class.

We declined.

We were invited again. And we declined. Someone, I assume the principal, talked the junior high into going to their classrooms. Things would be all right, they assured. Just go on. And they did, reluctantly. Quietly.

It's been 50-some years. If I told you I remembered everything that was said and done that afternoon, I would be lying. Administration talked. They explained. We listened. We explained. A few people got angry. I think we won some points. I know some classmates don't remember that we did. I seriously don't remember well enough to argue the point.

But I remember when Joe Wildermuth went to the microphone there on the gym floor and looked at us. I think he knew all our names. He was a math teacher who'd broken his back earlier in our high school career, and came back to school as soon as he could to teach from a wheelchair. By the time we were seniors, he walked with a cane.

He'd been trying to decide, Joe said, whether he wanted to sign another contract. Apathy bothered him, and he was seeing a lot of it. But then he said he looked around and saw that we cared, that we were willing to ... well, sit down and be counted, and he guessed he'd sign the contract after all.

Those weren't all his words, and they're probably not even close enough to call a paraphrase, but I still remember what he thought, that he stood with us as we sat, and that he signed his contract.

Recalling that day makes it excruciatingly hard for me to see how we've reached the place we are now. Because in the famous and infamous 60s, that time of the best music ever and protesting virtually everything that didn't seem fair, we cared not only about ourselves, but about others as well. It was when the Peace Corps and Vista were born, when the Civil Rights Act was finally signed, when little Ruby Bridges walked into school with the courage of 1000 warriors.

I remember Vietnam vets being treated horribly when they came home--one of the infamous parts of the 60s--and was glad we'd learned from that. Glad today's vets are welcomed with the respect and gratitude they deserve. Except, wait ... how did we unlearn that? When did it become just another day when a sitting president refers to them as suckers and losers? When as a candidate, he disrespected Gold Star parents and the son they'd lost?

When did violence become the in thing to do? Who does it help? Is it any better from one side than another? Are expensive cars a greater loss than people dying and a capitol building being defaced and vandalized? Is blowing up cars particularly smart? Is smearing human feces anywhere particularly righteous?

I'm not sorry I'm shocked by the place we've reached politically. I'm not sorry to be woke. I love being a snowflake--we are pretty and none of us are alike. I was proud to be one of the government workers about whom one congresswoman said, “Federal employees do not deserve their jobs. Federal employees do not deserve their paychecks, and these are jobs that can be fired at will.”

I'm glad Joe Wildermuth and Ruby Bridges and the veterans I know are my heroes.

I'm glad that back in the 60s, I sat down in the gym. I'm glad I cared. I'm glad I still do.

Have a good week. Be nice to somebody. Let freedom ring.