Tag Archives: greasy

Dated

Dated: (adj) out-of-date; old-fashioned

Oily tongues and greasy lips.

This would be my description of the verbiage that comes off the mouths of those settlers who presently have found their place on the prairie of Earthscape.

Everyone thinks they are so smart.

Everyone believes they’ve invented the wheel—but they don’t want to call it the wheel. That’s too dated.

So instead they call it the “circlebon.”

And they smirk, as if cleverness has found a permanent home in their hearts.

I just hate it when a song is played and it’s beautiful, powerful, emotional—and people sit around and discuss how the production is so “dated” that it’s difficult to listen to.

Or they’ll watch a movie and call it dated. Yes—it is dated. It was produced on a particular date.  Traveling into the future to produce it later was impossible.

They took what they had, what they knew, what they felt, what they believed, and they put it on a screen. So without you commenting on the camera work or the lighting, or whether the credits were done in your favorite font, could you simply just bring your soul and let it ease down into the warm waters of the experience?

No?

I understand.

Just please take your oily tongue and your greasy lips elsewhere.

I don’t care if something is dated.

I want to know if it can touch me, if I can feel something real and if it inspires me to find the better parts of my humanity—instead of becoming a gorilla with a weekend pass to the suburbs.

Afro

Words from Dic(tionary)

dictionary with letter A

 

Afro: (n) a hairstyle with very tight curls that sticks out all around the head, like the natural hair of some black people

James was black.

Nothing truly significant can be ascertained without this fact. I do not bring this up because his skin color made him superior OR inferior to anyone else. It just gave him different hair.

James worked for me for a while–matter of fact, lived in my house. It was a rather communal setup, so we shared food, toothpaste, and even hair products.

James was very gentlemanly. It was several weeks of quiet displeasure on his part before I noticed his disgruntled spirit.

I was a bit perturbed so I asked what the problem was. His response was standard.  “Nothing.”

Of course, he knew that his “nothing” was really NOT nothing, and he hoped that I would pursue his “nothing” by trying to find something out. So I did.

“No, no,” I continued. “What’s up?”

After a few more overtures of encouragement, he released his burden. He explained that his hair was not like my hair, and that my “white people” shampoo and conditioner was killing his follicles. I produced a quizzical look, as paler brothers often do.

He asked me to feel his hair–and I discovered it was rather bristly and dry. He explained in vivid detail that his afro, which was very fashionable for the time, needed to be conditioned with the kinds of oil that I would probably find to be greasy, but his hair found necessary.

I think he thought I would be critical, since the idea of purchasing additional products would be expensive, but stepping out of my Anglo-Saxon world and putting down my mace and Viking horns, I agreed. Matter of fact, he took me with him to the store to purchase his items, and even though they tallied up to quite a sum, they made James happy. They also gave a tremendous shine and bounce to his afro.

I learned a lot that day. Even though afros are not as prevalent as they were when James and I were working together, I understood–and I understand now–that what’s good for one person’s do is a don’t for others.