Sander’s main point in his essay “The Men We Carry in Our Minds” questions drawing neat lines between men and women, in regard to power, without taking class, race and other factors into account. He does this by showing us the powerlessness and brutality his male role models endured. He begins with a brief but searing memory of black convicts and white guards, then moves through the many toilers and soldiers he knew and ends with the man who sat at a front desk.  

A scholarship is his ticket to a new world. “Here I met for the first time young men who had assumed from birth that they would lead lives of comfort and power.” This sentence stood out for me because it highlights how much one’s point of view depends on one’s position in the world. We each understand our own grievances, our own feelings of outsiderness and the injustices we suffer because of them, better than we understand someone else’s. He says “It was not my fate to become a woman, so it was easier for me to see the graces.”

I liked this man, Scott Sanders, very much, because I personally identified with his story. I, too, grew up in a small farm community where men endured back breaking labor on a daily basis, (however, in my family, my mother worked beside my father in the fields and then came home to an endless array of backbreaking household chores as well, including daily loads of wet laundry lugged up basement stairs to hang on lines.  We were a family of 11 with no modern appliances.) Like Sanders, I, too, received a ticket out to redefine myself in a big city. I came of age during the so called “second wave” of feminists but clearly lacked the confidence and expectations that my middle class sisters felt entitled to.  And now, as a city busdriver, there is not a day that passes where I do not witness in some way a white person showing their entitlement to feel superior to another of a different race.   We seem limited in our ability to walk a mile in another’s shoes and power remains relative to one’s individual culture, to one’s race, class, gender, abilities, etc. But the lines between individual experiences are complicated and therefore difficult for us to make narrow generalizations, like between gender only, in this case, without taking all aspects of a person into consideration.

“… and then he sang a song about the ninety and nine safe in the fold, but one little lamb was left out in the cold.” That must have been a foreboding omen for a child. That, and the fact a great many old people knelt and prayed nearby, “old women with jet black faces and braided hair, old men with work-gnarled fingers,” in a place where it seemed to a young boy “they ought to know.”           

To feel you’re the only one of many who cannot see the light in front of you and yet, to remain steadfast in your pursuit of it, requires confidence, confidence or a stubborn integrity. Only at a late hour, ashamed to hold up others in the congregation and wanting “to save further trouble” does young Langston lower the standard of truth he set for himself.

Of course, letting yourself down and disappointing the one who helped you set the standard in the first place, carries painful consequences. Too bad, he couldn’t call up or download the Danish version of The Emperor’s New Clothes, for comfort

While much of this story felt sadly familiar, the statement “I made a fist and in one swift move, spun around and smacked him straight in the mouth,” surprised me. Like your own, and Lee’s, disbelief, the smack abruptly interrupted business as usual. It reminded me of all those fatherly mantras I read about or saw on television that said “You must fight back; The only way to stop a bully is to stand up to them; Fighting back is the only way to gain  respect; The only language bullies understand, etc.”

I never really believed these voices, probably because I never had the courage to strike back physically myself, but I must admit, the further I’m removed from a real life highschool bully, the more sensible it seems. At the time I could only cringe, try avoidance and non-reaction, or get away as quickly as possible.

Apart from describing this dramatic personal experience, the writers main point in the story is recognizing how one’s position on the social ladder affects infighting. The defining message is “Somehow, people at the top never needed to worry; people at the bottom regularly did each other in.” 

This blog trip is all new to me. I appreciate the experience, however. While I don’t want this blog to be all about the bus, I do spend 8.5 hours a day behind the wheel. I like my job except for the crazy hours we keep during the first few years and the fact that my body shapes into a question mark my first ten minutes out of bed, unless I rigorously exercise.

One example of a favorite driving trip for me is a late afternoon ride from downtown to New Duluth when I’m just a little behind schedule (under five minutes or it gets real stressful). I stop for teenagers with skateboards (almost always boys); for babies pushed in strollers by young parents (usually moms); and for older folks balancing assorted plastic bags with their walking sticks. When the bus is packed with people of all ages, all colors, all sizes, where different languages are spoken, that’s when it feels like a community, a living room on wheels. I know of no other situation in the city where such a mix of people come together. Sometimes magic happens between strangers then through a chance meeting, funny stories shared, or help from unexpected places.

Starting today and for the next three months, I’ll drive a lot of trips between the top of Piedmont Avenue and the top of Woodland Avenue with downtown as the midpoint. Lots of UMD students ride this one.  It is called Route 13.

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