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Literal Chest Pains … Parenting a Pandemic Kid
Oh, the good old days when I compartmentalized everything, shielding myself from emotional pain, disassociating from the political beat-downs I was hired as a proxy to suffer, and feeling free to fill my time with all kind of distractions for professional advancement. Those days are long gone … and good riddance.
Now, I’m old and retired. I began suffering chest pains a few weeks back. And, as many of you already know, I am Mom to a troubled kid. She’s 21. She lives with us. She works in a grocery store that attracts cranky customers; the kind that like to find a small person behind the counter, one who looks weak and meek, one who probably won’t fight back if they chose them as that day’s punching bag. That’s what it seems like. These angry and disillusioned customers come through the automated doors targeting small-in-stature clerks that they can verbally beat down at will with impunity because they’re pissed off about their life and the world, and they can’t help but spew their frustration and ugliness at the first vulnerable grocery clerk they find.
My daughter is that small person, who is not only tiny, but also, because of her serious mental health challenges, struggles to groom herself. You know, she forgets things … like taking a shower, brushing her teeth, washing her face, wearing clean black jeans to work, and making small attempts to comb her hair.
I almost choked on my beverage in the car when I heard an ad from cyber-security guru Kim Commando, warning that the government has enlisted the United States Post Office to spy on our social media content and report it back to certain agencies. Then the same story was being discussed on two different radio stations. From 
Only weeks into the new Biden-Harris Administration, Democrats defeated a bill that would have protected babies that survived an abortion. Called the 
be activists.
While all of us were shouting about freedom and due process, and the Left was screaming back about sexual predators, the continuous creep of Islam continued unabated. I came across three programs that are paid for with our tax dollars: a program with the innocuous title, Primary Source; a program developed for Newton, MA schools by the Harvard Center for Middle Eastern Studies (CMES); and a program funded by the Department of Education and distributed by PBS, called Access Islam. I’d like to describe each one and then offer some thoughts.
My son entered high school last week. In his American History class, the teacher wasted no time with the indoctrination: The very first assignment was a selection from the work of Howard Zinn. Before you suggest I summarily withdraw him from the school, let me say that I think this is a good thing. I want him to be exposed to progressive thought, the more ridiculous the better.