‘Tis very strange. There’s all this ranting and raving about independence by people who insist on identifying themselves by their birthplace or ethnic origins. Rather early on I discovered it was just a routine, a social habit to elicit a response whose value has virtually no significance– not unlike food that has no caloric value. Why ask meaningless questions and consume empty calories?

Is it all just for show? Is the emphasis on the visual a consequence of the individual being treated like a thing from the get go? If people are treated like cattle, do they behave like cattle?

I say that I failed my children because I did not prepare them to be commodities. But I don’t mean it. It’s a joke.

My mother bartered all her household furnishings for her child–except for the silvered tea pot I was tasked with getting exempt. I don’t know……Does a sense of personal autonomy mitigate against coercing what other people do?