Maybe Mother’s Day is the time to share the message my mother left on my phone with my children and grandchildren. I’m proud of you for just being who you are, and I love you unconditionally.
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After years of struggling with gambling, I learned the only way to win is to never play the game at all.
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Boycott

As a child I don’t remember  questioning the authority of my teachers,  I loved school and remember no run-ins there.

My parents were easy-going and so neither do I remember much contention at home,  although as a teenager I had the usual adolescent battles with my mother,  and remember storming out of the house during heated arguments.   However what the fights were about I can barely recall,  although I remember once desperately wanting a Loden coat that all my friends seemed to have.  But my parents,  usually indulgent,  adamantly refused to buy it for me as it was imported from Germany and in those post-war years they insisted on boycotting all German goods.

And later there were some issues involving their disapproval of a few guys I dated,  and of other youthful decisions I had made.  But otherwise I don’t remember seriously questioning parental authority.

Then while working as a high school librarian there were  few issues that brought me in conflict with the school administration,  although when my teachers’ union voted to strike I marched on the picket line.   And I joined the American Library Association and took outspoken stands on censorship and book banning.   And in my community I sat on a local civic board that fought the city on budgetary and environmental issues.

But in my professional and social circles I was an outlier who was generally accepting of the status quo and unapologetically apolitical – a strange conundrum since I’d grown up in a passionately political family.

And for years I remained stubbornly apolitical until I could bury my head in the sand no longer.  (See Good Girl and Getting Woke)

And with that awakening I realized how admirable was my parents’ moral stance in boycotting German goods,  a lesson more valuable than a Loden coat.

– Dana Susan Lehrman 

Anti-Authoritarianism

My German-born father was rather strict and accustomed to getting his own way.   When I turned 14 and was about to graduate from junior high he wanted to send me to boarding school in Switzerland.  I refused, not wanting to leave my friends and family.

“It’s like the army,”  he retorted,  “and I’m the general and you’re the private.”

“Then I’m going AWOL.”   I said.

That September I enrolled at Forest Hills High,  my local neighborhood school.

The writer with unnamed Retro admin

– Danny L,  guest writer