Something's Amiss

Wait. What? That’s not the way it happened…

It was Christmas night, and Dave and I were watching TV. We were not watching the news, neither a Fox re-write of the 2020 election results nor an MSNBC grind on some GOP folly. We were watching It’s a Wonderful Life on Amazon Prime, and a critical segment of the movie had been cut. 

It had been a lovely day of opening gifts in front of a cozy fire with daughter Casey, 6-year-old Eleanor, son-in-law PJ, and their dear old dog, Tallulah. We’d exchanged cheery texts with friends, sisters, and nephews, and enjoyed a Zoom call with my son and his family. For dinner, we savored Dave’s homemade lasagna, baccala, and stuffed calamari. How lovely to settle in after all the hubbub and excitement with some black and white serenity and the familiar holiday message of It’s a Wonderful Life.  

For those who don’t know the story – and there can’t be many of you – good guy George Bailey had repeatedly given up his dreams of travel to bolster the Bedford Falls Savings and Loan Company. This small bank enabled the town’s hard-working people to buy homes rather than rent from the wealthy, scheming Mr. Potter. Potter finally gets his chance to sink the Savings and Loan when George’s addled uncle misplaces an $8,000 deposit. Potter refuses George’s plea for help and tells him that, because George has a $10,000 life insurance policy, he’s worth more dead than alive. As his misfortunes mount, George decides the world would indeed be better if he had never lived. He heads to the river intending to jump.

Enter Clarence, a wing-less angel, Heaven-sent, to help George understand his value.  

CUT!

What? Yes! Cut! The trip back in time to a George-less world. Cut! The scene where George’s little brother dies because George isn’t there to save him. Cut! The embittered citizens living in Potter’s Field squalor without a kindly Savings and Loan to support them. Cut! Worst of all – ghastly really - George’s wife consigned to life as an Old Maid of a Librarian. Cut! Every scene showing George how important he had been in the lives of so many. Instead, we next see George gleefully sprinting through the snowy streets of Bedford Falls, inexplicably restored to good spirits. 

Since its release in 1946, It's a Wonderful Life has become a Christmas classic, a reminder of the ripples every one of us generates in all we do, whether we are given to know the impacts or not. Why would the geniuses behind Amazon Prime mess with a movie we all treasure and know so well? 

Reportedly, they felt the deleted scenes were too dark. 

Too dark? Please. Amazon Prime offers Silence of the Lambs  and Psycho. Graphic violence is available to all ages at all times, yet A Wonderful Life required censorship? Was this a sample of some soulless AI editing or the work of an ignorant corporate pup who understood neither the message nor the importance of tradition? 

In fairness, I confess I am not one to go to the mountain for the First Amendment. I’ve always taken issue with First Amendment sanctions cited to allow hate speech, Klan marches in Black neighborhoods, or Neo-Nazi marches through those that are Jewish. I feel the First has loftier goals, protection of the right to speak out against unjust laws or government, not license to preach and practice harm. My son and I have had some conversations about this: who would dictate what should be censored and where it should stop? I get his point, but still… 

Perhaps I’m over-reacting to Amazon's edits to It's a Wonderful Life, but with politicians and social media obscuring truth, the free press under assault, and Texan textbooks “softening” history to avoid causing discomfort, I’m concerned to see how readily the powerful can change a storyline. 

Lately, reality and fiction seem blurred with a convicted felon in line for the presidency, an anti-vaxxer nominated to head Health and Human Services, an accused sexual predator for Department of Defense, and a Vengeance advocate for the FBI. If we didn’t already feel something was amiss, here in Easton, the very heavens shuddered on the Eve of 2025. Thunder blasted celestial anger, lightning flashed, and torrents pelted the beleaguered Earth. Surely Shakespeare would have written it just so.   

 

 

 

 

Inside the Skin

An unmasked man called me a sheep this morning as I waited in line at Trader Joe’s.  Believe me, I dished out some solid zingers later as I re-lived the conversation in my car on the way to my next errand. But, why would a short man with a mustache insult a masked gray-haired woman in a flannel shirt and flats for no reason?

I’d arrived at the parking lot at 7:50 AM to take advantage of senior shopping hours. Because of the store’s effort to reduce capacity to enable social distancing, a line had formed. It ended by a table occupied by two men drinking coffee outside Bagel Plus.  “Are you in line?” I asked. They shook their heads no, and I took my position 6’ beyond them.

One of the men said, “So.  What’s in Trader Joe’s that’s worth waiting for? You could cross the street to Shop Rite and walk right in.” He’d been pleasant, so I launched into my list of Trader Joe’s delicacies: shrimp burgers, dark chocolate covered peanut butter cups, frozen halibut, and mahi-mahi burgers, “heavenly when grilled!” I added. 

He nodded, satisfied, and said, “They have some specialty items then.” 

They were joined, at that point, by the short, rude man.  My shopping motives held apparent fascination for he, too, asked me the same question about waiting. His friend said, “She’s already explained. I’ll fill you in.”

“Sheep,” said the rude man, looking at me.

Startled, it took me a moment to process. “That’s an insult,” I said, though with question in my tone, for really, why would he bother?  The man shrugged and nodded. 

There are countless “I-should-have-saids” that would have been wise, calm, and cutting, and if anything similar happens again, my in-car rehearsal has now equipped me. But I am spoiled in being unaccustomed to fending off unkindness, and all I came up with on the spot was bland truth, “it’s not sheep-ish to stay healthy. “

After Trader Joe’s, I drove to Stop & Shop, still rankling, but not hurt.  Being called a sheep is the mildest of affronts, but the comment stayed with me.  Given the protests churning the country, I reflected, how would it feel to live with the routine threat of harsh words, racial slurs, injury, injustice, and death?  These based not on one’s actions but on something that was God’s decision alone.  When does that hurt, frustration, and anger erupt? 

- When, for eight minutes, Officer Derek Chauvin kneels on the neck of George Floyd, a black man who has done no harm. 

- When Ahmaud Arbery is hunted down and shot for jogging while black.           

- When plainclothes police burst into an apartment without knocking and fatally shoot Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old EMT, eight times. 

- When cell phone technology permits video proof, and white people can no longer look away. 

Brute force. Intrusion with no knock. Rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse peaceful protesters. Have the First and Fourth Amendments been scrapped? Is the Constitution still law or just a list of suggestions? And when we love color and diversity in all else, in flowers, fabric, and our fellow creatures, why is it cause for suspicion in our own kind?

As streets worldwide boiled with protesters willing to risk Covid so their voices might be heard, I shopped for groceries.  While passing in aisles, masked shoppers were cordial, saying, “hello” or “excuse me” or “stay safe.” Thoughts of the rude man subsided as I sought corn meal, potatoes, butter, and birthday cards. 

My rounds complete, I wheeled my cart to check out. The cashier, an African American woman with a tumble of magenta curls, greeted me. Her mask hid her mouth, but her eyes were smiling. No one waited behind me, so our conversation was leisurely as she registered my selections, and I packed them in paper bags. We talked about the anguish of past weeks, and our hope that good would come of it.  She told me about her daughter, who’d been successfully treated for bone cancer when she was eight years old, and how grateful they both were to her doctors. She drew herself taller as she told me her daughter had wished to give back, and now, at 34, is a radiologist. 

Oh, the cashier was proud of her girl! She pulled out her phone to show me a picture of the two of them, and in the photo, I was able to see my cashier’s smile. In that moment, we were two moms bending over the phone, teary-eyed together at the thought of the torment of her child’s long-ago cancer and beaming (behind our masks) at today’s pride in her daughter’s path. 

When we parted, we were earnest in our wishes that each other stay healthy, and curved our arms in an air hug. Surely that encounter is the one more true? May the horror of Floyd’s death and the furor released shock us into connection with the people inside the skin.