When Skittles Was A Game

Itwas midsummer, and we were at Greenfield Village, my grandson and I. We go so often we call it simply the Village—as opposed to the Museum, which is just down the road. Greenfield Village is a national treasure, established by Henry Ford, in Dearborn, Michigan.

It is said that Mr. Ford wanted children to learn history by experiencing it, so he built a place where old things seem new, and what has long been gone, reappears.

There are historic buildings— Ford’s own birthplace, a seventeenth century windmill, and a one-room schoolhouse. There’s a town hall and a doctor's office, a covered bridge, and a hundred year old Merry-Go-Round. The calliope plays Take Me Out to the Ballgame, and School Days, School Days, Dear Old Golden Rule Days. Bordered by a brick wall on one side, railroad tracks on another, and a wetland forest as a backdrop, the Village belongs to another world.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not idyllic. I’m not fooling myself. There are slave quarters, too—a reminder of a sad and unjust time in our history—and there is no Catholic Church to be found. Farming was hard work, and it’s hot in the glass blowing shop. Candle making is no picnic. The wax can burn little fingers. This is Earth, after all.

Nothing moves too fast. There is the peace of order and quiet and wrongs made right. It’s so different from the way things are now, where confusion reigns and corruption goes unnoticed, where hopelessness suffocates cities and everything seems twisted. Nobody sings much anymore.

I go to the Village to visit our country’s past. And I bring my grandson so he can know how things once were in America. He can eat salmagundi and corn muffins at a trestle table at the Eagle Tavern, an inn that was once a stopover for stagecoaches.

In the dining room, there are candles in hurricane lamps, and salt is served in little bowls. The jam is homemade and the corn, home grown. After lunch, my grandson can ride a train pulled by the Torch Lake, the engine that once hauled copper in the Upper Peninsula.

That’s what he was doing the last day we were there. He walked on stilts and tried his hand at the beanbag toss. But what he liked best was Skittles.

There were six or seven boys, all about the same age, who took up the challenge of a game they had never heard of before.

I sat on the grass and watched them play—these boys who had never met, proving themselves in vigorous competition. It was fair and decent, just good, clean fun. I watched the sheer masculinity of it—the skill, the determination, the focus of those boys. They played to win, fiercely and with honor. There was no silly Everybody wins, there are no losers. There was victory, well deserved and acknowledged.

While I was sitting there, daydreaming, thinking about boys and girls and how much has changed in this engineered gender-neutral society of ours, a young woman walked by. One of the Village workers (most likely a college student as many of the summer workers are), she was dressed in the style of the early twentieth century. Her ankle-length dress was pastel, dotted with flowers with a sash around her narrow waist. The fabric was lightweight cotton, probably muslin, and certainly not polyester. A soft, light-colored hat was set at an angle over her dark, upswept hair. She moved with dignity and style and grace.

As I watched, a young man approached her, clad as well in vintage attire--a beige suit, crisp white collar, and straw hat. She stopped, looked up at him, and took his arm. He smiled, and they strolled across the green, talking quietly. Every now and then, I heard her laugh softly.

The answer came as quickly as the question had formed in my mind. It was the clothes.

Those clothes changed her, I am sure of it. I wonder if she can maintain the same mystique when she goes back to her jeans or yoga pants. I doubt it.

A moment later, a stark contrast materialized in front of me. A small group of young women, four or five of them, all jostled together, walked by the Skittles game. They were about fifteen years old, visitors, I imagine, dressed in frayed denim shorts and low-cut shirts with trashy words printed across their chests.

Nothing was ironed. Every bulge showed. Their natural loveliness was eclipsed by the ugliness of their clothes. They were unkempt.

Their hair hung loose and tangled. They clomped when they walked, scowling, their shoulders hunched forward.

It was more like a shriek, loud and raucous, as they grabbed each other and rushed across the grass. Dear God in Heaven, I thought. Those poor, poor girls.

It’s not their fault. They don’t know any better. No one has taught them. They have no model, not in the movies or the magazines. Not in the schools or in the books. The standards have been destroyed. Girls no longer walk with books on their heads to improve their posture nor learn to sit with their hands folded and their ankles crossed. They don’t know the joy of swirling skirts and lacy cuffs, of matching purses and shoes. Their jewelry is clunky; they don’t wear pearls. Unlike the radical feminists of the sixties and seventies, they don’t disdain ladylike comportment. They just have no idea what it is.

All through their childhood and school years, they’re directed to a cross-role identification. They are taught to emulate boys, compete with boys, and set the same goals as boys. Achievement is according to male standards. Nothing else matters. Forget the soft and gentle things. Don’t let anyone call you girl.

This new paradigm is supposed to enhance their self-esteem and assure them a coveted position in the world of business and government. Like Esau, they've sold their birthright, but the difference between them and Jacob’s brother is, they don’t even know what it was. They get less than pottage.

Marriage and family are supposed to be sidelines now, fit in after work and on the weekend. And that work is different, too. The traditionally feminine professions are spurned. They’re not good enough for the brilliant, upwardly mobile, 4.0 woman. Nursing and teaching are cast aside in favor of engineering, finance, and marketing. The work is brutal, the competition exhausting. That glass ceiling just won’t crack.

The workplace used to be called a man’s world, and even though no one wants to admit it, it still is. Strange as it may sound, and difficult for the young to understand, the old way existed for good reason. It was established to serve the family and, therefore, was of great benefit to the woman and her children. She could draw apart—free to love, to nurture, and to protect. Even her clothes bespoke that purpose, as did her manners. She was expected to be modest, lovely, a bit delicate, refined. And that was a good thing. A very good thing.

For the family to survive, this social structure and the accompanying mores must be restored--not only that, but they need to be encouraged and valued by women. Little does the modern girl know it—because everyone has told her the opposite-- but this structure is the key to satisfaction with her own work.

gentle, pretty, lovely, or fragile

in describing women anymore? No, they use words like

hot

order of things would feel like rebellion. For women, who are naturally more accepting and compliant, it’s easier to just get with the program and let nature be damned.

So off they go to put in their forty hours (or fifty, if they want to climb the corporate ladder.) And they soon learn to their surprise that, in addition to talent and competence which women possess in full measure, male traits are necessary for worldly success. It requires a fixed focus, which is difficult for women because many of their responsibilities entail constant interruption—things like sick children, elderly parents, cooking, shopping, teaching, feeding. How they can concentrate on spreadsheets and production predictions when all these other things have to be done? Who’s going to do them?

Besides, most women are circlemakers, more interested in drawing people together than pushing themselves forward.

Until their femininity is crushed, women are generally not aggressive. (Until now, I guess, when they have been granted a new opportunity—they get to go into combat. They can experience the joy of killing some other woman’s husband or son.

It won’t come easily, but, with enough training, by golly, they can do it. Hoist that M-16, man that tank!) From contact sports to the battlefield, all this is antithetical to womanliness. To appease the rage of a few miserable feminists, society has to be leveled. No distinctions allowed.

Girls are being required to force themselves into a way of thinking and acting that is alien to them, donning their masculinized persona like an ill-fitting coat.

sexy,

instead, and it makes me sick to my stomach. It’s shameful. (And speaking of shame, why do pregnant women wear those tight knit tops, outlining the contours of their life-swollen womb? That baby is supposed to be protected. Cover up that belly! Let’s have a little modesty here.) Can you see what’s happening?

We’ve got to stop this before we’re all turned into barbarians. Reject the coarseness of this age. Refuse to march in their parade.

lady.

They’re wrong. You’re not one of the guys. Rather, you are given something wonderful. Modern society has obscured it, but it’s there. Unwrap it; behold the gift.

Don’t be afraid to dream dreams of hearth and home, of little children tugging your skirts and a husband who loves you more than life itself. Don’t be afraid to say you want babies, not birth control, and you have no desire to be the director of marketing for a Fortune 500 firm. Go forward.

pedestal—

that assures the continuity of civilization. Somebody’s got to save the culture. Somebody’s got to polish the rough edges.

We need to insist that nature be respected. God created us male and female. He didn’t make a unisex world. We’re not supposed to be the same. Human nature is not androgynous. Let’s have a bit of divinely created diversity here.

Boys will play Skittles and girls will giggle. Dolls are for girls and trucks are for boys. Don’t mix it up.

For those of you who have been squeezed into a defeminized mold, break free. Start over.

Learn from the girl on the Village Green. Put on a pretty dress, toss the laborer’s pants in the trash, and buy a hat. You’ll feel

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