She sucking a bottle of milk and I'm sipping wine.
We're watching cartoons.
I have to tell you cartoons have gone to Hell since I was a kid.
We're watching "The Mickey Mouse Club" is nothing like the Mickey Mouse Club I used to watch ... the one with live kids like Annette Funicello, whom I sure you remember, like me, as "the over developed Mousketeer."
There were other reasons than the two Annette gave us back then because the cartoons were funny because ... well ... Mickey Mouse ... Bugs Bunny and our favorites were very politically incorrect!
Mickey wasn't above threatening Donald Duck with a shotgun to get what he wanted!
A card carrying member of the National Rifle Association, Elmer Fudd wants to "kill the Wappit" every time he sees him.
Pepe LePew is obviously a sexual predator.
Betty Boop crossed racial and sexual lines in her most famous cartoon, "Scrub me mamma with a Boogie Beat!"
That was funny stuff when I was growing up.
Watching cartoons with my daughter Che leaves me horrified.
Arthur ... The Amazing World of Gumbo ... Sponge Bob Square Pants?
They're awful.
They're riddled with garbage trying way too hard to be funny and original. The animation is terrible. The message is all ... so perfect. Everyone's politically correct!
The door to our bedroom slams shut with a gust of wind.
Che jumps in my arms, turns her large blue eyes towards and without words asks for an explanation.
"It's a ghost," I explain.
Her almond shape eyes grow large.
She knows what I'm talking about because I've introduced her to Casper the friendly ghost.
Leaving the couch, we creep through the Living Room into the kitchen making our way towards the tiny hallway, past the bathroom in the bedroom ... where four white drapes fly upward.
Frightened blue eyes stare at me over the round, pink pacifier.
"It's under the bed," I say, and our brave little girl, spins around, drops to her knees and peeps into the darkness, wetly sucking her "pacie".
Watching from above, stiffing a giggle, I'm a proud papa.
She "ain't 'fraid of no ghost."
But I am.
"The ghosts of our past are boiling in a cauldron that is spewing fury and distress across America like lava from a volcano," writes columnist Andy Brack, Charleston City Paper, 2/13/19).
"And just like climate change, many deny or ignore how segments of our society are colliding, getting hotter and hotter week after week. There is an increasing sense that America is out of control, preferring dysfunction and confrontation to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
"Leaders wear blackface.
#MeToo revelations.
White nationalist rallies.
Priests abusing kids.
A high school student staring down a native American.
Deadly shootings at schools, churches, {mosques} and synagogues.
Gay conversion therapy.
All-white social and country clubs."
We're a country on edge, seemingly leaderless as ghosts increasingly confront society, deteriorating the values that united us in the past. It's as if there's something new every day heating up the cauldron which releases even more hot venom from the ghosts.
I don't know about you but I listen to a lot of talk I don't want to engage in ... so I don't.
"You don't have to look far to hear the haughty ghost of racism, discrimination, paternalism and privilege" spewing everywhere in America.
The ghosts are here and no matter how hard we try not to see them, we do every single day.
One of three things happen ... we're seduced by them and spew the same "isms" that keep them alive ... we ignore them pretending they don't exist ... or we confront them and it's never funny if you're a Ghostbuster because it's so easy for ghosts to drag you down to their level.
"Count it all joy, brothers and sisters, when you meet various trials for you know the testing of your faith makes you steadfast" (James 1:2-3).
It's hard to have joy when confronting evil kept alive by ghosts ... especially if their haunting the very people you call friends or family.
It's a test.
We're either steadfast against them or we're not.
If we are, we side with God.
If we're not then we're in danger of being possessed like our friends and family spewing the racism, discrimination, paternalism and privilege we abhor.
Every single day it's a pass or fall only test.
Che leads me back to the sofa.
Sitting down, she snuggles beside me, head resting on my chests, her tiny hand wrapped around my index finger and we watch Disney's "Beauty and the Beast."
Belle, the princess falls in love with the Beast, who is under a spell cast by an evil Witch, and the only way the spell can be broken is if someone can love him at his worst.
She does.
The Beast is transformed into a handsome Prince.
"If only it were that easy," I sigh to my daughter.
The wind blows through the windows and the white drapes fly again to remind me the ghosts remain, if we can find them or not.
All we have to do is keep an ear out for them ... cause you can hear them everywhere.
