I was talking on Skype the other day to my old childhood friend Becky (we were around 5 years old when we first met) about my big sister Kathy. Kathy was my best friend as a child. We did all sorts of stuff together; she called me "T" and whenever I had a problem she was always there to help me sort things out.
We grew up together on a farm in Oregon; I don't know if she particularly liked it or not, but she did have her own horse (which she couldn't ride for beans) and was a pretty normal girl. Until she went to college at the University of Oregon.
This was back in the '60s; the heyday of Abbie Hoffman, the Black Panthers, and Students for a Democratic Society. Whatever happened, my sister was sucked into the maw of leftist philosophy, and turned, seemingly overnight, from a normal farm girl to a fist-shaking, snarling protester, who hated capitalist pigs, sexists, racists, the "pigs," the establishment, etc.
I was due to go to college in 1970, and her present to me was to send me a little essay by some guy, whose name escapes me, entitled "The Student as Nigger." This was to get me ready to crap on all of my college professors and to begin attacking anyone over the age of thirty as members of the establishment or white devil slavemasters (or whatever came to mind that sounded protest-appropriate). I sent my sister a letter telling her that I wasn't interested in such things, not having been indoctrinated yet, and not to bother sending me anything else like that. She was offended, and a few years later told me that my response to her "sounded like Dad." I was, and am, still annoyed over the transformation of my sister from a normal girl to a nut, all due to leftists.
At the time, I was too young to have formulated a political philosophy, but if I were to trace it back to the beginning, I would say that my sister's complete personality change when she went to college was the trigger. For years afterwards she would send Christmas presents back to my mother that had been sent to her children, saying she didn't want her children to accept anything from her evil parents. The only time she ever came around and made an attempt to be somewhat polite was when she was short of cash. Otherwise, there she was in Canada. Yep, Canada. During the Vietnam War she married a draft-dodger and moved to Canada. My dad, a WW2 vet, didn't think much of that. Then she dumped the guy, got pregnant by a black guy, and ended up with HIM. Again, my father (possibly the prototype for Archie Bunker) didn't think much of THAT, either, and Kathy pretty much became a non-entity.
I don't remember hearing from her for years; then one morning at work I got a call from my mother. Kathy had been killed in a fall from a horse (I told you earlier she couldn't ride for beans). Apparently she'd been tossed onto her head, just like Christopher Reeve would be some years in the future, but she was dead just about as soon as she hit the ground. And the last I remembered hearing from her, it was seeing my best childhood friend yelling and spouting epithets about our family, all a result of leftist ideology. And I realized in a flash that, being suddenly gone, there would never be a time where Kathy and I could sit down and make up, or reminisce about growing up. She died hating her family, estranged from all of us due to leftist ideology, and went to her grave shaking her fist. And for that I can't forgive leftists.
So I suppose, on Kathy's birthday: April Fool's Day, the 1st of April -- I can say that I trace my disgust with leftists to a horseback-riding accident years ago. Leftists took my sister away, and turned a young, impressionable girl into a screaming harpy, and with her death, all chances of a reconciliation ended. But no biggie for them; lose one footsoldier but there are millions more to indoctrinate.
Happy birthday, big sister. Sorry I lost you. Was it worth it?
