Log In


Reset Password
  • MENU
    Columns
    Saturday, November 09, 2024

    I’ll take the kids over political division

    Mashantucket - Many of us in the crowd of more than 600 caught tears occasionally Tuesday night, awash in stories of perseverance and triumph. The best night of the whole year sure gets better with each rendition, this one the 43rd rendering of the Martin Luther King Scholarship Awards Dinner inside the Premier Ballroom at Foxwoods Resort Casino.

    Our tears were borne of inspiration and joy, tethered to the idea that what we watched and experienced was truly authentic - real people doing real things in real life - rather than the contrivances we allow to foster the faux moral outrage that gets us through our days.

    The 12 honorees - 12 high school students from the region - get to write our future. Not the people we’re about to elect in a few weeks. And yet what occupies our minds and our keyboards? Political tribalism wrapped in moral superiority: Somehow God is on your side, by golly, because your side is the right one.

    I wonder when and if we’re all going to get tired of the dart throwing and awaken from the self-congratulatory angst that comes when the “other side” wins. Make no mistake: The darts come from both aisles. We’re all guilty. It’s just that many can’t practice the self-awareness required to understand that extremists have more in common than they’d ever fathom.

    You know what real life is? The stories of the kids Tuesday night. Where they were born, what they’ve overcome and the coping skills they learned to do so.

    You know what real life is? The parents of the kids Tuesday night, all of whom were invited to stand and be recognized, while their children, on stage in front of 600 people, thanked them only for everything.

    You know what real life is? The story that honoree Raidy Cabrera told about needing somebody out there in his life to believe in him. And then into his life comes teacher Robert Hibson at the Marine Science Magnet High School. Everybody should have a Mr. Hibson in their lives, Cabrera said, drawing rousing applause.

    You know what real life is? Being a Mr. Hibson for somebody.

    That’s real life. That’s our future. And how sad that so many of us believe our future honestly rests on what happens Nov. 5. This just in: It doesn’t. Regardless of who gets elected, we can still be decent, honorable people. We can still be good parents. We can still be Mr. Hibson to somebody else.

    But are we interested? Or would we rather sit behind our keyboards - and I’m talking people in the media, too - and be consistently divisive? If Tuesday’s honorees spent the time hating everybody else that many people reading this do, they wouldn't have been Tuesday’s honorees. There wouldn’t even have been a dinner.

    I got asked several times Tuesday why I attend. It’s not a sports thing, they say. It’s a human thing, I say. It’s the best night of the year with 600 influential people who (mostly, anyway) read The Day. Why am I there? It’s a responsibility. You either care about where you live and where you work or you don’t.

    Besides, it was a sports event. Most of the kids are involved in athletics. I loved seeing Shem Adams (St. Bernard basketball), Tati Pemberton (New London dance and cheerleading), Cole Baumgartner (Waterford football) and Arnell Peck (Williams School basketball/lacrosse and also a worker at Muddy Waters). Most of the time, when the kids see me approaching them to talk after a game, sometimes in a GameDay situation with a live, on-camera interview, they view it as an honor.

    This was a night I was honored to be around them.

    None of this is going to change the burgeoning pastime of shouting damnation at one another. Just know that in comparison to the accomplishments of the kids and the show they put on at Foxwoods the other night, you’re a tired act. We watched the real future play out before us. And left feeling better than when we’d arrived.

    This is the opinion of Day sports columnist Mike DiMauro.

    Comment threads are monitored for 48 hours after publication and then closed.