A man consistently and intentionally leaves turds in your hands. Day after day, week after week after month after year. The turds stink and stain. They attract flies. Because you do not have the right to put your hands down or refuse the turds, the Man continues to leave the turds on you. He tells you this is what you are worth. You begin to believe it. You begin to accept that this is how things should be. You begin to convince yourself that the turds are not detrimental to your wellbeing. You go about your life with turds in your hands and do the best you can. Eventually the Man stops dropping turds in your hands, although your skin still reeks from the accumulated stench of every turd left in them until then. The Man never apologizes for the turds he left behind. He never cleans up his mess or attempts to make amends.
Soon, because it is what you are accustomed to, you begin leaving turds in your own hands and in the hands of people who look like you. Except, you decide to rename the turds and call them turnips. You reason that this is a different word. You tell yourself you are being creative because that’s what your people do. Something similar to making lemonade out of lemons. And since these are not now turds, but turnips in your hands, you forget the painful memories of the Man leaving you turds. In fact, you forget the very origin of the turd dropping thing. You convince your children that what might look like turds in your hands are actually turnips – see, turnips – and turnips are relatively okay so it’s not a bad thing to place the turnips in their hands. Each one teach one and that one passes it on.
Some among you say, “Let’s stop the turd drop”, but you ignore it, concluding that they themselves look like they carry turnips. You very carefully pronounce it “turnips”, being sure to note that the last letters are different, therefore reasoning that turnips don’t stink, and turnips don’t stain, because if they did they would still be turds. And no-one likes turds in their hands, but they convince themselves they can tolerate turnips. These days you wouldn’t think of eating turds, because the Man doesn’t have the right anymore to drop turds on you. But you can swallow turnips.
