I didn't think I'd start this way...

This lady, Dr. J. Jackson-Beckman, ended up, well,
throwing me a curve. I had thought about this blog
and this was NOT what I was thinking about. But
you have to be ready for what life throws you, eh?

"When men make plans, God laughs."

We all know that saying. But it's not the real saying. Not the actual one, anyway. We've just Anglo-ed it over the years. You know, to own it, I guess. Like we try to own a lot of shit that's not really ours.

The actual saying, which has Yiddish roots, is "Mann Tracht, Un Godd Lacht." Same thing, in essence. "Man plans and God laughs."

But this, too, is the nature of life. A couple of months back, I was hanging with my old friend Johnny and I was told by him quite insistently by him that I have to write about more than just craft beer. I have a six-year-old blog called Brew Ha Ha that deals with beer.

This was an old dear friend, smacking me in the face with a fuzzy slipper. (Not literally. I doubt he owns one, much less a pair.) That's where 61 Turning 16 was supposed to begin. With Johnny and his advice. A new venue. Something else to write about (said the former newspaper editor, ending a sentence with a preposition.) Issues that are not-beer-related. So that's where I thought this was gonna start. Talking about Johnny, our long-standing friendship and his surprisingly insistent demand.

I didn't really know what to say about a very racist
attack so I reverted to my fail-safe. My son, David.
When things seem bleak, he walks in and brightens
any and all situations. Apparently, when you're made
of pure love, that's what you're capable of. It's nice.

(Just to take the word "suggestion" off the table.)

So anyway, God laughed. (I am not a religious man. When I say God, I mean the universe.) Someone I follow on Twitter, Afro Beer Chick, who hails from Chicago, was attacked in her private messages by some demented idiot who was overly fond of the n-word. So she posted it. I read it and thought exactly what I have many times since I discovered social media. And that's this: Don't we all wish we could just reach through our screens and just take someone's keyboard away? Or perhaps hit them in the head with it until they wake the hell up?

So anyway, Afro Beer Chick was very cool with it all. Gonna suggest this isn't her first experience with racism because she's likely been dealing with it... (*looks at clock, double-checks calendar*)... okay, let's just say... all her life. She responded overly-politely to this man that perhaps they should sit down together with a beer and discuss their differences. I have my doubts he ever responded. Cowards are notorious that way.

But someone else, a person named Dr. J Jackson-Beckman, saw the attack and decided to turn a negative into a positive.

Except it's not. It never has been. It never will
be and this is way past time when we should
just speak up and say, "This is not acceptable."

She asked all of us in the craft beer community to go on Twitter, describe something about ourselves, post a selfie and simply tag it #IAmCraftBeer. Simply to show unity with someone who had been personally impugned and yet, still handled it like a warrior.

Now, while this was all happening, I was down in Las Vegas, having one of my little fiestas. My friends will tell you that I do this a lot. So one of those friends, Robert, also known as The Drunk Polkaroo, brought this to my attention. I took a look at the context of it all on Twitter, looked around at my Vegas setting, realized that, yeah, as usual, I was surrounded by people of all the various skin hues and cultures, having an awesome time. So write something happy and positive?

I could do that because I never even have to look all that far. I simply grabbed my anchor, a boy named David and made it about him.

The beautiful one is Veronique. The butt-ugly one is my
buddy... brother, really... Matty. Anyway, Veronique is
dealing with something pretty harsh right now. And it all
came to light with a simple hashtag - #IAmCraft Beer. 

I said simply, "Okay, I'm down. I'm Donny. In Vegas at the moment. Nothing special about me. But I have a special needs son, David. Down syndrome. He loves everyone. That's his nature. He has never known hatred, only unconditional love. I hope I'm the same. Because that's how he brought me up."

The Twitter response kind of (what was it my grandfather used to say... oh right...) flabbergasted me. Let's just say it was overwhelmingly (and I don't 'whelm' easily) positive. But, of course, even though I was one of the first ones out of the gate with Dr. J's request, I forgot to add the hashtag #IAmCraftBeer. So I did subsequently which, I think, includes it. A natural defence would be to say, hey, man, I'm in Vegas. What do you want from me? But the actual truth is, well, I'm an idiot and can't follow the simplest of instructions.

Long story short, Dr. J's tweet got a lot of responses. Thousands, I would guess. A great majority were white males. That's also good. It's important to know that some of us aren't, well, assholes of the first order.

But another response was the one that caught my eye and kinda stuck a knife through my heart. It was from my friend and brother-from-another-mother, Matty. I have written about Matty in that beer blog. But this isn't that blog. Matty responded by talking about three things. His daughter, who he described as a princess. (I've seen her picture on Facebook - a total cutie-patootie.) Concerns about drinking. (We all share that to varying degrees.) But mostly his wife, Veronique. You see, she's going through her second battle with cancer. Had it a few years ago. Fought it with chemo and radiation. Beat it, too.

It came back this year. I talked to Matty and he told me she's doing the radiation three times a week, every three weeks. So she has good weeks and then her completely horrible ones. Like racism, that's not an acceptable reality.

The thing is that one simple hashtag - #IAmCraftBeer - brought a lot of stuff to light... to life. People like me spoke from the heart. People like Matty, well, they spoke from the soul. But we all spoke up, which was kind of the point of the exercise.

The words of Elie Wiesel, the Romanian-born Jewish-
American, best known as being an author, a professor,
a social activist, a Nobel Laureate and most important
of all, a Holocaust survivor. We can't make that mistake
again. We're seeing it now. We know the history. We
have to know that inclusion is everything. It's really
quite literally the only way we'll all survive. I've picked
so time to pick yours. Be on the right side of history.

So here's my final thought. Sometimes, your friends are people you've known all your life like Johnny. Over 50 years.

Sometimes, they're new friends like Matty who I met this past April for the first time.

And sometimes, friends are people you've never met like Afro Beer Chick and Dr. J but you realize you simply share a mutual agreement about life. About what is and isn't proper behaviour and how we should live together, rather than apart.

That's it, I guess. Like I said, I was going to open this with the story of Johnny and how this started. It's a story that can wait for another day.

And Veronique, like I said, I'm not a religious man but I know someone who is. His name is David. And when I pick him up this weekend, I'm going to ask him to put in a good word. Because if anyone on this planet could whisper directly into God's ear, it's David. And, well, keep fighting. We're all on your side. The same goes for you, Afro Beer Chick. I'll make sure David includes you, too.