I Don't Need Nothing or Nobody

I DON”T NEED NOTHING OR NOBODY..

Or….It’s Shake ‘n Bake…and I Helped….

My favorite commercial of all times has to be Shake ‘n Bake where the little girl says, “And I helped” with the most southern slang slow drawl that I have ever heard, and I am a pretty southern slang slow drawl talkin’ gal.  Oh, those were the days when needing help and giving help was not such a horrible thing.

People are all up in arms and having a good old fashioned 2 year old temper tantrum over Barrack Obama saying “You didn’t do that by yourself.” He might as well have just went ahead and shot Mickey Mouse. How dare he say such a thing, this is AMERICA. Where you work hard, you build a business, you become successful. It is how this country was founded. Those pioneers taking off across the prairie in those covered wagons, not knowing what they would find but with the courage and the work ethic to just go for it!  Of course they usually had a wagon train-- you know-- where they all traveled together because apparently they felt there was safety in numbers. They would form a circle at night to protect each other. I know, I grew up watching Wagon Train and Little House on The Prairie. They all worked together and helped each other. When the Ingalls needed a barn or their neighbor needed a barn, they all came together and built a barn, had some good food and then little pig tail Laura wrote about it in her little diary thingy.

But that was the “good old days”. We don’t need that sort of crap anymore. We are better alone now. It is each man for himself, no more “we”…it is all about ME. We don’t need those roads and interstates or the truck drivers who take groceries or merchandise to our stores so we can sell them in “our” business to other people. We don’t need the garbage men or people who clean the streets so people can get into “our” business. We did it all by ourselves. Nobody helped us build anything. We are an island. We don’t need nobody or nothing. We don’t need customers to buy our goods, we don’t need the airwaves to advertise our goods and we certainly don’t need anyone telling us that we need anybody or anything.

This is America, home of the free and the brave. We don’t need the government sending the armed forces out there to protect us. We have our own guns. If somebody comes in our front yard, we will take care of them on our own thank you very much. Do you think for one minute that Henry Ford needed anyone to help him invent the Model T, assembly line and mass production??? Well …as a matter of fact …he did. Shocked?  Henry Ford had lots of help as a matter of fact.

He was first a machinist in Detroit, someone gave him a job. When he got tired of that and went home to his family farm where he learned how to run a Westinghouse steam engine. Westinghouse later hired him to service their engines. He also got a job with Edison Illuminating where he made enough money to start experimenting with gas engines and well…we sort of know how the story ends. The fact is without the family farm, Westinghouse, Edison and the business college he attended, we might all still be riding around on a horse and buggy. Sure, he had to put forth the effort, he had to work hard. But it would not have mattered if all the other inventions and knowledge before him had not existed. Every successful giant has stood on the shoulders of someone before them. So what is wrong with saying, “You didn’t do that by yourself”? When taken out of context it doesn’t sound very good, but if you listen to the words before that statement you would have heard …we are all in this together. We all need each other to prosper and grow and continue to be the great nation we say we are.

Only in politics would someone take something so well meaning and true and turn it into a horrible thing. We have to stop listening to what people tell us other people mean and listen for ourselves. If I listen to only one source of news, I would believe that Mitt Romney put his poor family dog in a cage on top of the car and drove down the road while it was puking and having diarrhea because he hates dogs and is cruel and inhumane.  I think he made a bad judgment call by thinking that his dog enjoyed that, but I don’t think he is a monster.

And I don’t even mind people fighting over Obama and Romney and lying about what they said or didn’t say. What I do mind are those who proclaim they follow Christ saying there is something evil about saying “You didn’t do that by yourself” We all know we never walk alone. We are supposed to be all about brotherly love, our brother’s keeper, taking care of one another, loving one another and yet it makes us mad when someone says “You didn’t do that by yourself.” Really???

I got my first real job because someone I knew put in a word for me with someone they knew. You know, that old, “it’s not what you know but who you know”? And I am thankful. I tell people all the time about being too afraid to even ask someone for a job. They opened a door for me. It was up to me to walk through that door, but I might not have had the courage without some help. I could not have got a college degree without my wonderful high school teachers, I would have never finished high school without the basics of my elementary school and I would have NEVER left Captain Kangaroo every morning to get on that school bus if my family had not threatened me within an inch of my life. I need people and I know people need me and I think THAT is what makes us the great nation we say we are. I pray we have not truly forgotten where we came from and where we would be without those who came before us. And I hope we continue to encourage those who will go forward….with a little help.

With all due respect, ~~Squirrely Girl