I have no idea what happens in the “real world” between the hours of 0700 and 1700.

In the past 31 years I have been sequestered in my work environs. I rarely left the many bases that I worked at during the working hours. I rarely leave the plant for lunch or other off-site events. Although I occasionally meet my wife and daughter for lunch, it is almost exclusively at the park directly across from work.

Consequently, I have little idea that the traffic conditions after rush-hour are almost the diametric opposite of the patterns experienced during the morning and afternoon commutes.

When I do get out and about, I am astounded that many people own cars that were not delivered with accelerator pedals, but did somehow come with make-up mirrors. It becomes obvious that wandering around town is a higher art form that involves navigating all four westbound lanes of Rte 66 within the span of a single block; all in a car that was apparently sold without turn signals. I had no idea the line in the drive through at In-and-Out Burger would be twenty deep at noon. Or that people actually shop at malls on the weekdays.

And because I am rarely home during the weekdays, I really had no idea what to expect from daytime television. I really didn’t understand how bad daytime television has become, until yesterday.

I had a fractured tooth removed first thing yesterday morning, and because the surgeon insisted that I be given a general anesthetic, I had to spend the rest of the day at home. I have apparently softened quite a bit since leaving the Marine Corps, but in between pain pills and the lingering effects of the anesthesia, I got quite and education about the low levels to which daytime television has sunk.

Most notably Maury and the new daytime reality soap opera wrapped around the questionable paternity of children whose mother’s were exotic dancers, or slept with another man three months before her scheduled wedding day. Aside from my rapt attention to the show content, I was also overwhelmed by the promise of more paternity results tomorrow and beyond, and the overt solicitation trying to recruit additional show participants who also have difficulty ascertaining which bed mates’ sperm could have gotten them their free ticket to daytime TV hell.

But now I am fully up to speed on the morass of junk TV.

But as I became less groggy, and my ex-tooth parking spot hurt less and less, I began to assess what I had witnessed, and to put it into context. And since a majority of the participants, and promised future quests, were black, I began, as prompted by AG Holder to consider it in the context of race, and to reflect on my cowardice in light of my failure to have minorities to my house for my weekend bar-b-ques. Continued...