Parents Talk Back

I stood in front of the pile of old shoes at Yad Vashem for a long while.

Visiting Israel's national monument to the Holocaust, I felt paralyzed in front of those shoes, especially the tiny ones.

Later, I read about toddler Hinda Cohen. She was taken from her bed and deported to Auschwitz in a children's roundup on March 27, 1944. When Hinda was taken, her shoe was left behind. Upon finding it, her father etched the date on its sole. Her parents survived the war. They kept their daughter's shoe and birth certificate, along with a pair of mittens that her mother had sewn for her from scraps of material, until they died.

That is the legacy of registering religious minorities and making them carry special identification.

I've listened for the past several days to the rising rhetoric and hysteria about refugees and Muslims.

I listened while Donald Trump trolled our Constitution by saying the government may need to shut down some mosques if he becomes president, and that we may need to allow warrantless searches targeting Muslim Americans.

I listened while the "reasonable" candidate, the man whose father and brother have been presidents, joined in, suggesting that only Christian refugees be allowed to enter this country.

I read the letter, stunned, in which the Democratic mayor of Roanoke, Virginia cited the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II as a valid precedent for keeping out Syrian refugees today.

But when the leading GOP candidate for president suggests he's open to the idea of Muslim Americans carrying special identification or registering in a national database, all I could think about were those shoes.

As many readers know, I am Muslim, as is my family. I'm not a refugee, and I'm not scared of refugees. I'm not an immigrant, and I'm not scared of immigrants.

But I am scared of Trump's deliberate bigotry and hate-mongering. By recirculating vile proposals from history, he shocks us, then raises the bar on what it takes to shock us. Even when he walks back from these incendiary statements after leaders from both parties call him out, there is damage done.

Trump's campaign is normalizing ideas from the darkest chapters of our history.

It's a strange feeling to live in a state of anxiety in your own country. "Liberty and justice for all" are words I memorized as a child, and a critical part of my self-identity. Like many American kids, I learned my country's history in school, but didn't really process it until I was much older. I remember that crushing moment, and maybe you do, too -- when your beliefs were challenged and you were confronted with the extent of man's brutality toward man; the depths to which humanity has sunk and risen.

When you intimately study history, when you lose yourself in stories from the past, you recognize the alarms -- you notice when history is starting to repeat itself. You begin to play out scenarios you never imagined before.

After 9/11, I played out many of those what-ifs. I had conversations with my spouse about who would stay and who would go in the worst-case scenario of our country turning against us. I thought of a person -- a white, non-Muslim American person -- whom I would leave in charge of our assets if we had to flee.

Keep a sense of perspective, I told myself. Don't allow yourself to feel hunted. Fight the impulse that your children are at risk going to Sunday School at the local mosque. Try not to worry that your hijab-wearing mother could be an easy mark for unjust reprisals.

But I had to stay practical -- and still do. I am a well-educated writer with resources, connections and a platform. None of that insulates me from politicians who foment hysteria. My opinions and arguments are made in the public sphere. That's not a protective shield against suspicion.

In a time of war and fear, you make choices: Hide or speak out.

I choose to speak, and speak loudly.

Trump does not offend my feelings as a Muslim. Attacks on my faith slide off of me because my faith lives inside me, and no one can take away what lives inside of you.

He offends me as an American. His words are an attack on my country. Americans should be able to disagree on policy without vilifying and dehumanizing the Other.

When I went to Israel, I also visited the occupied territories of the West Bank. I have traveled all over the so-called "Muslim" world -- Egypt, Turkey, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and the Emirates. Each time, I felt a sense of relief when I landed back in the U.S. The same sense of relief all travelers feel upon coming back home.

So, would I carry a special ID if Trump or someone like him tried to make me?

No.

To do so would be to dismiss all that my parents gave up to come to this country. To dishonor the sacrifices of those who have fought and died for my country's values and my freedom. To disgrace the memory of the 6 million Jews who were marked, then murdered. To forget Hinda Cohen.

I will not betray my country like that.

I will not wear a special identification that marks me as anything other than American.

My child's CEO aspirations were quashed after just a day of managing fake employees.

He is one of 12,000 St. Louis-area students who will get a dose of reality this year at BizTown: one of the most valuable elementary school field trip experiences I've encountered as a parent.

It's offered by Junior Achievement (J.A.), a nonprofit organization with 114 chapters across the U.S., which aims to educate students about entrepreneurship, work readiness and financial literacy. The St. Louis chapter, in addition to about 30 others nationwide, has a mock mini-city in which students spend the day learning how the "real world" works.

Each of the fifth-graders in our school applies for a job in one of BizTown's 17 businesses. They spend the day running the town -- working, making financial decisions, paying taxes, shopping and running errands.

Imagine my delight when my youngest chose to work as CEO of MasterCard. (Businesses that sponsor the hands-on learning center are named in the town.) Perhaps this will be the first of several CEO positions, I said to him, hoping to plant a seed.

He headed to school in a pressed suit and tie, ready to conquer the world.

He came back a broken man.

"Oh my God, I don't want to be an adult," he said.

He ranted about his day as took off his suit jacket and loosened his striped tie.

"First of all, there was a guy who couldn't do his work," he started. "Then, I had to sign my name about a hundred times. There was a problem with the payroll tax. I had to update the system five times before I could get it to work. And then I had to send the bill to the printer, and they denied it. Two times! Only one person paid their taxes on time. I had to work a double shift on a station I didn't even know how to do. And some people took way too long on their breaks."

Worn out and weary, he kicked off his dress shoes and said: "Everything hurts."

To anyone who has managed employees, his experience has the ring of truth to it.

Lori Jacob, president of J.A. of Greater St. Louis, said the great thing about the BizTown experience is that it gives students a chance to realize the relevance of what they are learning in school. Participating schools complete 20 hours of a financial literacy curriculum, and the trip to BizTown is the capstone experience. It costs schools about $15 per pupil, which is roughly half the actual cost of the program. Business sponsors subsidize the programming.

The program is so popular that a school that missed its day due to a snowstorm offered to come back once the students had been dismissed for summer. And they did. Another school made up a missed day on a Saturday.

Jacob said J.A. would love to accommodate more students, but their BizTown is booked throughout the year. J.A. would need support from business sponsors to build another location to serve more students.

For any business that has bemoaned the lack of a qualified workforce, here's a chance to invest in teaching students skills that are critical to workplace success. Giving students a chance to run a business and manage their peers as employees is an eye-opening experience at this age.

It leaves an impression.

I asked my daughter what she remembered from her class's trip there two years ago. To my chagrin, she had applied to be the reporter at the radio station. (Please consider a more reliable and profitable line of work, my child.)

"I learned that some people are bossy," she said. "And some people can't do math."

The CEO of the radio station where she was working ordered 500 pieces of coal instead of five due to a calculation error.

Another pearl of wisdom: "You shouldn't trust some people with a microphone."

That sounds about right.

She admitted that being a reporter was the best job in BizTown because "you can leave the radio station at any time to do whatever. You have a pass to do that."

It's hard to argue with that.

In their fake jobs, the students learned a few truths about the way the world works.

A box arrived at my work with a seductive message.

It promised "the pouty lips you always wanted. Naturally."

I had not given much thought to the state of my lips, but I supposed that maybe they could be a little plumper.

"What harm could there be in trying a device that doesn't involve needles or chemicals?" I thought. The company had sent my office the CandyLipz Xtreme Lip Shaper to be tested, so why shouldn't I test it? In retrospect, when "lips" is spelled with a Z and "extreme" with a capital X, it may be a red flag about the scientific validity of the product.

I vaguely recalled hearing about some ridiculous "lip challenge" that had been making the rounds among teenagers, but this wasn't that, of course. This product came in a fancy box and retailed for $69.99.

I handed the instructions to a colleague, who seemed a little too amused and eager to spearhead the experiment. After inserting my lips in the mouthpiece, I was told to compress the sides of the cylinder. When I released the tube, it created a vacuum that sucked my lips into the plastic tube.

It hurt.

I looked at the fashion editor who had been guiding this misadventure, and she said the directions said to keep it dangling there for two minutes.

It hurt a lot. When the two minutes were up, I broke the seal and peeled my lips out.

They were definitely swollen. Within minutes, I saw a reddish-purple ring form around my lips.

I looked like I had been punched in the mouth.

The discoloration around my mouth got darker by the hour. My colleague advised me to find an ice pack. By the time I got home, hours later, it looked like my mouth had been lined with black marker.

"Look what I did," I said to my family.

"What happened?" my 13-year-old daughter asked. I described the product I had tried at work.

"You know you just basically did the Kylie Jenner lip challenge, right?" she said, making no effort to contain her smirk.

"No. Noooooooo."

The indignity of being called out by your child stings more than sticking your lips in a vacuum. Trust.

My husband took one look at the ring of dark bruising around my mouth and said: "You are not a child. And you are not a Kardashian."

Duh.

I didn't have to pout. I was already there.

"I MADE A BAD CHOICE," I announced to all parties who would be witnessing the results of said choice for days to come.

My ego was bruised far worse than my lips.

Sometimes it's difficult to remember how the teenage brain operates. We may recall that we did some foolish things in our youth, but the plus side of thinning hair (and lips) is that experience and maturity make those occurrences far less common over the years.

When confronted with some ridiculous behavior, we may be tempted to ask an otherwise intelligent young adult: What in the world were you thinking?

So what makes teenagers -- and, ahem, the occasional columnist -- take such foolish chances?

A study out of New York University suggests that adolescents are not inherently risk-takers, but they are more likely than adults to take actions when they don't fully know or understand the consequences of their actions.

"In risky situations where you know the outcomes and the probability of the outcome, teenagers didn't take more risks than adults," a lead researcher told LiveScience about the study in 2012. "Teenagers went for the risky option when the outcome was not exactly known." When adolescents know an activity's potential dangers more precisely, they are less likely to participate.

Had I read the accompanying instructions on the Xtreme Lip Shaper myself and known that 80 percent of users end up with bruises on their face, I would have found someone else to test the product. Clearly, there wasn't much forethought involved. I was reminded how easily rational adults can fall prey to marketing and peer pressure.

For five days, I took pictures of my damaged lips and studied the photos for signs that the marks were fading.

"I can't believe I did this to myself," I thought each time. I also took herbal remedies, and watched videos and read articles on how to heal bruises faster.

As the days passed, I also embraced my humility and vowed to remember this feeling when one of my children does something head-shakingly dumb.

There's a thin line between a fat lip and a fathead.