Obama Nailed It; Were You Listening, Cuz?

Sometimes I surprise myself by how conservative I can be. (Shhhh.) When the controversy over President Obama's supposedly subversive speech to schoolchildren first hit the fan last week, I thought to my single-with-no-kids self, "Well, shouldn't parents know what the most influential man in America might say to their highly impressionable mini-me's? Doesn't something or other begin at home?"

Then on Sunday I went to my cousin's wedding. I come from a sprawling family that made its way to middle-class Compton, Calif., by way of Arkansas and Alabama during the 1930s and '40s. My grandfather never made it to high school, but he owned several small businesses and retired as a postman. My mother, her four sisters and three brothers all completed at least some college. For my cousins and me, college seemed altogether possible but not always probable.

So. The wedding. I'd heard through the Andrews Family Hotline that one of my cousins had been goofing off. He'd missed a year of high school for only the devil knows what reason, and I made it a point to pull him aside while everyone else was doing the electric slide. He said he wanted to finish school as soon as possible so that he could become a . . . writer. "You know that's what I do, right?" I asked him. "Why haven't you called me?!" He answered that all he had to do was get published once. Then, according to this 16-year-old with the skinny mustache, it was all good. Smooth sailing, if you will.

The deejay announced the start of the "money dance" (when guests pay cash to cut a rug with the bride and groom), so I didn't have much time to tell my little cousin how much it took for me to start calling myself "a writer." Two degrees, tons of Top Ramen, a lot of loans, and endless doubt. I told him to call me, e-mail me, Facebook me --something. It's been two days and I still haven't heard from him. Hopefully he heard this part of the president's speech:

"Maybe you could be a good writer -- maybe even good enough to write a book or articles in a newspaper -- but you might not know it until you write a paper for your English class."