Well, they did it. They elected...hang on, why am I telling you this?

Unless you've just emerged from some week-long bout of unconsciousness, you already know - if you are online, it's impossible to avoid. If you're just emerging from a bout of unconsciousness of around one and a half years' duration, then allow me to break the news. It happened - that thing that (just before you took a time-out) everyone with a fully formed central nervous system had a chuckle about and said could never happen...yep, that thing we all said was impossible because the American people couldn't be that stupid...yes, really. Sorry.

If, by some terrible misfortune you're awakening from a slumber of more than eighteen months or two years' length, then I'm afraid that  we have some really rather strange news for you. It's the kind of news perhaps best received in the sitting position, away from easy-to-hurl objects (unless they're soft, stuffed toys) or anything breakable or valuable. In fact, I'll let somebody else fill you in on the details, so close this window and go and ask your best friend (or somebody else that you have never before felt violent towards) what I might be talking about. Yes, do that now.

If, like me, you have spent the last seven days feeling slightly stunned and occasionally shaking your head rapidly (so that your mouth and cheeks flobble about and make an unpleasant sloppy sound), you need no further explanation. But there is a bright side for this writer.

I've been unable to find the words which express how I feel about the decisions that some fifty-something million Americans made last week, and so I've done my very best to avoid trying to track them down. Left with a feeling about recent events which I suspect may equate to that experienced by a small planet passing too close to a black hole, I have retreated to my memories (of less fucking crazy times) and have been picking up the cudgels (oh, what good work I might do with a cudgel if only I could go back in time around seventy one years, and tap a certain Mr Drumpf on the shoulder as he randily prepares to interact with his good lady in an offspring-producing kind of way) of re-writing and writing some other work.

I'm lucky: I have a virtual happy place to go and hide in. The tough part is coming back to the real/surreal world wherein America has just elected...well, you know.

With the very real possibility of a narcissistic, racist misogynist being elected to an extraordinary level of political power, I find myself being visited by a memory which marks one of those moments on my life when one of my children taught me an important lesson. It was a slap-in-the-face kind of lesson, a few seconds of time during which something clicked firmly into place, and stayed there. It taught me how we ruin our children.

Tom was five years old,  my only son, the elder of my two children, and as such the first to embark upon the long journey into the education system. Our small family had gathered on an early summer day to watch and take part (there were of course the obligatory parents' races to be endured) in his first school sports day. My competitive hopes were high: Tom had proven himself to be fleet of foot and nimble with it. His chances of success in the sprinting race - and the sporting world in general, for that matter - were, I felt, extremely high. That day, I was excited on his behalf, and more than ready to play the role of the proud parent of an accomplished athlete.

Finally, after what had frankly been an exasperating schedule of egg-and-spoon races, jumping-in-a-sack races, three-legged races and assorted other decidedly non-Olympic events, the time for the full-on sprint race arrived. My pulse quickened as the competitors gathered in an almost straight line at the start. Anxiously I watched to make sure that none of the other five year-olds (the little buggers) were trying to gain an unfair advantage by taking an extra step before the flag dropped. Nobody, I had promised myself, was going to cheat my son out of his rightful victory.

I scanned the line of perhaps fifteen boys, my eyes resting for a moment upon a very small - noticeably small - kid who stood out for one other reason. In a town where ethnic minorities were few and far between, the very, very dark skin of this child was still a mild surprise, despite the fact that he had joined the school some months earlier. My eyebrow rose momentarily before I continued watching for  any signs of sly, athletic shenanigans. As my gaze reached the end of the line, it settled upon the little boy's parents, easily identifiable, both by the colour of their skin and by the stunningly vibrant clothes that they had worn to the event. I was impressed, and also suddenly a little ashamed of my Tee shirt and cargo shorts combination. Those folks (as it would turn out, recently arrived from Kenya) had raised their game for their son...maybe I should have done the same (but then what would I have worn?)...

With a shouted "GO!", the green starting flag fell (surely not accurate enough to enable the correct finishing times to be recorded to within a thousandth of a second, I felt, but I would graciously let it pass for the sake of not creating a 'scene'). Like a collection of differently-propelled projectiles, the children variously sprang, stepped, stumbled or rocketed off the start line. To my delight, Tom was in the lead immediately, his little arms and legs pumping away in a determined blur. He pulled away from the chasing pack - with one exception. I watched with a mixture of disbelief and horror as the tiny black kid, moving faster than any child of his age that I had ever seen, overtook my poor Tommy, and left him in his dust as he powered his way to a deeply impressive victory. Shit, I thought.

A few moments later I found myself comforting the second-place finisher and reassuring him that he'd done a great job and yes, was still seriously quick, etc. etc.. I looked around for the winner, hoping to demonstrate how to congratulate someone magnanimously (I'd finished grinding my teeth by this time), only to see him hand in hand with his parents, disappearing into the crowd some distance away. 

After some more clench-worthy sporting events of questionable value (e.g. the balance-a-ball-on-your-head race), the afternoon drew to a natural conclusion and we began to make our way back towards the car park. Looking down at Tommy I asked him "Who was the little black lad, then?". He stopped, a look of confusion on his face. "Black?" he said with a note of disbelief - clearly he thought that dad was goofing around again. "Well, not really black, but definitely brown, then." I said. The look of consternation on my son's face grew more pronounced. "I don't know what you mean, daddy!" I tried again; "The little fellah that won the running race - the brown-skinned boy." Tom looked at me with some relief. "Ohhhh, you mean Eko!" I smiled down at him, thinking that that was a truly fantastic name.

And then he did it. It was then that he taught me a profound lesson that I have never forgotten. The look of puzzlement returned as he looked up at me, squinting in the sunlight. "But Eko isn't brown!" he said in a way that indicated that he obviously felt that I was losing my marbles. I felt my skin shiver as every tiny hair instantly stood on end, the import of what he had said flooding my consciousness. At the age of five, my innocent, unspoiled child had just told me something completely true and yet incredible.  I had no more words worth saying as the realization soaked in.

The colour of his classmate's skin - so obviously different to my adult, jaundiced eyes - had never even registered with him. 

Now, especially now in these times of broadcast intolerance, prejudice and bigotry, I find myself thinking: if only...