It is just a tar baby. There isn't a way to get involved without becoming stuck in a not-healthy way. It is sort of agonizing to go there, knowing what will happen.
That is how I described a situation to my mid-20s daughter. She didn't understand the term. Huh?
I had to stop and explain it. How if you touch something, you can sometimes never get unstuck and you become tied down, unable to freely carry on. The entanglement, bound up as tar will cling and not let go (ever sat on a tar-blotched beach? I did, in Corpus Christi -- ruined the beach towels). It is a nasty thing... to go there.
Tar Baby. It was not used in any pejorative, racial or other manner. Just a way to describe that any engagement with a situation leads to an unpleasant obliged relationship of a no-win set-up. The tar baby image I conjure is a black bush-like blob, nothing like the image I tracked down, which might make it seem racist and with a personification of the tar baby. My thoughts take me back to the idea of Brer Rabbit.
Some things are better left well-enough alone. That's the idea. Gee. Do I date myself that much?
Yes, and they must look the same way at their parents when they talk about "butt-dialing", "sexting" and "twitter". Few things stand the test of time. But, they too will be adults someday (probably).
Posted by: anthony | March 25, 2009 at 08:05 AM
Oh yes....I understand the meaning of "tar baby", but as you said, we date ourselves. A funny take off on those thoughts...you know the book "Little Black Sambo"? Well, whilst in Costa Rica adopting a child 32 years ago, I was treated to the many colloquialisms of the Spanish language and especially those pertinent to Central America. So they have this saying "listo del tigres"...translated it means "I'm ready for the tigers". Its derivation is from the book "Little Black Sambo". At the end, Little Black Sambo runs up a tree and hides because the tigers are chasing him. And the tigers run round and round the tree and turn into butter! So when you are so tired you could just give up and fall down to the tigers chasing you, you are ready for the tigers! Listo del tigres. Which I am many days after working 12 hours in the ER! Little Black Sambo and tar baby...not PC anymore, I guess. Neither is meant disparagingly, but....
Posted by: carron e. | March 25, 2009 at 11:57 AM
You are on to something. Did you read Toni Morrison's Tar Baby by the way?
To me the big Internet Tar Baby is Facebook. It can entrap you, which is why I dropped it after two weeks.
Posted by: Hattie | March 25, 2009 at 12:12 PM
Reading your poignant post whose plaint has resonance for so the over-50 literate, I was seized by a thought. Possibly the end of American civilization as we know it will arrive when it is impossible to have an intelligible exchange with anyone more than five years older or younger.
Those with in-law issues might find this promising.
Posted by: naomi dagen bloom | March 26, 2009 at 07:21 AM
We loved the Brer Rabbit stories. I would have known exactly what you meant by tar baby. We had the books, but also saw Disney's "Song of the South" as kids. You can't get that movie anymore, though some of it is on YouTube. I always equated Uncle Remus with Aesop - both very wise men who told stories with good lessons. But I guess they're not politically correct anymore.
Posted by: Janet | March 26, 2009 at 09:10 AM