It’s Not About Me

Chris and I spent today working in the garden. It’s time to plant stuff, here in Texas. As the shadows grew long, we sat on the front porch and drank beer. Then he said, “How come you care?”

“Huh?”

“How come you care so much?”

“Huh?”

“You’re married. We can afford more kids. You can’t possibly get pregnant — you don’t have any more ovaries. How come you care so much about birth control and abortion rights?”

“Three out of the five guys from my friends list who re-posted my rant on birth control and abortion rights are gay. It’s not about ‘what might happen to me.’ It’s about the fact that when the rights of half the population disappear, everyone suffers. It’s like there’s this huge movement to move us back to the bad old days like things were in the fifties.”

“Everyone says the fifties were great. Even your mom says the fifties were great.”

“My mom says the fifties were great because she was as rich as Croesus, but when you press her, she also says they sucked for everyone who wasn’t a white guy. The feminist movement came out of the fifties. The civil rights movement came out of the fifties. No one wants to go back to the fifties.”

Chris drank a long pull off his beer.

“So, I’m a white guy. Why shouldn’t I want things to go backwards?”

“So our daughter can get raped and then have her entire sexual history put on trial? So that if our son turns out to be gay, he’ll have to live in the closet? So that neither of our kids can ever date — or marry — someone from another race or culture? Like you did? So that we all think it’s okay to round up an entire nationality and imprison them for years?” At this point I was starting to get all hot under the collar, but Chris was grinning at me.

“Well, I’m a white guy. Things for me would be pretty great, wouldn’t they? So why should I care?”

“So what you’re saying is that the people who talk so much about returning to the social values of an earlier era are pretty much assholes?”

“Pretty much. Now, woman, I spent all day working in the garden for you. Go make me a sammich.”

“Make your own damn sammich. I’ll bring you another beer, though.”

“Make sure you take your shoes off when you’re in the kitchen.”

That’s how it is,  huh.”

“Damn straight.”

“Sexksay.”

Then Chris finished his beer and went to build Legos with our kids.

Thanks, everyone, for the huge response to the post I wrote earlier.