Queer as in Fuck You

My mother- who was a single parent raising me alone in my early youth- has never believed in baby talk. So when I was born, she started from day one talking to me and treating me like I was an adult. 

As a result of this, I had rather high expectations of other adults from a very young age, and despised being talked down to. The worst was being asked sweetly and stupidly y over and over, “can you say “hello”?” in a way that felt like I was an animal being coaxed into performing a trick. 

In my earliest years, I learned that using certain words and phrases could convince new adults to treat me the way I preferred. So to combat the annoyances of being treated like a subhuman idiot, I began purposefully expressing myself with a broad vocabulary. 

My mother started teaching me how to read when I was three. By the time I was five, my favourite thing to read was Calvin and Hobbes anthologies, partly because I loved tigers, but mostly because in every other book I’d read, kids my age were written as stupid babies with no thought process or agency who nobody seemed to think of as capable of thinking or contributing. Calvin, though, was only a year older than me, and had a rich inner world, and was capable of speaking meaningfully and eloquently while still being a kid. Calvin was a kid the way that kids WERE, not the way adults saw us.

As a consequence of this, I think, I developed a prematurely warped sense of humour wherein- again, starting around age five- the funniest thing in the world to me was to approach adults and instigate conversations wildly beyond my age range. Like “oh, you’re slowing yourself down for me? Bold of you to assume I’m not already four steps ahead”.

I imagine this was probably very annoying, as I mostly didn’t actually have the experience or context to fully understand a lot of the subjects I was talking about and was mostly just imitating the persona of a mildly disinterested and somewhat philosophical old woman, but I genuinely understood enough vocab to bluff around the gaps in my knowledge long enough for the funny part to happen. 

My preferences to spend more of my time fucking with adults instead of my peers slowly widened the already-existing gap between me and the majority of my schoolmates, which honestly didn’t bug me much because the two friends I DID have were way more fun than the rest of them anyways.  But I was probably a bit emotionally stunted by this point anyways 

Cut to me, age nine or so. Annoying know-it-all, deeply ironic, and the kind of kid who would rather lick a carrot peeler than suffer through the torture of meaningful emotional vulnerability with any adult ever

First real health class

We get the Puberty talk

Skin-peelingly awkward

Mr. Q, our fifty-ish something teacher, brings out a question box and a bunch of scraps of paper. Says he wants everyone to write down at least one question and he would pull a handful of them out anonymously to answer. 

I cannot resist

We all submit our questions

Question one. “What is a vulva”

Diagram. Clinical and age-appropriate response. 

Question two. “Is love nothing more than a chemical reaction designed to ensure the survival of the species?”

Long awkward pause

Teacher clears his throat

[This is hilarious]

Teacher speaks

“Uh…….”

“Well, um. I suppose… I love my wife. And I love my children. Or I would describe what I feel for them as love.”

Oh No

[Dawning realization that I have trapped myself and everyone in this room in a Feelings Talk]

[Panic and stare directly through the floor until he stops talking about his personal emotions regarding family and society and shit]

[Pain And Suffering And Hell because this is, in fact, what I signed us all up for, because boarding a plane to Alaska means that you are definitely going to Alaska, no matter if it was a joke or not, because the plane doesn’t give a fuck, because it is a plane and you are a moron]

The lessons in humour I learned that day have stuck with me ever since

Sincerity always wins

So are

colostomy bags

Diapers

insulin pumps

Oxygen systems

rollators

hearing aids

compression garments

prosthetics

FREEDOM AIDS

- service animals

- noise cancelling headphones/ear defenders

- wheelchair attachments

- fidgets

IT’S DISABILITY PRIDE MONTH YALL

>looks inside

I've had this idea stuck in my head all day

If someone were, as a random example, say hospitalized for over two weeks with no explanation, I think that should automatically trigger a special election to replace them.

If you're still able to do your job, then prove it. And if you're not, then you're actively obstructing democracy by not stepping down.

Which is to say, that if a public official were to pass away or into a coma, and their handlers choose to obfuscate that fact, this should be seen as intentionally obstructing democracy.

[Q: Why did you decide to do this experiment?

A: Snake behavior has been generally neglected as a field of research, especially in Brazil. And most studies don’t examine what factors make them want to bite. If you study malaria, you can research the parasite that causes the disease—but if you don’t study the mosquito that carries it, you will never solve the problem. Up until now, the popular wisdom was that the jararaca would only attack if you touched it or stepped on it. But that was not what we found.

Q: Why did you need to be the victim?

A: The best way to do this research is to put snakes and a human together. In this case, the human was me. We put the snakes inside a ring on the floor of our lab until they got used to it, then I stepped in wearing special protective boots. I stepped close to the snake and also lightly on top of it. I didn’t put my whole weight on my foot, so I did not hurt the snakes. I tested 116 animals and stepped 30 times on every animal, totaling 40,480 steps.]

my collection grows

I honestly believe half-brother Owen could give Anakin enough of a reality check for this to be a fix-it au LOL