velartrill

In discussions about design flaws in the human body people always say “What idiot decided to have our breathing and digestive passages cross?!” but, uh, it’s actually a pretty great thing that they do since if we could only breathe through our nose then colds and allergies would frequently be fatal or lead to brain damage due to suffocation or oxygen deprivation, nosebleeds would lead to fatal inhalation of blood, and someone could kill you just by pinching your nose. Oh, and we’d drown if we attempted to swim underwater, since we wouldn’t be able to close off our nasal passage with the velum. Now, obviously, if we’d evolved differently, something would have most likely arisen to address these issues, but I’d just like to point out that it’s not a simple fix. So if a genie ever offers to make modifications to your body, definitely don’t ask to have your breathing passages rerouted away from your esophagus.

““I cast toxic masculinity.””

Definitely a problem with the kind of semi-professional middle-class upbringing I had was that I never, ever, ever once had a meaningful interaction with an adult outside the context of an explicitly deferential relationship (parent-child, teacher-student, boss-worker). The very few relationships that didn’t fit that script were either forced into them or avoided like the plague - if you were visiting a friend’s house, you thanked their parents for hosting you, perhaps the way you would with an aunt or uncle, but otherwise interaction was minimized and you stayed out of their way, not only for politeness, but because there was literally no script for how to interact with them beyond “Hi, Mrs. _______!” “Bye, Mrs. _______!”

I know I’m not saying anything new, but wow, thinking back on high school it’s just shocking how authoritarian the whole thing was - especially for all the ~15-19-year-olds. It’s no joke to say it was like a prison. And all the rules about when and where we had to be - the kids they were intended for broke them anyways (plus they weren’t the kind of motivation or help they needed), while the kids who could have done with a bit more responsibility and benefit of the doubt were the ones who were frightened into obeying.