Posted on 04/15/2016 9:25:51 AM PDT by relictele
Now And Then
THEN In October 2008, you were a freshman in college, still just 18 years old. You’d already had four years of high school during which your teachers demonstrated the ability to blame everything from cracked heels to rainy days on the occupant of the Oval Office who just happened to be a Republican and who just happened to be named George W. Bush.
9/11 took place when you were still in middle school. You remember your teachers bravely showing up for class the next day and glumly talking about the tragedy that befell New York, Washington DC and Pennsylvania…for five minutes. The next 50 minutes they became much more animated as they defended Islam, reminded you that terrorism exists in all societies, races and religions and that any linkage between Islam and 9/11 was the product of hatred, while 9/11 itself was not, merely an anomaly, and even if it was hatred, we deserved it. You remember the research paper assignment in science class in which you had to persuade your peers that the towers were brought down by controlled explosions.
Your nerves were still jangling from the mania over standardized tests, even if that mania was largely orchestrated by your principals and teachers, who were apoplectic that greedy evil taxpayers (the ones who lavishly funded your school) wanted to apply some form of measuring stick to so-called public education to get some idea of their return on investment. In hindsight, you realized that the tests were stressful mostly because they humbly asked for mastery of the three Rs while most of your school day was spent talking about global warming, ‘comparative religions’ (in which Jedi Masters were equal to Islamic imams who were equal to Catholic bishops), gay rights, and long, detailed biographies of Malcolm X, Rachel Carson and, er, Freddie Mercury.
College was like high school, but even more fun because the food was better, your parents weren’t around to bug you about your constant use of your phone or laptop and everybody on campus seemed to agree with your political views. You would worry about the $50k/yr tuition later when you got your $150k/yr job with an anti-ivory hunting nonprofit. It would be part-time, of course, because you didn’t want to give up your rock climbing or kayaking hobbies.
And then came Obama.
Black? Check. Black even if not really black, as in African-American-descended-from-slaves black and in fact half white? Shrug..whatev…check. Exotic name? Check. Exotic name changed at will and according to political need? Check. (After all, his dad WAS Barack Obama, Sr. even if Barack Obama, Sr. did unto others and left rapidly.) Young(ish)? Check. Invoked name of your hometown, college or current city in his campaign speech? Check. Appeared in his shirtsleeves because he really didn’t want to wear suits? Check. Talked a lot about unity and how bad Washington DC was? Check. Environmentalist? Check. Gay rights champion? Not quite but he’ll get there.
You held up your signs, chanted, marched and put up the HOPE poster in your dorm room. You voted for the first time – in a presidential election, no less! – and proudly marked your ballot for Obama and that old white guy with an odd-looking hairline. You sure as hell weren’t going to vote for that horrible woman from Alaska, of all places, who rose to the governorship of a state, had a healthy, beautiful family including a baby with Down syndrome, and who may have handled those icky, dangerous guns a time or two.
After that, college was a bit of a whirlwind. Your professors made your high school teachers look like Rush Limbaugh. You became convinced that 9/11 was an inside job, that even if it was an inside job we deserved it because of ChimpBush’s wars (even if the wars weren’t launched for another two years AFTER 9/11), that SUVs and trucks cause climate change while school buses, private jets and diesel trains in India do not, that banks should loan money to anyone who asks and that refusal is simply being mean or racist, that raising the minimum wage automatically helps the economy and that the finest, most advanced medicine and surgical techniques should be free and unlimited to everybody, and that the drug companies make too much profit and their future R&D budgets for developing cancer and diabetes drugs should be confiscated to fund expansion of the methadone clinics in the inner city.
You put on the dreaded freshman fifteen and added fifteen per year after that for a total of 60 lbs gained while in school. You tried to hide it with billowy blouses, maxi-dresses, lots of black and that dashiki you bought during the African Heritage Festival although you stopped wearing it after getting lots of strange looks from people, including your friends. You got the new Apple iPhone and enjoyed texting and using Facebook but the phone function itself was rarely used, since guys didn’t call you for dates or just to chat. Of course, that was only because they were heteronormative misogynists stalking their prey, waiting for the slightest opportunity to rape them. You volunteered to be a student representative on the Campus Trial And Disciplinary board that kicks men out of school for being undeclared members of the Rape Culture but the list of student applicants was already very long when it was handed around in your Gender Roles classroom.
Still, that left your evenings and weekends free for marches and photo ops where you promised to Take Back The Night even though nobody had taken it from you in the first place, given that you were sitting in your dorm watching Gilmore Girls DVDs (remember those?). Pot was readily available, especially in the separate-but-equal African American-only dorm and you became a regular visitor where you developed an appreciation for gangsta rap and dismissed the lyrics about hoochies and guns as just a bit of good fun or an ‘expression of rage’ from an underprivileged community.
At last…graduation. Changing majors cost you (well, not really you) another semester’s worth of tuition but it was worth getting that degree in Media Studies. You still wanted to pursue the anti-ivory, anti-poaching job because it might involve a paid safari trip to Africa but you aren’t so eager to put on that tight-fitting khaki uniform now. With your degree you thought you might crack into the world of online movie reviews since you weren’t into the bar scene (or any scene, really) and watched so many films during school. You could even work from Starbucks. How many online reviewers could there be, really, and didn’t the review business need the womyn’s point of view regarding race, class and gender in the Lord Of The Rings trilogy or the Iron Man films?
NOW It’s 2016. You are 26. College seems like a lifetime ago. The movie review business didn’t go to plan, especially once you looked through Rotten Tomatoes and realized there were about 2,000 critics on that site, that none of them made any money from it, and that nobody cared what any of them thought, either. You still claim some credit, however, for people now buying pianos with keys made from synthetic materials. After all, you care about elephants and isn’t that what’s really important?
You applied to be a marketing trainee with a focus on Gay & Muslim Outreach at the local lighting plant that had been there for 70 years but EPA regulations meant it had to be closed down permanently. You’re now a Leasing Consultant at a nearby apartment complex. As a bonus, you don’t have to transfer buses to get there. You know a lot of the HUD people…or at least you’ve talked to them on the phone frequently as you have lots of Section 8 renters (who don’t really pay rent, but you never say so). Your pidgin-Spanish is improving by the day, since most of them don’t speak English, and you have learned to look the other way when it comes to previous addresses, Social Security numbers, real names and references on applications. To save time, you fill in most of the paperwork for them and have them make an X on the signature line. HUD has never rejected or questioned any application anyway, so what does it matter?
You take pride in the falling unemployment numbers under Obama, but can’t understand why there were so few job listings on Careerbuilder.com and why you never got called for any interviews. You cheer the strong economic recovery but wonder why the local mall shut down and why you see FOR LEASE signs in so many shopping center windows. Maybe they were businesses selling fat and sugar-laden products made from nonsustainable raw materials – in which case they should go out of business.
Living with the parents again has been OK. The fridge and pantry are always stocked and you just can’t stay away from those organic Fair Trade cookies from Aldi. They turned your old bedroom into a study for Dad but since Dad had his disc surgery he has been confined to the first floor of the house. So you got your room back. You strongly supported Obamacare but you still overhear the frantic whispers of your parents at night. Dad needs another back surgery but his retiree insurance coverage was just cancelled under the Affordable Care Act. Your parents never were too good with computers but they are staying up late using your school laptop trying to find insurance ‘on the exchange.’ They are too young for Medicare and they enrolled in one plan but it had a $6,000 deductible and they didn’t have that kind of money so Dad’s follow-up surgery had to wait despite his agonizing back pain. Still, it was better than nothing…until it actually became nothing when the insurer went out of business despite having a government-subsidized monopoly. But Obamacare is a success even if some mean people say it isn’t.
Dad used to love working in the yard and took pride in the neat diagonal mower stripe pattern in his lawn but his back problems prevent him from doing it now. But you support the idea of Mexicans doing jobs Americans won’t do and $20 cash paid off the books to the landscaping crew is a small price to pay, literally and figuratively. But they won’t make the stripes even if you ask them. It makes you feel good to know that you live in a multiracial, multilingual, multicultural society even though you heard them say “culo gordo” when you went out to get the mail the other day. You wonder what happened to the nice boys in the neighborhood who used to deliver papers and mow lawns and assume they’re busy doing other things now. You don’t like your Dad joking around, calling the leaf blower gusts ‘The Winds Of Tijuana’ and suspect he may be a closet Klansman or possibly Donald Trump’s distant cousin. But the closet is already full of the clothes you can’t fit into anymore so that theory is probably false anyway.
You still use your iPhone for Facebook where you post quotes you regard as inspirational from authors you’ve never heard of because the quotes are in a pretty script font that looks like calligraphy. You tried Instagram but you don’t like to see photos of yourself now and you definitely don’t want strangers looking at them. You haven’t been able afford a vacation in a while so you don’t have any beach or mountain photos to share. You post the occasional blurry selfie to Facebook after you’ve had a late-night glass or two of Trader Joe’s Red and are feeling brave. You’ve learned how to use the Crop function in the Photos app so only your face shows and not your favorite oversized black t-shirt that you also wear to bed. It warms your heart to see your friends click the Like button and post comments like ‘Beautiful lady!’….’Pretty Girl!’….’Love this one!’…’Short hair suits you!’…but you suspect they are mostly trying to cheer you up especially when they post the same comments under every photo. Besides, your hair is only short because you tried to give yourself a dye job to save money at the salon but you botched it and had to cut it all off with the kitchen scissors. You tried Match.com and the Tinder app, too, but you angrily deleted them after a lack of responses. Probably those same heteronormative sexist cads you detested in college – especially the ones with jobs and cars now.
Still, without one man in particular you wouldn’t have your son. Your son is almost two, full of energy and worth every minute of the drunken, fumbling one night stand that produced him. You started talking to the eventual father while waiting in line for the restroom (you were using the men’s only because the line was shorter), one thing led to another and he swept you off your feet (for a few seconds at least until his face turned an alarming shade of crimson). He led you to a clearing in the woods behind the concert lawn section. You still laugh to yourself about getting poked in the back by tree roots while staring up at the moon and stars.
You keep tabs on the father – after all, he took your virginity during those romantic 45 minutes – and because you need his address in the next state over to file for court-ordered support payments. But the payments have been few and far between after he lost the only job he could find when the hospital he was cleaning closed down to consolidate under Obamacare.
Your boy is talking and asking questions and you worry about the day he starts to wonder where his daddy is and why you live with Grammy and Pop-Pop. He’s so high-spirited you start to believe he may be ADHD and you have resolved to give him strong doses of Ritalin as soon as you can get a prescription because boys acting like boys is part of a dangerous, oppressive patriarchy. You caught him watching a few minutes of Dora the Explorer and your hope is building that he may be a womyn trapped in a male toddler’s body. You don’t want to be cisnormative so you plan to buy a Wonder Woman costume at Big Lots and lay it on his bed to see if he puts it on so you’ll know for certain. You look forward to raising him as a girl, if necessary, because Girls Are Awesome and Boys Are Mean. You’ve already done some Google searches to find the earliest age at which hormone therapy can commence. You just hope it’s before he expresses any interest in toy guns or playing Army or football.
Obama has been a presence on TV all along. You try to be proud of him and of the two votes you cast for him, but you secretly admit it’s not the same as it was especially when Mom makes macaroni again for dinner. In school you learned about Our System Of Government and how the president works in the Oval Office in the White House in Washington, but you see lots of footage of him walking down the steps of Air Force One in a new city or country almost every day so he can’t be in Washington if he’s in Palm Springs again. He gives lots of speeches but the speeches are behind closed doors to people described only as ‘donors.’ But you know that presidents are limited to two terms so you can’t understand why he would still need donations.
Obama is a nice man who cares about single moms like you and so does his wife, who takes time out of her busy gardening schedule to fly to Europe to talk to single moms attending high fashion shows in Milan and Monaco. You’ve never had any trouble with the IRS and have always gotten your refund on time, especially once you started filing for the Earned Income Tax Credit. You don’t believe the IRS spied on the Tea Party but even if they did the Tea Party deserved it because they want people to starve and stuff. Obama didn’t know anything about it anyway because he’s still nice and gives good speeches. And you heard that the Tea Party people occasionally attend church, which makes them even more suspicious and dangerous.
You don’t know what all this NSA stuff is about, either. It sounds like James Bond. But you’ve always believed that if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear, which is why you support random police roadblocks and vehicle searches for safety and you are sooo tired of people whining about the 4th and 5th Amendments written on that yellow scrap of paper. Who needs that old Constitution when it didn’t include the obvious right to gay marriage in it? Hello!?!
You also believe the police are racist and should stop patrolling in the inner city altogether. Their presence only causes violence and shootings. The drug and gang activity would stop if the police would stop provoking those people – at least, you think so. In reality, you haven’t been downtown in years because it’s not safe to go there thanks to the racist police, especially all the black police officers and the black chief of police.
And what about these horrible sneaky people who filmed Planned Parenthood staff? You believe Cecile Richards when she says they were edited and taken out of context, even if you wonder to yourself what context could have made the harvesting of baby parts and making jokes about it sound reasonable. You are definitely pro-life when it comes to your boy and can’t imagine having snuffed him out when he was 8 months in the womb but if your neighbor wants to kill hers it’s her choice!
You know there’s an election coming up this year and you plan to vote Democrat again to keep the country fair and equal. You finally have a womyn candidate and she was married to Bill Clinton who was a great president – at least that’s what you’ve always heard. Men are always on the prowl for victims, as you know, and Bill Clinton had affairs, was credibly accused of rape and orchestrated the biggest sexual harassment power play in history, but he supports the right to abortion on demand and so does Hillary so he must be OK.
This Sanders guy is interesting, though, even if he’s a bit strange with his white Bozo hair, red face and hunched-over posture. He wants to give out even more stuff to the people who really deserve it – like you. You don’t know much about Wall Street but you know who Gordon Gekko is and saw the film’s hyperaccurate documentary-style portrayal of investment firms. You ask yourself how a company that is taxed out of existence will be around to pay more taxes next year but companies are evil and profit is bad so they should have no complaints, really. It’s already been proven that banks and insurance companies are racist and sexist. If everyone, including you, could get a government-mandated ‘living wage’ then poverty and unemployment would disappear and America would be a fairer place like Cuba or North Korea. You and your son-turned-daughter could move into your own place. You might feel guilty about taking your EBT and WIC card with you since you occasionally helped Mom and Dad out with groceries but they’ll manage somehow.
The year 2016. Already? You’ll be 30 in four years. You have no prospects, no husband, no house, no money, no car. But you are open-minded, tolerant, anti-gun-violence, anti-fur, pro-marriage equality, pro-gender neutral restroom, anti-racist and believe Islam is the Religion of Peace.
You are still a catch, darn it! You are proudly voting Democrat and living the Coexist dream – even if every day seems like an unending, inescapable nightmare.
Whew! I was reading this and seriously hoping you weren’t the actual subject of this messed up soup of inanity. I am relieved, frankly.
The description is nowhere near what I ever experienced in my life.
Dayummm!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I see these fat turds all over the Austin area. Hilarious.
The writer isn’t old enough to have a “then.”
I lived through what was described in this blog but my school years were filled with quite a different cast of characters.
Which blog? Well written!
he has that in common with most of the self-designated “pundits”, includng those who lined up against Trump and the conservative woymn who convinced Corey.
Piss be upon the pundit class!
Yes, all of this.
And they’ll vote themselves the contents of our 401ks when the time comes.
Actually looking forward to it in an ironic way.
Yeah, right...
Well done!
Ping
bkmk
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