Consent Part Two: Self Defense

I wasn't planning on doing any kind of follow-up on that other consent post, but recent news coverage just leaves me no choice. I have no interest in talking about that news coverage. That's not what I do. I tell stories.

This is going to be a story about taking self-defense classes.

My public high school offered self defense as a P.E. elective for girls. This was probably really cutting-edge at the time. Every girl I knew wanted to take this class--possibly because every girl I knew well described herself as a feminist, but maybe also because the teacher was a bad-ass woman coach who was very nice but also kind of tough and you could imagine actually learning some useful things from her. Or maybe because it was P.E. without the physical exertion. Who knows.

We watched a lot of videos about date rape, drinking, inappropriate behavior from adults, how to protect yourself on the street. We had a lot of good, open, honest conversations. We practiced some physical fighting techniques. This stuff got us thinking, and we girls talked about the class a decent amount, as I recall. Having already dealt with a lot of unwanted attention by the time I was 14 or however old I was when I first took the class, there was one thing that really bothered me about it. A few things, actually. One was that it seemed to give some of the girls the idea that as long as they knew how to fight, they were invulnerable. We would joke and tease with each other and pretend to fight, but I never liked that. I was little. I knew that the point wasn't to fight and be a badass, but to create an element of surprise with the hope of escaping. A good right hook wasn't the point, and you weren't to blame if you were being assaulted and you froze, or couldn't fight, or fought and lost. I often felt like I couldn't articulate those thoughts, because if I did, I would be accused of having "victim mentality" or thinking that girls aren't as strong as boys.

Which, you know--a lot of times, they aren't.

When I was 16, I dated a guy for a while who was fairly small, maybe 5'4", 110 pounds or something. All I know is he was still bigger than me, since I was maybe 5'3" and 95 pounds on a fat day. (Is it normal for girls to grow taller 7 years after getting their first period? Oh well, I'll chalk that up to another way that Katy is like a boy--growing in college). And one day we were wrestling, and I tried one of those self-defense moves on him. And he just flipped me and pinned me, using his upper-body strength to win the wrestle, until I said let go, and he did. That kind of worried me, and got me thinking about how the first serious boyfriend I ever had was 6'3" and weighed 200 pounds or so--thankfully I never had to try to fight that guy.

So here's the thing that really bothered me about learning "self defense." One day, probably when I was a junior, I pulled the coach aside and said I wanted to ask her something:

"Why aren't there any boys in this class?"

She said that the administration didn't think we could have honest discussions in a co-ed setting, and that kids would be too embarrassed to talk, or that girls would feel threatened. OK, that sounded reasonable, I guess, so I followed up with this:

"So, is there a class for them? So they can watch these videos and see what is appropriate and learn how to interpret "signals" and identify bad behavior and understand that no means no and all of that?"

No, she said, there was no class for boys.

I walked away in anger--not at her, because I know she agreed with what I was saying. Inside, I was thinking, but I already know all of these things. I am 16 and already about 60 in my self-policing behavior, already clear on how to fight because I've already done it. I get it. I left feeling like maybe I wasn't the one who needed educating. Or, that it wasn't about education at all, but decency, respect, civility, common sense, and in general not being a piece of human garbage.

Now I'm not saying I didn't learn anything. I did--I suppose I learned a lot. In high school self defense class, I learned:

not to accept drinks from people I don't know, or from people who seem really hell-bent on offering me drinks (didn't need the video for that one--understood why from experience);

not to wear my hair in a ponytail in public because that would make me an easier target, as someone could try to grab me. I also learned not to go out at night or in the early morning by myself, not to use parking garages, to look under my car before getting in it, to look strangers in the eye on the street so they would know that I would remember how to describe them to the police, to wear pants instead of skirts when walking outside, and all kinds of other crap that make living your life seem like some kind of regimented impossibility;

how to use my elbows as weapons, how to stick my fingers in someone's eyes for maximum pain, how to break fingers, and the best ball-injuring techniques. (full disclosure: I have used all of these in my life. many of them in high school, some of them before I had taken the class or knew what it was called. I never actually broke fingers but came close enough to hear the yelp of pain and run the fuck away);

how to yell really loud: NO! FIRE! HELP! MY DAD JUST GOT HOME! I'M CALLING THE COPS! YOU GODDAMN SONOFABITCH IF YOU DON'T GET OFF OF ME I'M GOING TO RIP YOUR FACE OFF! (OK that last one was all me);

how to essentially get a PhD in adolescent male mind-reading so that I could be sure to know what unspeakable things they were thinking at any moment of any day (and that wasn't even, like HARD to learn);

that I could indeed agree to a date, even an expensive one, and not have to put out (yup, check, knew that);

that I could put out and that was ok, as long as I wanted to put out (double check);

that boys' (and men's) excuses for why they behave in bad and criminal ways were just that--excuses.

And that last one was the one lesson that really mattered.

Do you know what I did NOT learn in self defense class? I did NOT learn:

how to keep my body parts to myself and not use them as weapons against people smaller or less powerful than me;

how to walk down the street, or attend a party, or drive somewhere, without wild uncontrollable urges taking over and forcing me to commit acts of aggression against random people or my best friends or the person I claim to love;

how to actually listen to the words coming out of someone's mouth, and believe that they too know what those words mean;

how to avoid sticking objects inside other people unless they asked me to;

how to make out and make my way through all the "bases" and be damn happy with what I was getting;

how to talk about and tease my guy friends and boyfriends without resorting to insulting and degrading language;

that I wasn't entitled to any parts of anyone's body other than my own;

that the world didn't owe me sexual pleasure;

how not to: corner people, lure people away from the crowd, pin them with my arms or legs, pull their hair, cover their mouths, say things like "you aren't getting away from me," "there's nothing you can do about it," or any of that kind of stuff that must be, like INEVITABLE if you're a guy, right?

I didn't learn any of those things, because I was a human female living in the world and the understanding was that I already knew them. But in my mind, that was the class I wish they had offered to the boys. I am not saying that I wish that now, looking back with the wisdom of age. I wished that then. When I was 16.

Now I would say that I think everyone really does know all of these things, because boys and men do understand what consent is and what rape and assault are, and most of them care about the difference, but some do not. I knew at 16 that boys knew damn well how to behave, even when they were horny, even when they were drunk, even when no one else was around, even if no one would find out, even if I would never tell. They knew, and they didn't need a class to tell them. Still, it wouldn't be a bad idea to stop focusing on girls and women changing every freaking aspect of their real or potential behavior, as opposed to boys and men just not doing violent and degrading shit.

I failed to mention something else that I learned in self-defense class in high school. I learned that it wasn't my fault, and that I could tell people, and I wouldn't be blamed, and someone in authority, like the police, would help me.

I didn't believe that then, for a lot of reasons, including some damn good ones involving figures of authority being part of the problem, not the solution. I read the news, and I'm not sure I believe it now. So how about if we all collectively take the class called:

How not to be a piece of shit human being.

If you fail, you can enroll in the

Lose access to the basic privileges of society because you don't deserve them class.

And I will just keep waking up early for spinning class, and maybe take piano lessons.

Puppy Love

I have always hated the phrase "puppy love." First of all, I'm not a dog person, so it just conjures up images that I'd rather not have in my mind. Second of all, the phrase is always used when talking about young people, and the assumption is that they are idiots who don't know what REAL love is, because only the old or cynical know about that kind of stuff.

I call bullshit on that.

In general, I don't believe that emotions ever change. I don't believe that children's emotions are less real or less relevant than adults.' While I will agree that sometimes children and teenagers are lacking experience or the luxury of context, I don't think that makes their feelings any less real. Children are inherent narcissists, teenagers believe their experiences are unique in the history of the world. That's true. And it means that sometimes people--especially the young--need a swift kick in the ass or a big dose of perspective thrown in their direction.



But they FEEL things the same. In particular, if people decide they are in love, I don't see who we are to argue.

In full disclosure, I have been in love with four people in my life, and I fell in love with three of them as a teenager. I'm not talking about crushes, or unrequited longing. I'm talking about relationships, full of love and sexuality and passion and commitment and learning things about yourself and the world. I dated people as a teenager and an adult whom I did not love, so I'm pretty sure I know the difference. I fell in love with my husband when I was 27, and you know what? It felt the same as it did at 15. No, it was not the first time, filled with all of that wonder and, let's face it, disbelief. By 27, you can believe it...kind of...and yet it still seems like some kind of miracle. The people were different, hell I was different, but love, that's still the same.

I should say that I believe that all close friendships are love affairs. It's one thing to have friends, groups of people you like to hang out with, people who make you laugh. It's another thing to have that close friend or friends, the ones you make special time for, the people you find captivating, the women you find fascinating and sexy, the men you have so much in common with that it almost seems wrong. Those kinds of friendships are love, absent the sex. And very, very small children have those kinds of friendships. Both of my children have them. They KNOW what falling in love is, because they have done it already.

When people refer to puppy love, with all of that disdain in their voices and rolling in their eyes, perhaps it's because they are regretting something that happened or that didn't happen in their youth. If kids say they are in love, they are not lying. It's not "just" lust, or hormones. Because let's face it, what IS love if not lust and hormones? I am 37 years old and I am not looking for another friend, damn it, and I am absolutely not looking for a freaking roommate. I want a LOVER. I WANT lust and hormones. I also want a partner in crime, a co-pilot, a parent for my kids. That person might play catch with me, grab my ass all the time, give me cheesy googly eyes and start a pot of coffee for me at dawn while I am at the gym even though he doesn't drink the stuff himself. And people might say "oh you are just like TEENAGERS," and roll their eyes, and I would say this:

Yes.



Because teenagers aren't morons, and adults aren't exactly known for their aversion to irrational and disastrous decisions. People of all ages play games, if they are so inclined. Some people are jealous and possessive and toxic and crazy, and they always will be, no matter how old they are. Others are inclined towards compromise and selflessness in love, and most of the rest of us are hanging out somewhere in between. Life changes people, but life is always happening. I had had enough of life--enough pain and suffering and perspective, thank you very much--to know what the hell I was talking about as a teenager.

In high school, there is the luxury of not having to choose someone who is "right" for you, based on some notion of what you have in common or where you want to live or your philosophy on organic farming or some shit. You choose based on mutual attraction, of all sorts--how he or she makes you FEEL in a variety of situations. You have the luxury of taking it slow, choosing to ease into it gradually with sex or at least not having the option of spending the night together, which kind of goes away with adulthood, and later you will realize that what seems like an interminable prison to your hormones is actually a gift of pacing you will wish you could replicate in 10 years.

When I was 16 to 17, I dated a boy for about a year who had been a close friend for a long time. Before we started dating, my mom once told me she always knew when I was talking to him on the phone. Back then, there were no cell phones of course, and we had two phones in our house: in the kitchen, and in her bedroom. There was no such thing as privacy, so she could hear all of our conversations. I asked how she knew, and she said, "That's the only time I ever hear you laugh that hard."

The woman had a point. I fell in love with that kid. That was real. So was the pain of losing him, not just as a boyfriend but as the friend he had been before, though I never regretted any of it.

My first love happened when I was 15. This kid, who was also 15 at the time, told me he loved me on our second date. Well, it was kind of our third date, but that's another story. I told him that was impossible, because he didn't even know me, and it didn't make sense. And he just shook his head and said, I hear what you're saying, but you're wrong. I love you. I know I do.

And you know what? He did. He loved me for a long time, much longer than he should have, much longer than made any sense.

Gabe told me he loved me when we had been dating for two months. Today it seems like if you're a guy who just turned 28 you are too cynical or too focused on holding onto your extended adolescence to make that leap, especially before the woman does. He never seemed to care about that stuff. He loved me early on, wanted to marry me early on, became a father relatively fast, figured out the whole cancer and menopause and baldness when the shit eventually hit the fan.

Through all of this, I realize that I learned something way back when I was 15. I learned, first of all, that someone could really adore me, think of me when he could have thought of so many other things, treat me like some kind of goddess descended from the heavens, regardless of whether or not he was "right" for me. I learned that I COULD have that, so I didn't want to settle for something else. I had already learned the kernel of what real love is--what it always is, no matter how old you are.

Love is a choice.

It is a choice you make every day, or every minute of every day, or at least whenever you can. You can always make a different choice. It is a decision that you make, and you stick with it, or you don't. You can't talk someone into it, and you can't talk someone out of it. Age is irrelevant, stage of life is irrelevant, experience is irrelevant. As Goethe said: "If I love you, what business is it of yours?"

The decision has already been made. You just have to decide whether or not to accept it, which is not what puppies do--it's what people do. And it's worth everything.

On a Child's Seventh Birthday

They say that seven is a lucky number. But lucky, exactly, for whom?

Seven is supposedly so many things: a years-long itch, a deadly sin, a sun, a son, a wonder of the world, a sister, a number of days, all of the seas on earth, a particularly impressive notion of heaven.

Seven is also the number of years it’s been since my first child, my daughter, was born.

She was born early, not by choice but rather necessity, to protect me and her from the high blood pressure in my veins that threatened us both. The whole thing started in the morning, and she was born a little before 6 pm, silently, as if she wanted to reconsider. One of the odd things about giving birth is that you remember everything, every last detail, and yet it all seems impossible, like it couldn’t have actually happened. When your child is a small person living fully in society, it’s hard to fathom how she used to live inside of you, how at one point in a sense you were one and the same.

What a world!

Because you and she are not the same. She is gymnastics, and you are basketball. She is arts and crafts, and you are poetry. She is obedience and you are rebellion. She is straight fine hair and you are thick and curly. She is competition and you are just too busy laughing in the background to care.

And now, she is seven.

Seven is an important age, somewhere between being a little kid and being a not so little kid. Do you remember being seven? I do. I remember resignedly waking up at midnight to take my epilepsy medication. I remember that my best friend was a boy, and everyone—well, mostly adults—teased us about being “boyfriend/girlfriend.” I remember my last year with a bowl cut before my hair turned curly. I remember being able to float on my back on the water for 30 minutes straight. I remember pancakes and peanut butter and crackers and watermelon boats. I remember jumping rope for hours without stopping and reading novels intended for people ten years older and lying in the hammock in my back yard.

What will my daughter remember of being seven?

Will she remember her surprising strength, the impressive little muscles in her belly and arms? Will she remember her “monochrome” phase, wearing the same color from top to bottom? Being student of the month? Winning the spelling bee? Playing with her brother—finally, finally!—peacefully and happily for hours on end? Refusing to eat? Colored pencils or sleds shaped like polar bears? Treating an eraser with a smiley face as if it’s a real life person? Playing gin with her mother on a Friday night? Any of these songs that we sing?

Well, she will now, because I wrote this.

What can we give our children but a name, some mannerisms, immeasurable love and memories they’d like to keep?

We can give them nothing else but a wish. And so we say, Happy Birthday.

And when I remember this happy 7th birthday, I will think about how I went to her classroom to do a little poetry project. She was so excited in theory and so shy in practice. And as everyone else was shouting and giving their answers to the age-old philosophical question of Why Popsicles? and it came time for her turn, I already knew the answer: Because 30 years have passed between your eyes and mine. I asked her, why did you choose that one? And she said, in front of the entire first grade:

Because I love you.

I will always remember you when you were seven, Lenny. Always—no matter how many more sevens I've got.

This post is also available at KatyDidCancer.

Snow White v. Superman

I've written a lot about gender roles, I realize. I've written controversial pieces based on my own childhood experiences, talked about the craziness of buying clothes for boys and girls, written about sex and rape, and yes, even ventured into the territory of talking about Disney Princess movies, though apparently I'm not good at that because that post degenerated into a long missive about the importance of using condoms. And that's not to mention all the posts about hair and breasts and body image and femininity and everything else inherent in KatyDidCancer.

However, I think it's time for me to give a little bit of my take on the whole Princess phenomenon.

It really doesn't bother me at all.

If you think of yourself as a feminist (and yes, I do, because I don't think that's a dirty word and I don't like how people have tried to take history and manipulate it), this is almost a sacrilegious statement. After all, princesses are only valued for their sex appeal! They are sitting around waiting for Prince Charming! (Ever notice how no one ever focuses on the princes? They are usually some pretty ineffectual dolts) They have to give up their talents and get threatened with death and they are abused and have no lives of their own! They are literal prisoners! What does this say to our daughters?

Um, well, I don't know. That's all bad stuff. I just think our kids can figure that out. Look, I could be dead wrong about this. I didn't grow up playing with princesses. I didn't play with dolls in general, except for Barbies (read this for my mom's perspective on mothering a girl like me). I think the princess stories are disturbing, especially in their dark, depressing, original Grimm form. However, my daughter has never seemed to care about princesses (my son went through a Princess-obsession phase; he thought Snow White was SO PRETTY). Lenny used to dress up in the outfits if her friends wanted to do that, but she never chose to do that on her own. She doesn't have princess dolls and never talks about being a princess. So, perhaps I've been lucky. But I can honestly say that it wouldn't bother me if she was into all that stuff.

Why the collective obsession with princesses? I think we give advertisers too much credit, and our kids too little.

Does anyone wring their hands over the assumption everyone seems to make about boys looking up to superheroes? No--quite the opposite. The trend seems to be to encourage girls to look up to those characters too.

But think about what that means.

Who are superheroes? Well, on the one hand, they are people who help others, fight crime, and do things for the greater good.

On the other hand, they have a pretty bum rap, if you ask me. In order to be a superhero, it's pretty much guaranteed that you have no family. You are an orphan (Spiderman, Superman, Batman), led into the path of greatness by the suffering and death of the people you love most. Even that is not enough. Once you begin your life of crime-fighting, you still don't get to have a family. It is accepted that anyone who loves you--women, parental figures--will be a target of the bad guys in order to get back at you.

So, it's back to a life of solitude for you. Back to a life where you hide your true face and lie to everyone every day.

There's more. Sometimes, you can't be a superhero without literally being a freak of nature, an aberration (Hulk, Spiderman). Sometimes you bring this on yourself or it's done to you against your will (Iron Man, Wolverine). So you can look forward to being this dude who is tormented, either by others or by his own misgivings with his body, or both. Your life is filled with excessive danger and physical pain. You will die young or come close to death over and over again. People will hate you and misunderstand you. You will be expected to represent entire nations and save society from extinction (Captain America, every other superhero).

Now you're saying, Jesus Katy, way to ruin all the fun! And that's exactly my point. No one points out how unrealistic and damaging the actual messages of Superheroes are--they are too busy focusing on the cool special effects and gadgets and the flying and the stuff blowing up. We don't actually want our boys to be isolated, cold, violent, without friends or love, incapable of telling the truth about themselves, doomed to lives of heroism tinged with the knowledge of a painful and early death. I think it's accurate to say that there are aspects of those messages that do get lodged in boys' brains, and those can be damaging, but no one is wringing their hands over the completely effed-up messages behind these dudes (yeah, I said dudes--Wonder Woman is kind of on her own).

And I say that's fine.

Kids get interested in this stuff for their own reasons, and they do different things with it. Sure, there's too much product placement for little kids, too much pressure for every kid to like the same things, too much merchandising of the message. However, our kids do deserve a little more credit than for us to just think they are mindless drones swallowing every piece of junk message that's given out.

When I was a kid, I had a favorite Barbie. I named her Joanne and called her Jo. I dressed her in the pedal pushers and other awesome 50s-era pants I had handed down from my mom, and she often wore Ken's sweaters. She drove to her job (she was 17--my idea of the absolute perfect age in the world when I was 9) and did well in school and hung out with her friends and got to have sex with the one Ken doll, who never cheated on her. She was a tomboy. I never gave a thought to the unnaturally large tits or the weird curve of her feet or whatever other porn-based messages Barbie was supposed to impart to me. Playing with that doll did not cause me problems in my life, my relationships, or my career. It never affected my body image. She was a 12 inch plastic doll. There wasn't a single part of her that looked like a real person. I was smart enough to know that.



And when my brother played with his thousands of little green plastic army men, arranging complex war scenarios, it did not make him a violent person. I remember him making a diorama about World War II or something, and to make it realistic, he cut off some of the army men's limbs and painted them red. I kind of love that fact. But the point is, he didn't grow up to cut people's arms off or inflict harm on other people or think that's what a man should do.

In fact, there are so few kids who ever grow up to do anything remotely resembling the messages behind princesses or superheroes that I don't know why we've all got our undies in a bunch over it. Sure, there are some trophy wives and gangbangers, some Navy seals and supermodels (or whatever the real life parallels are), but not very many. Most kids grow up to do something, hopefully something they like, but not usually, not for most kids. They do something to pay the bills. And they learn how to do that, how to cope and survive, in part by how they play.

The other day, Gabe and I were treated to a "movie" that our kids put together with the stuffed animals. The plot was that the two Beluga whales had a baby (a cow), who was subsequently rocked to sleep by a Latina American Girl doll, and then treated to a birthday party complete with cake until Augie started throwing everything around. There was singing involved in the movie--Lenny singing softly to the baby, Augie making up some pretty creative lyrics of his own. In order to do that movie, they had to work together, plan, build the set, use their imaginations, and generally laugh a lot and make a huge mess. It didn't turn out exactly how either of them expected. Gabe videotaped it for a minute but then his phone died. I made them cut it short because it was past their bedtime. We forced them to clean up.

There's more to real life in those games than all this other stuff we worry about, and I see them play like that all the time.

I started thinking about all this the other day, when Lenny said something very insightful to Gabe about her birthday. Her words made me realize that kids do internalize messages they see and hear about men and women, though not necessarily in the ways we imagine. Girls might not see the superheroes and toughness and world-beating out there that's stuffed down boys' throats and feel left out or lesser. They might see something else--something more insidious, something that they don't want for themselves--something kind of sad.

Lenny was due to be born on St. Patrick's day. She knows this. She was born 9 days early, on International Women's day. She complained to Gabe a few days ago that she wished she had been born on St. Patrick's day because that would be so fun (we are a family of redheahds living in a neighborhood filled with a lot of Irish Catholics; we are neither Irish nor Catholic, but the shamrock culture is ubiquitous here--an alien concept to me). Gabe said "well, don't you think the day you were born is better? I mean, which is more important?" Lenny said "women, I guess." Gabe told her that if there were no women, there would be no babies. And she said this:

Yeah, and then there would be only men. And then there would be no people. Because all they would do is have wars and everyone would die.

I'm thinking that a cow born to whales that like cake and music is a better bet. But maybe that's just me.

Consent

The concept behind this post is really a very simple one. I thought of talking about a lot of other things that are related, but there will be time enough for that. This time, I’m talking about this:

Consent.

As in sexual consent.

Part of what it means to describe a “rape culture,” a term that I find accurate and yet grossly misused and misinterpreted to the point of being almost useless, is that everyone seems to agree that consent is this murky issue. Those who decry that notion state that consent is not the act of not saying no, it is the act of saying yes. Then, those people are shunned for being idiots who don’t understand the way human sexual behavior works in the real world, called Feminazis or frigid or something, and the whole mess just continues.

Here’s the thing. Consent is obvious. It is not about people having some scientific conversation that goes like this: May I have sex with you? Why Yes you may.

When we act as if consent is difficult to define, we ignore most of the history of human sexuality. People—men, women, of all different sexual orientations—manage to have consensual sex every single day here on earth. The very fact that rape cases and trials often hinge on the notion of consent proves that we are denying what we all know to be true—that people actually do know when someone wants to have sex with them—in order to excuse criminal behavior and blame victims.

If you are female, you have a high likelihood of being in a situation, or multiple situations, where you somehow have to convince folks—the perpetrator or perpetrators of the crime, the people investigating it, your friends, your family—that you were not “consenting” to certain acts just by nature of being there, by nature of existing. You begin to question this yourself. You call your own actions into question, though you are confused, because you know that you do know how to consent, it’s a normal, natural thing, nothing to be ashamed of, so how can people question it so easily?

We use the cloak of the supposedly ambiguous "consent" to call into question all kinds of things. "Consent" can apparently be assumed, based on a variety of factors: your age, your level of sobriety, your clothes, your attractiveness, your being in a certain place at a certain time, your choice to be by yourself or not, your body language.

This is a pretty complicated formula to figure out. And none of it even comes close to discerning whether or not I, or you, you know--actually want to get busy with another person.

I've always been clear about this. I cannot imagine anyone ever being confused about my willingness or lack thereof in sexual matters. And yet that does not mean that I have not been molested on numerous occasions, that I have not been the victim of attempted rape, including from multiple boys when I was very young. I have been very, very..."lucky," though I hate to look at it that way, in that I escaped these scenarios and have not been raped. I will not get into some of the more egregious cases here, for a variety of reasons. But I can illustrate a few more minor, personal stories that show that we allow boys and men to explain away all kinds of bad behavior based on this assumption that they don't know what's going on, when the reality is that they know exactly what is going on, and have even manipulated the situation such that the inevitable outcome would work in their favor.

Like the time when I was in junior high school, and I went with my mom and brother to the auto body shop to watch them haggle about getting his first car painted. My mom and brother argued with the manager or someone, I'm not sure. I stood there--I was maybe 13? it's possible I was still 12--bored, looking around absently, several feet away from them. Two mechanics sidled up to me. They began whispering to me, telling me I was beautiful, that my hair was so pretty. I didn't know what to say, so I said nothing, and apparently that was "consent" to this creepiness right? So on they went: I love your titties. I'm thinking about fucking you right now. My family was right there...nothing bad could happen, right? One of them began touching me, feeling my breasts, rubbing his erection on my leg. I froze. I had never been touched like that before, and I wanted to slug him, but I also didn't want to cause a scene or upset my family, even though I knew my mom, and my brother, would have been homicidal if they knew what was going on right there. The mechanics must have known that too--that I was crazy young, inexperienced, embarrassed. They had lived in this society long enough to know I would probably do nothing, and if I told on them, they could use the fact that I did nothing, or the fact that I was cute, to cry "consent."

Or how about all the times we went to the pool when we were 12, 13 years old, and older men--men in their late teens and early twenties--felt up our legs or butts underwater while we were playing games like "I'm a mermaid!" We never said a word. Because they told us we looked hot in those bathing suits, so apparently the fault lay in our pubescent hotness.



Or when we would go to "all ages night" at various clubs, nights that existed--in our minds--in order to provide teenagers who didn't have fake IDs with some interesting things to do in a city like Chicago where it seemed like everyone on earth was dancing the night away and we were sitting in some basement somewhere bored to tears. Groups of us girls would go and dance our asses off, talk about our boyfriends who were at home, who were all of 16 or 17 years old, and we would have to contend with dudes in their 20s trying to get us drinks or corner us somewhere. Dudes who would say things like "you look older" or "I thought you were older" when I would say, hey man, leave me alone, I'm only 16. Now think about it. It's all ages night. They knew EXACTLY how old the girls were. That's the whole reason they showed up--to try to take advantage of young girls. So when he asks you to dance and you say sure, and you are agreeing to dance, he assumes you are agreeing to getting some painful hickey on your neck from this 23 year old named Marco who did that because he was pissed you wouldn't let him put his hands on you and he wanted to "mark you," which is literally what he said, so no one else would be interested. And you know that you DON'T look older, you look 16. You style your hair naturally and don't wear much makeup and wear normal clothes, hell you even throw a tshirt on before anyone takes your picture at Oak Street Beach because you are modest in your swimsuit, and people say YOU LOOK OLDER when they mean I WANT TO FUCK YOU, (which is also what it means when today the same types of dudes say "you look younger") and even teachers and coaches have done this, which makes no sense because they work at your high school and know exactly how fucking old you are, thank you very much.

Or in college, walking home from a party by yourself, when a group of guys start shouting at you, telling you what they wanted to do to you, all while you are wearing something along the lines of this Beastie Boys shirt and 7up jacket, and you run into the library which was luckily still open, and you hear them laughing in the distance, and your friends all thought you had overreacted.



Or when you are older, 25 say, and on a third date with a guy you'd like to like more than you do, and you let him into your apartment and start fooling around. And he ruins it almost immediately-- he pushes your sweater and bra up over your breasts just like you are in the 9th grade and doesn't bother to undo the bra or take the sweater off and that's wack and uncomfortable, and you know that you aren't sleeping with this dude, because this is going nowhere fast. And just as you're thinking this, suddenly you literally wince in pain and audibly say "OW!" You grab his face and push it away from your chest, where he had been kissing your breasts and stomach. You ask what the hell that was, and he gives you some look that I'm sure he practiced in the mirror since he was 13 and says "I'm a biter," so henceforth and forever he will be known as The Biter. You look him right in the eye and say "Oh. Well, I'm not. Don't do that again. I don't like it. That hurt." And he promptly continues to keep doing that shit, as if your statement was unclear. You realize that he is getting off on you not liking this, so you change tactics and pretend to get romantic with him and then tell him that you "aren't that kind of girl," whatever that means and that it's too soon to get so intimate etc. And finally that asshole leaves your apartment, and you triple lock the door and rip your sweater off, and now you understand why he didn't take it off, because he didn't want you to see your torso covered in little red welts. And it's after midnight, but you call two of your friends anyway because that shit is messed up and you have to tell someone.

Asshole.

See, here's how I know that consent is an easy concept. I know because I have been with normal guys. I know because I have been with teenage boys who were insanely horny, boys who were inebriated, boys who were probably convinced that the number one cause of death among adolescent males was the dreaded blue balls, and they still knew how to keep that shit in their pants or back off if I told them that's how it was going to be. I know because boys, and grown men, who are normal, are usually so happy and surprised and ridiculous when they find out you actually want to get with them that they forget to act cool. I know because I have started to engage in certain activities with people, told them I didn't want to anymore, AND THEY STOPPED. Without questioning it, without arguing. I have been the one who wanted to have sex when they wanted to wait. I have had the fun, exciting, laughing at yourselves sex that pretty much sums up the first time you're with a new person and you're both nervous and clueless and HAPPY.

I'm sick of this nonsense. I'm sick of the idea that rape can somehow be an "accident" or that someone "made you do it" as if sexual abuse can somehow occur out of self defense. I'm sick of people trying to find a way that some girl who is unconscious can consent to sex with multiple people. I'm sick of people witnessing those crimes and instead of intervening, going to twitter and joking about it with #rape, admitting to the whole of humanity that they knew exactly what was happening--and still not getting indicted as an accessory.

I'm sick of talking about double standards, because that language is too mild. I have a boy and a girl to raise. My kids are good-looking. People tell me this all the time. I have been told that both will grow up to be heartbreakers. This is usually followed with people winking at me and saying things like watch out girls! when referring to my son. When referring to my daughter, people will tell me things like, you will have to keep her at home! get a shotgun! just like they used to tell my mom that maybe I should be put in the convent because I was pretty. And all I can think is that the message we give is that if you are a good looking boy, the world is your oyster, and if you are a good looking girl, the world is your prison.

I'm tired of it. When I put on running tights and go for a walk, I wish my husband didn't worry about me, not just for going out by myself early in the morning, but "because of the way those look on you." He's not trying to be a jackass. He knows that bad things happen to women, and that often when they do, it turns into this conversation of "but did you see how her ass looked in those tights?"

Here's another story, a story about a guy who said that the first time he saw me naked he was beside himself because "it was like looking at an angel." He's supposed to say that kind of stuff. Fine. We were 27 years old and he might as well have been 14. And I'm sure he would remember if it was on our third or fourth or fifth date because he's a guy and that would be important to him, but I don't remember. I know we were sober, and there we were, naked together, and I asked him if he had a condom. He said yes, and I helped him put it on.

And that, my friends, is a pretty good indicator of consent.

But you know what? He said something to me that I will always remember. We were discussing this and he doesn't recall saying it. He was lying on top of me, wearing the condom I had helped him put on, and he nervously and quietly said the following three words to me:

"This all right?"

And I said "Yes! Let's go!"

And I married that guy.

Blue

What do you do when you have a child with a vastly different personality from your own? I ask that question with honesty, because I really don't know the answer. Some who know me and my kids might assume that I'm talking about the challenges of raising my son, who is a character all his own. But this time, I'm talking about my daughter.

For years, I'm not sure we really qualified as "parents" per se, when we were just raising Lenny by herself. She was such an easy kid. Now, this whole eating thing has always been a challenge. She was a runt as a baby, for sure, not just in size, but in her lack of interest in keeping herself sustained. That was hard--she needed to drink milk or formula in the middle of the night when she was a year and a half old, because she simply didn't eat enough during the day. But that passed and now she still doesn't eat much and she's still tiny but she's strong and she sleeps and she's getting taller so what the hell.

Sometimes when parents talk about raising a child who is different, they mean a kid with special needs or a kid who is struggling with identity issues. But I'm talking about something much more basic--I'm talking about a kid who is just a really different person than me, or her dad.

As I said, for years, we had it so easy. We never child proofed our house, because Lenny would pick something up off the floor and hand it to us. She would never think of putting stuff in her mouth, or doing dangerous things. She had a natural distrust of strangers, especially men. She could play quietly by herself as an infant--true story. When she was not even one, I could tell her on a telecommuting day that I was going to have a 2 hour conference call, so she would need to sit there quietly. I would give her a pac if she wanted one, and she would literally sit there and quietly flip pages in a book, watching me. I would hang up the phone and then she'd start talking. She potty trained herself. At two and a half, she would get up in the middle of the night, go to the bathroom in the dark, flush, wash her hands and put herself back to bed. You could talk to her like she was a full-fledged person when she was one and a half. She started reading at three, learned to pump her own legs on the swing when she was 2, took care of her own nighttime nosebleeds, sat quietly in her room and played or read if she woke up in the morning before us, and never, ever caused trouble.

And that's it--that's what I'm struggling with right now. Where did this kid get her mortal fear of doing the wrong thing? I know we didn't teach it to her. She has literally been that way all her life. She hates conflict. She can't watch some animated movies because she senses that something uncomfortable might happen. I tell her, look, books and movies EXIST because of conflict--that's what they're ABOUT, that's what makes life interesting. But she's not having it. For a long time, this seemed eccentric to me, but you know, every person has a right to her personality, so I didn't think much of it.

Enter Augie. Lenny loves her brother and likes him. But she is still so jealous of him. STILL. The boy is almost four. Gabe might be able to relate to this better than me, but not really, because he is an only child. I'm the younger one, so I don't get it at all. I never had my parents to myself, I always had a sibling, so I never knew anything different than having to share folks' time and attention. When she acts out because Augie is getting attention, I have little patience for it, especially since I do more one-off things with her than I do with him. When she cries over homework--saying I don't know the answer! or I don't know what to say! I'm scared to make this presentation! what if I can't climb as high on the rope as I did last time! I honestly have no clue what to say.

It's not because I'm out of touch as a parent and I've forgotten what it's like to be little. It's because I was never like that when I was little. I didn't mind being wrong. I wanted to be right, but I shrugged off my own failures. I was pretty sure I wasn't the most-suited person for team sports but I played basketball and hockey anyway. I tested boundaries all the time and made my parents crazy with my inability to sit still and my interest in causing petty trouble. I was a good student but not as interested in perfection as my brother, so I did enough to be considered bright or gifted or whatever so people would leave me alone and I could eventually ditch class all the time and be forgiven for it. When I was deep in my tomboy phase, I refused to tie my shoes or clean my room and my best friend, definitely a type A personality herself, would get so fed up with my sloppiness that she would do those things for me. I did worry about consequences of bad behavior--usually after the fact, or if I got caught. I did learn early on how to be cautious and not put myself in bad situations, but that was not because I feared getting in trouble, it was because I had learned the hard way not to trust other people and their intentions.

So the thing is, I just don't get it. What is she afraid of, what is this horrible thing that might happen if she is wrong or gets in trouble or if someone else is better than her at something or if she forgets to do something she is supposed to do? Is her concept of love and forgiveness really so fleeting and conditional? It's hard to understand. It's frustrating. I feel weird being the mom saying things like "just let it go," "there's nothing wrong with mediocrity," and "you can't learn anything if you aren't willing to be wrong." Here I am, 37 years old, telling a child she should defy her teacher and just write her damn name the way she wants to write it. I try different tactics, telling her that is capable of doing things she's worried about, refusing to do things for her or even with her when she gets caught up in the idea of failure, but I have no idea if these are the right things. Gabe talks about her being a sensitive child, and I know he's right. But I am not a sensitive woman. I have been thick-skinned as long as I can remember. It's hard for me to relate.

I'm not saying that my way is better, just that I don't know how to put myself in her shoes. And then, I realize this:

My parents didn't get me either. And I turned out all right. Lenny and I have this in common: neither of us ever tells anyone else when we are upset. Or, if Lenny does tell us that she's upset, she cannot tell us why. If I try to get it out of her she will cry "I don't know." Maybe that's true, maybe it's not, but all I can do is try and make sure that there's not some kind of outside force causing the trouble. If it's coming from within her, I just have to accept that she will always have that side of her. She will always be a perfectionist who wants to be right and is internally competitive with herself. That will bring good things to her in life--that fire in the belly that her mother just doesn't have, no matter how many people have tried to convince me that I should have it. I am never going to be super-ambitious, always going to be relatively complacent, fairly certain that good enough is good enough, willing to bend the rules or break them into pieces. My firstborn will be more like a lot of people I know, people who are interesting and driven and awesome, but she will be a challenge for me to raise.

I think about one of my close friends, a man who shares Lenny's nerdy love of geography and maps. One time, a bunch of us were bowling. Most of us were doing terribly, lucky to get a 100 at the end of the game, and this guy got a turkey. I thought the whole turkey thing was made up, but no, I witnessed someone get one in real life. Then, he only got 8 pins down on the next roll or something, and he was literally hitting himself in the head, pissed at himself. He was laughing and toasting the rest of us losers with beer during our turns, but even though he had smoked us all, he apparently felt the need to do better, to beat himself. I just laughed at him. I didn't get it, but who cares? This is the guy who takes a little gnome figurine with him on his world travels and takes his picture in scenic locations and sends the postcards to my daughter.

There's more than one way to be, right?

I tried something different last night, after Lenny was panicking about a presentation she needs to do for school. This is the kid who memorizes the entire play and pracitcally strong-arms her way into a speaking part, and she's scared of reading from a poster? After trying to reason with her, I just gave up. I told her to take a break. Then I said this to her. Hey Lenny, you know how you found out a bunch of information about Mae Jemison (first black woman in space, graduate of the Chicago public high school in our neighborhood) on wikipedia? Well, do you know that you can look up just about anything on wikipedia? The other day I was thinking about the color blue. So I looked it up and found so many interesting things. Will you do something for me? Write something for me about what you think about blue. It could be a word or a sentence, it could be about why you like blue or what is blue or what you think about blue, I don't care. I'm just interested in what you think.

And she stopped crying and seemed intrigued. I went out to get coffee with a friend and she was asleep when I came home. I asked Gabe if she had written anything, and he said, well, it's Lenny. She had to make it into a craft (I HATE crafts). And you know what? Of course she did. After looking at it (he said he had absolutely no part in what she came up with), I realized this.

We aren't so different after all.


Blue, According to Wikipedia
By Katy Jacob

This article is about the color. For other uses, see Blue (disambiguation).
Searching begets searching, as I yearn for ways to disambiguate
or even to understand the concept of something
that is neither ambiguous nor its opposite, but a way to explain
the inevitability of confusion.
You see? I’ve already lost sight of the goal.

Blue is the colour of the clear sky and the deep sea.
I’m starting to come to terms with things:
That even spelling is ambiguous;
in the first two lines, we just couldn’t choose.
And it pains me how we’ve started off with a lie.
Seeking clarity, we explain a name as if it is a truth.
Filled with hubris, we elaborate:

The harbour of Toulon, France, on the Mediterranean Sea.
We say this with authority.

Shades and variations of blue
This is how it all started.
This is what I wanted to know: how many?
I thought it would be simple, but
blue is not blue, it is a reflection of everything:
Sky. Navy. Cobalt.
Blue is important because of the past.
It represents us as we are, and as we have been:
Egyptian. Prussian.
Its very existence is in question;
some say it is but a wavelength,
that which comes between green and indigo,
while others do not differentiate it from green at all.
Relativity itself could not be so relative.

The war of the blues – indigo versus woad
Few things could make me so happy as this.

The search for the perfect blue
We’ve all been there, I suppose.
Someone once told me that midnight blue
was the only color that could not be accurately photographed.
He must have known that blue makes accuracy irrelevant,
as twenty years later I pass this idea onto my children,
stopping the car suddenly, admonishing them to look!
knowing that someday they will repeat this refrain
in the near dark to someone they love in a way
that is different from the way they love me,
but filled with the same mystery and impermanence of sudden blue.

Politics. Religion. Music. Lasers. Animals. Sports.
Blue has it covered.

Associations and sayings about blue
It is the favorite of many, and why not?
Blue could be anything:
Sympathy, harmony, faithfulness, friendship, confidence,
excellence, distinction, high performance, torment,
hostility, nobility, commonness, coldness,
infinity, distance, melancholy, truth, sex,
sadness, happiness, my God even drunkenness!
Blue could be eyes or ink, our world from far away,
berries or bells or birds.
Blue is blue is blue is
all that I can think about in the cold, in the dark,
and I know now that I am not alone in this.
I started off searching for something real,
something I could touch,
and I found nothing but mirrors.

You're Cheese, and I'm Cottage Cheese

Has anyone ever told you that your story isn't true? Or that you have no right to tell it? Have you been criticized, censored, excoriated, misquoted or misunderstood?

Well congratulations! Someone's listening.

As a woman who only started blogging because she had a rare and aggressive form of cancer and she wanted her children to know something of her if she were to die young, and she wanted her friends to know how she was doing, and she didn't want her immediate family to have to explain all the time, I am somewhat naive to the ways of the blogging universe. I know nothing about sponsorships, little of blogging communities, a tiny bit about trolls, and have only a vague knowledge of audience and how to attract it. Normally, 50 or 60 people read my blogs. Various cancer survivors or others find specific posts, for years after I've written them, at times, and I know that I have helped people who say that they were searching for something "real."

Once I got used to writing KatyDidCancer, I realized that my blog was only technically a cancer blog. I started this one so that I could continue to write about a variety of things without having to figure out if they were related to cancer or not. This domain has enabled me to write posts that are essentially ME. But there's another reason that I started this blog.

It's because I sometimes had the experience of people telling me that the things I expressed in the cancer blog were, essentially...WRONG.

You shouldn't feel that way. You should be more appreciative. I am living for my children; what is wrong with you?

Those sentiments have been rare; most people have responded in an overwhelmingly positive manner to my blogs. But what is interesting to me is how common it is in this world where there are millions of bloggers--especially women bloggers--to tell people that their stories aren't worth telling. People feel comfortable using this anonymous social-media-fueled medium, to violently criticize others--often while admitting that they didn't actually bother to read the entire text.

Ponderous thoughts don't work so well in an instant-gratification universe.

And women are on the receiving end of this punishment quite a bit. We have mommy wars, feminist wars, body type wars, skin color wars, the decade of my youth was better than the decade of your youth wars, your suffering is not as bad as mine wars, jock versus princess wars, funny versus serious wars. There's always someone ready to say that the life you've lived is inauthentic and the way you have chosen to talk about it is unacceptable.

I began writing a blog because I wanted to tell some very specific people my story before I died. It would be a lie, however, to say that I only started doing that in May of 2010. The truth is, I have always done that. And here's the proof.

When I was 15 years old, I loved poetry. Like any teenager, I was curious about sex, but was technically a virgin (back then, we were led to believe that oral sex "didn't count). However, I hated poetry about sex. I told someone that I could write a sex poem as good as any adult's. It was a dare. I wrote this, and my mom printed it off and framed it and hung it in the living room.

I Don't Know What
by Katy Jacob

it is in you
that makes me
crumble, or
whether it is
in pale moonlight that I
seem to fade
and I begin to open my
best heart--
or if it is simply
the action of opening;
here and there a dark new
thing
precisely made to offer
to you something
hotter
than hell--
like the warm stuff of eggs,
this that
makes me
shrink
and possibly
falter
and then
you--over me, silenced--
leaving behind only
a shedded snake-like
sigh
for the killing



When I was in college, I won an award for writing a poem about wondering what it was like to grow old:

The Elderly Couple
by Katy Jacob

As they go upstairs to bed,
the last light faintly fades.
Everything has been put away
and they are clean again, tired again.
They walk slowly in their soft clothes
as if steps were secret thoughts,
spinning and floating on delicious air,
leaving light traces of empty space behind.
As if his hands weren't silently shaking,
as if she had time to spare.



When I was maybe 18, I was riding the el with my boyfriend, who was, let me see...20, and it was really hot and there was no air conditioning on the train and there were a million things to look at out the window, but I was only looking at one thing, and it was insignificant so I didn't say anything, but he did. He was looking at the one thing I was looking at, so I wrote this to tell him that:

Doorman
by Katy Jacob

The doorman stands before me waiting in his red coat.
Shyness of color is too subtle for him;
the wool of his jacket is purpled like a worn bruise,
a color so heavy it hurts.
The detail he possesses is a kaleidoscope
of moving pictures that wrongs my eyes.
On a coat like his, even the buttons are moving.
They bleed bright light all the way to the ground,
reflecting shiny blood-drops on his face.
The collar is regally wide and teases his shoulders,
leading to simply-perfected metallic stripes on his arms.
These are his decorations--the stripes are nowhere hurting.
As the door man shifts in sunlight,
these lines become molten to his body, taking on his form.
Looking more closely I see that they are
glad straight arrows, funny kissing mouths,
two gold things going down, new money.



In my late twenties, I got tired of hearing people talk about women's words as if they were always sexual words, or of people conflating the very ideas of women and sex, and I decided to write a poem about riding the train. The TRAIN, people.

Commuter’s Lament
by Katy Jacob

When I rode different trains
I wrote different poems.

Two straight lines turned into three
as I lied a little, to mix it up.

Late became world weary,
crazy ended up spiritual.

I’d make love and redemption
out of three tin cups.

I wouldn’t cover guns at my head,
hands up my dress or the friends I kept.

Words only flowed
from the ordinary

when the sharp rumble
where my feet should have been

caused the faithless to pray a little
made the ride home sweetly rougher

turned 6 pm into everything I’d want
to remember about the life I never had

over the wooden trestles
where the sparks burned blue

the screech lingered and
you had to go down to feel the real world.



Once, on my lunchbreak, I went to a museum. Really, I did!

On Viewing "The Old Guitarist"

When Wallace Stevens saw it
he wrote about things as they are
and things as they seem
and imperfection.
When Rafael Alberti remembered it,
his written recollections were all of blue.

But when I stood in front of the painting which
stands by itself, apart,
on my day off from work in June,
I thought of making art about art--
of the ways we create worlds from a wall--
and I wondered if I could do it.

I don't think I will ever know now,
because I don't know how things are,
and I can't imagine what exists outside of
imperfection and colored memories.

All that I can recall of that Picasso
is the way it made me want to know
if there was ever such a man
so tattered and bent and blue,
if his fingers were really so long,
and where it was that he was sitting.

I can't get to the metaphor
for the obstacle of wondering
if he was real.



When my daughter was a baby, she grabbed a frozen leaf:

First Winter
by Katy Jacob

No one ever told you what lies beneath
the most beautiful days.

In the whole of your life
no one ever told you about the
heavy sharpness of white lace ice,
the glare in your eyes that you will miss after the melt,
the implied noise just before the branches crack,
the danger and perfection all mixed together.

Remember that I will always remember your tiny hand
curling up to a soft white leaf, which cracked and fell at your touch.

If I could, I’d give you this gift,
this day, a postcard you are too young to receive.
I’d vanish into you
so you could see how you smiled.



And when my son was a baby, I held long and intellectual conversations with him:

Talking to Babies
by Katy Jacob

I have a secret.
I use you to talk to myself.
You don’t mind.
You could watch me
search for dust in the air
as long as I was close.
I leave you alone
and you babble and shriek
to yourself, my son.

So keep my secret,
learn what I have learned.
Other people don’t need to be there.
Words are what you make them.
They’re real if you hear the sound,
or even if no one does.

You and I are here,
talking around each other,
wondering what the other one is saying,
alone together at least for a few more months
or maybe forever.
But why am I telling you this?
Your eyes crinkle up at me, saying
come on, Mom, we’ve had this conversation already.



In college, I did an independent study wherein I wrote a bunch of dramatic monologues--poems in memoir form, from someone else's point of view. I wrote one poem, which I will NOT include here, about myself, from my lover's point of view. He said I got it right, and my professor, who was a man, said, "I think only a woman could have done that. That must have been very difficult. I mean, it's even erotic! How interesting. You see yourself as others see you." And one of the other poems that I wrote--years before I married or had children or had lost anyone very close to me or was daily facing my own mortality--was based on the monument of a child that you can find in a cemetery in Chicago. Now that more than fifteen years have passed and all kinds of things have happened, I can say this:

Yes.

Graceland Cemetery: A Mother's Request to a Sculptor
by Katy Jacob

A little more curl in the hair, please.
She always wore her bow on the right.
That's it! That's her face--
but not her eyes,
they were never so bright white, pallid, unmoving.
Please, why can't you get her eyes?

What I would give for you to color this marble!
Then it wouldn't be so easy
for death to creep right in.
Then it could be how I remember.
But now she seems cold, so cold,
I don't want anyone to touch her.
Surround her with glass, let the sun in,
give her a space that lasts longer than seven years.

I want to see her eyelet dress move;
I want her to look on stone-stemmed flowers that won't fade;
I want the ivy to loop through the wood slates
of the white wicker swing she always sat on--
I want the green of it to glisten and melt into every
Saturday morning.
I want to drive that chisel of yours straight into my heart.

O God, when I die
lay me to rest underneath her name
Inez


These things, these stories, large and small, were worth telling. They are true, or at least as true as anything. Sometimes, it's the sharing of perspective that's important. Sometimes, we can learn all we need to know from a three year old child. My kids had this conversation the other day, and it brought everything into perspective for me, and it allowed everything else to just roll off my back. Here it is...truth.

L: you're male and I'm female.
A: no, I'm not.
L: you're not male?
A: no, I'm something more fun.
L: what are you?
A: you're cheese, and I'm cottage cheese.