No, said Aziraphale, it's ineffable.

“How come there’s no straight pride?”

abearthatdoodles

When I was a kid around 10 years old, I had a brace on my leg a-la Forrest Gump… I wore it for about two years to correct a hip disorder called Perthes disease. I spent those two years either hobbling around in a prototype brace (which I was lucky to be in the test group for), on crutches, or in a wheelchair. I wasn’t able to play much outdoors, not able to run around and be a kid, and not able to walk faster than an uncomfortable waddle. I was really lucky, but honestly - from a kid’s perspective? it sucked. A lot.

During this time, there were a handful of kids - not a lot, but five or six out of the thirty or so in my class - who were actually shitty to me about my situation. Seriously - they actually teased and bullied the kid in the leg brace like the antagonists in a bad 80′s coming-of-age movie. They were mad because I “got to be” pushed around in a wheelchair all the time. They were pissed that I got “preferred” seating near the restroom so I could manage more effectively. They were frustrated because I got attention that they perceived as something they deserved. They viewed the elements of my medical care as a “privilege” that they were being denied. They were actually jealous that I was stuck in a goddamned leg brace.

The point of all this back story is this: every time I see people moaning and whining about the lack of “straight pride”, this is the part of my life that provided my understanding of why. These kids were so jealous and shitty and selfish that they could completely overlook the discomfort and struggle (and outright misery, at times) of my situation because they wanted the attention I was getting. They took their health and their freedom completely for granted because they valued attention and privilege above all else, and had a complete inability to look any deeper at the consequences of the situation. If the attention wasn’t on them for one second, they did whatever it took to get it back.

I suspect that these kids grew up to become the jealous douchenozzles who write the posts bemoaning the lack of “straight pride” celebrations that show up everywhere around this time every year.

trekverseworlds

Entry 445: Gaian Settlers

Home World: Gaia

Occupation: Future Defiant descendants of the week.

First Appearance: “Children of Time” (DS9 1997)

Summary: When the USS Defiant attempted to approach the planet Gaia, it found itself a victim of the world’s innate quantum energy barrier. The barrier’s temporal anomalies sent the Defiant back in time two hundred years before crashing it onto the surface. The survivors colonized the planet, and established a thriving society on the surface. Most were farming villagers, though some chose to establish a Klingon society of hunters in the mountains. Both societies lived in harmony for two hundred years before their time was up. The USS Defiant arrived to crash-land on the planet and establish the colony – but in order to save Major Kira, who would die of her injuries during the encounter with the barrier, the elder version of Odo sabotaged the controls of the Defiant, allowing it to evade the temporal disturbance and erasing the people of Gaia from history.

See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

“How come there’s no straight pride?”