3/28/23

Another tragic school shooting. I hate that! Innocent lives lost. I can’t imagine what the parents are going through. Tragedy strikes so soon after our own community has had attacks against it.

I went to a school board meeting tonight. I am not really the parent that attends those. Avery got there before me as I was having dinner with a friend. The topic of discussion was the book “This Book is Gay”.  There have been a few boisterous community members pushing this book to get banned from the High School Library.

The interesting part of this drama is that some of the parents involved in the negative feelings surrounding this book don’t have any of their own children that attend the school district. It’s a free country and everyone has opinions. I am amazed at the amount of extra time these people have.

There were a few points during last night’s meeting when the board members had to take a break because the crowd was getting rowdy. Not all the  adults were exactly leading by example. One speech was interrupted by an adult and a teen yelling loudly at one another in an unfavorable way.

I enjoyed people watching as this is a heated subject. Person after person stood up to support the idea of choice. I did find it interesting that those that were so boisterous online, weren’t (from what I could tell) at the meeting. Again, I arrived a bit late so maybe they were and I missed them?

I was pleased at how some community members were so supportive of the high school child’s right to choose reading material from the library when they can’t make the choice to take health class and learn very similar material. A class that shows pictures of diseased genitalia as a learning measure, that is NOT optional. But a book that may help change someone’s life, I hope remains optional.

I am supporting the right to choose. That is where I stand. I have no right to tell you what to do. You have no right to tell me what to do. We can agree to disagree and move on. I don’t have time nor do I care about your decisions as long as you make them in a respectful and non-violent way. It’s the lack of choice that concerns me. The “do it my way” approach is a dangerously high tight rope walk with sure death on either side.

As we listened to short speech after short speech, it was evident how much the members of the community were in support of keeping the book as an option. It was actually nice to see so much rally from the LGBTQ community. 

I am glad I went. 

I had to call Expedia again. After about an hour, I was able to FINALLY book my flight. Two thumbs and two big toes down for this horrific service.

Happiest Birthday Sarah. Sarah is one of my best friends. I pretend she is older than I am, but I am older for real. We met at a vet clinic as coworkers and instantly hit it off. It’s so funny how being at the right place at the right time can be so continuously rewarding.

I like that Sarah and I have the same humor. She can send me some wildly inappropriate meme or vice versa. No matter how inappropriate it is, the other person laughs. If we were to receive the same meme from someone else, it wouldn’t be funny, it would be gross. It is a hard phenomenon to explain. I can say my life is better with her in it.