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I feel left out.
Everyone else gets to scream and shout with righteous indignation about how their particular group is vilified on a regular basis. But I, too, have realized that I have been the subject of terrible prejudices for many years now.
I didn’t realize it until I had fully absorbed the 450 Oprah Winfrey, 328 Sally Jesse Rafael, 263 Jenny Jones and 137 Riki Lake shows that painstakingly took the time to educate me on how truly horrible my life has actually been. To think that all these years I have walked through life blindly, feeling happiness, when in reality my psyche was being secretly stabbed with the daggers of human bigotry. I can’t believe all the years of unhappiness and anger I have to catch up on.
I have been maligned for almost every physical characteristic I possess, the way I speak, where I live, my purple shoes, my love for my cat, and every job I have ever had. I have apparently been sexually harassed, harangued, and assaulted. I guess. I never knew how much sex I had in my life until my recent enlightenment. I thought that my sex life was really boring.
My first newly un-repressed memory of prejudice was when I was three years old and my mother read me Dr. Seuss’s “The Cat in the Hat”, the story about the weird cat that comes to alleviate the boredom of the brother and sister. Why was it a brother and sister? I don’t have a brother. I have two sisters. What’s wrong with a story about a cat and three sisters? Didn’t Dr. Seuss think it was interesting enough to write about three sisters? Do you realize how many families out there are not comprised of a brother and a sister? What’s so perfect about that?
Then another horrifying memory came me. It seems that my poor, unsuspecting mother took me to a movie one day about some bizarre, screwed up chick named Pippi Longstocking, who was covered with freckles and moles on her face and body.
Just like me.
It’s difficult enough having to live with the pain of people saying, “You have freckles” without creating entertainment out of it, thereby inciting people to surmise that all girls with freckles and moles are whacked out freaks. All those sidelong glances, all those notes passed in class. Now I know what they were about. No wonder no one takes me seriously.
Then there’s the men. Oh the men. Yech! Horrible, bad, bad men.
I would like to preface this by saying “thank you” to those insightful school administrators who had that filthy little 6-year old boy punished and kicked out of school for kissing that girl on the cheek. He knew exactly what he was doing -- using his sick, Don Juan charms to get only one thing from her.
I have an intensely private and deeply disturbing admission to make, which I must bring out in the open in order for me to begin my healing process. This will be shocking to you, so if there are any children reading this article with you, please have them leave the room.
Thank you.
I confess that I had my dress pulled up probably over thirty times on the jungle gym in the course of my pre-pubescent experience. And not only by boys. By girls too. And I think even some dogs. You know how those beasts can be with their big, wet noses.
After un-repressing these memories, I’ve been overwhelmed with the realization that I had had my innocence slowly strangled, squeezed, and finally stolen by this intricate web of bigotry and sexual harassment day after day. Year after year. It’s a wonder that I haven’t suffered a complete mental breakdown.
I am very proud of myself and my wondrous strength and courage.
Fortunately, I have way too much time on my hands.
I will spend it championing the rights of the non-brother/sister family structure. I will sue those nazis who published that trash. I will join the Board of Supervisors and have that lesson in non-diversity ripped off the shelves. I will write letters to newspaper editors and movie theater management that freckled, moled women like me will not tolerate being maligned for the sake of mass entertainment. I will picket the elementary school playgrounds where sexual deviance runs rampant.
Thank God that we have arrived at this era of enlightenment. We are free at last.
Now if you will excuse me, I must go. I’m being highly offended at this very moment by my boss standing here asking me why I’m writing something personal on company time. She obviously hates creative people.
I think I’ll sue.
