I was taught to stand when a woman enters a room, to
open doors for women, to cuss and swear only when no women are present and
to always say grace before I eat my food. I was taught to respect my elders and
protect my siblings and my mother. (Dad always said that he was on his own until
he went down, then I had to step in.)
My parents tried.
I was not raised in a conventional family. You know, the kind where Mom stays
home and frets about the color of the kitchen walls while the kids are at school
and Dad’s at the office turning ten dollar bills into fifty dollar bills. My
mother is a minister; my father is a head-shrinker.
"Not only did she agree to get the abortion, but she also
agreed to pay for half of it."
Dad always worked late because people who
can afford to pay to complain about their lives typically have to do
so after normal business hours. My mother worked sixty hour weeks
tending to a huge congregation. So we didn’t always have a chance to
get everyone at the table… or the little league game… or the piano
recital… or whatever.
Nevertheless, despite the odd nature of my family, I was raised right.
Nowadays, being raised right means nothing. How can you raise a kid right in
a world where religion has been reduced to a bunch of tax-avoiding pedophiles,
women have earned the right to open their own damn doors, and marriage has
been reduced from a sacred vow to a mere crapshoot?
I guess you can’t.
Don’t get me wrong. I love this world we’re living in. The crazy divorce rate
has provided me an excuse to extend my bachelorhood as long as I want, the mess
that has happened with religion provided me the opportunity to sleep in on
Sundays, and the women’s rights movements and resulting sexual revolution have
allowed me the beauty and bounty of many casual partners. This world kicks ass,
and if you don’t believe me, try to find a chick under thirty without a tattoo.
Oh they’re out there, but so are albinos. Neither is easy to find. And in both
cases, there’s not much of a reason to search (sorry, albinos).
My friend Jimmy recently knocked up a chick with three tattoos and a tongue
ring. She may have other piercings, but the tongue ring is all I’ve seen (I
swear, Jimmy).
Jimmy told me about the unwanted pregnancy, and then he asked me what to do.
“Get an abortion,” I said.
“But, I mean, isn’t that a little unethical?”
I shrugged.
“What isn’t?” I asked.
So Jimmy went back and talked to his girl, and not only did she agree to get
the abortion, but she also
agreed to pay for half of it.
I think that’s fair. And fair is important.
You see, fair is what we’ve been trying to achieve with gender equality.
Equal pay for equal work, splitting dinner checks, letting women get their own
doors, sharing the housework and on and on. Fair is what we’re going for, which
makes sense to me because when I was a little kid, I always wanted everything to
be fair.
Of course, by the time I was six my father had taught me that nothing was
fair and that if I went through life expecting everything to be fair, I would
amount to exactly “jack shit.”
Which, if you think about it, is exactly what Jimmy’s unborn child is gonna
amount to.
What a time to be alive.
