"If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change."
-Wayne Dyer
My family and I are headed to Pittsburgh (go Steelers!) in about two months for a family function and my brother (who’s also gay) and his fiancé will be approaching the often awkward situation of having to rent a hotel room with only one bed for two men. It’s a shame though, that we all have to stay in a hotel when we have so many relatives in Pittsburgh. I mean, there are about twelve different households we could stay in, but instead it’s off to the Holiday Inn.
There’s one particular house out of these twelve that I am especially sad to miss out on. It’s the house of my cousin and her husband. They are seven or eight years older than I am, and when I was younger, they were my idols. I wanted their apartment, their hobbies, and their lives. They were young and played roller hockey at midnight and let me drink beer. Now, only a few years later, they have two young children, don’t like anyone who doesn’t speak English, and adore Sarah Palin. Their young boy has to be all boy and the little girl is required to want to either be a ballerina or Elizabeth Hasselbeck when she grows up. The funny thing is, in actuality, the boy is the one who is interested in ballet.
Maybe then it’s a good thing to stay in the hotel, rather than stay in a house where a sensitive little boy is told that it’s wrong to cry and the girl is taught to only be a princess. They’re young, and who knows, maybe in ten years they’ll turn out to be the most hetero-normative kids on the planet. For the moment, however, it’s heartbreaking to hear a six-year-old boy whisper, “Don’t tell Dad I’m watching Cinderella. He doesn’t like that.”
I hope that some day we can just let the boys dance, and let the girls… well, do whatever it is that girls like to do.
Writer - Anonymous
Illustrator - Stephanie Tartick - New York, NY
www.stephanietartick.com (Coming soon!)
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