GROWING PAINS

Is This Going to Get Me Canceled?

We’re clueless because it benefits us

Do I offend? People used to ask that question with levity. It’s not a joke anymore. You say, write, or speak the wrong thing, and, like they say in baseball, “You’re out.”

That’s the entirety of what I know about baseball. I must apologize to my little brothers, who know everything about baseball. I don’t want them to cancel me again for being baseball insensitive.

I once fell asleep next to my little brother at a major league baseball game. He was eight. I was 20. I woke up drooling on his shoulder. He couldn't believe someone would fall asleep during a game as thrilling as baseball. He canceled me, in his baseball heart.

When you’ve struck out, it’s impossible to get on a base. Have you ever seen a batter say, “Wait! Can I just walk onto First? That third strike wasn’t intentional.”

It’s the same way with being canceled. When you’re out, you’re out. You might get to bat again, but the team might have given up on you. Get comfy on that bench. There’s no telling.

I grew up in a time people when we used the words retard and spaz to describe 50% of the population and 90% of the people in the playground. They’re terrible words. They totally dehumanize people. I hate writing them here, now. We threw them around without a second thought and clearly, without a decent thesaurus.

Our generation wasn’t very sensitive to the range of ways to be a human being. You were popular or nerdy. You were white or Black. You were normal or disabled. Rich or poor. Pretty or ugly. Fat or thin. Smart or stupid. Not a lot of gray area.

At the very least, we had tunnel vision. At the very medium, we were ableist assholes who tore people down mercilessly. At the very most, we were monsters who wanted to maintain our status by humiliating our competitors.

When PC culture became a thing in the 80s, we Gen X people became instantly ashamed of our past selves. How had we lived as such overt assholes for so long? People who didn’t immediately jump on our PC bandwagon horrified us. No relation to R.E.O Speedwagon. Not that you were thinking that.

It reminds me of when I quit smoking. I was immediately disgusted by everyone who smoked. How dare they? Second-hand smoke was the silent killer! I grew up on binary thinking. For or against. Pro or con. Pick a side — no nuancing allowed.

I made repulsed faces at smokers who lit up in public places. Months before, I would have asked them for a light. I would have delighted in conversations with those strangers.

When I smoked, I said, smoking’s great. You get to leave parties and go talk to the cool people. Now, I was hanging out with people who felt sorry for smokers — how could those people do that to their bodies? I canceled smokers, in my fickle matchbook heart.

I should have been sent into a smoking car, on an old-fashioned train, and infinitely inhaled as my punishment. Now, it’s been decades since I quit and I love the smell of cigarettes. It returns excellent memories and reminds me of some of my favorite people.

I remember the first time my siblings and I told our parents to say partner instead of boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, or wife. My stepfather laughed. He was alive during the depression. He was evolved but the times, they kept a-changin'. Partner? My stepfather repeated. He made a gesture like a cowboy riding a horse. Howdy partner, he said. Then he pretended to ride that horse.

We were shocked even though a month before we had woven girlfriend, boyfriend, husband, and wife into our sentences seamlessly. If he had been an influencer or a comedian, instead of a professor, society might have canceled him.

My son’s pronouns have moved the needle again. The great thing about having a mini-educator at home is being constantly illuminated.

It’s also a shocking reminder that I am as ignorant as I thought my own parents were.

When I do ask my dumb-ass generational questions to my son like, Is your friend Kinga a girl or a boy? He is shocked by my ignorance.

Some days Kinga is a boy, my son responds patiently. Some days Kinga is a girl.

So, Kinga is a they? I ask, proud of myself.

Kinga is not only one pronoun, mom. Yeesh.

That seems like a lot to remember, I say, stupidly.

My son shakes his head. His expression reads, Who raised you? Drumsticks?

But I am not deterred.

Does Kinga tell you every day what gender Kinga is that day? I ask. I know this question is going to get me in trouble, but I’m underinformed.

Why would Kinga do that, mom?

So you know what Kinga is, I said. It seemed logical in my tiny corn kernel brain.

Why do I need to know what Kinga is, mom? What difference does it make?

I was starting to understand my obstacle. I was making this about me. Kinga didn’t need me to understand. Being from the ME generation, this was definitely messing with my deeply rooted neuropathways.

I attended a workshop on gender this past year. The meeting’s facilitators challenged us. They said, Tell a story about your day without mentioning gender words.

It was excruciating. I felt like I didn’t know any words but pink she feminine lady masculine blue boy.

It reminded me of white people trying to explain a Black person without saying the word Black. The conversation looks something like this.

I’m going out for lunch with Harry. You wanna come?

Which one is Harry?

The guy who works in accounts.

Do I know him?

He’s the one who’s always talking about aerospace.

What’s he look like?

Well, he’s always wearing a sweater and he’s sort of short and he wears tortoise shell glasses. He quotes Dante a lot. He likes string beans. His wife is an Econ professor? His grandfather was a teacher in at NYU. His kids go to Brown, Caltech and Indiana University. He smells like jasmine. His favorite food is peach cobbler. He loves Grey Poupon.

Oh. The Black guy?

God. You’re so racist.

We all suck. Not all of us, but a hefty percentage. We have a long way to go. We’re so afraid of being canceled, we choose to be PC instead of exploratory. We say, “It is okay to say this now?” instead of thinking about that question more deeply.

Why do we say it at all? I hope I don’t get canceled. That would suck, but what I really hope is that I keep learning to understand how I benefit from marginalizing other people — because that’s why we keep being assholes, right? Because it benefits us.

Wouldn’t you rather be contemplating? Follow Amy Sea and Contemplate.