hame

twelve hours ago i was on a long flight back to baltimore from oklahoma, listening to screaming babies, avoiding eye contact with the DC queen to my right, watching a woody harrellson movie, and enjoying the combination of hydrocodone and white wine pulsing through my veins. (when you're scared of flying but can't get your hands on any downers, you do what you can.) now, i've just gotten out of a harrowing lab meeting, the kind where my boss sits us down and gives us a talking-to. luckily i've got the greatest boss ever (i'm not just saying this so that i don't get fired; look for a picture of her dancing with a stranger in the RR archives), so her sit-downs always end with a motivational speech.

being in oklahoma this weekend was great. it's funny, i never thought i'd type that. honestly, though, home really felt like home. my family is crazy. crazier than ever, in my opinion, because my sister has finally developed some kind of strong-woman power. i mean, it's about time. but for the first time i really saw that she'd become an adult. oh, and we went to our first gay bar together. it's no wonder, then, that she and my mother are at each others' throats. my mother gets all of her opinions from the national review, a fact i tried to convince robin of. my sister, a jewish womens' studies major who plans on going into civil law, doesn't often agree with my mom. a disagreement starts, and my mom starts throwing out these ridiculous statistics about silly things we shouldn't even be arguing about. for instance:

robin: "well, that's because most of our military is comprised of the lower-class and minorities."
me: "well, it's been that way for hundreds of years. because once you have a college degree or a masters or higher, you're not really going to want to enlist and risk your life. when you've got a lot less to lose, the guaranteed salary seems a lot more appealing."
mom, overhearing this while walking by: "actually, robin, if you'll look at the data, that's not true. our armed forces aren't made up of minorities and the lower-class. it's all mixed, and the data that's telling you otherwise is wrong."
robin glances at me.
me: "buh?"

the weekend was filled with my sister and i rebuffing my mom's republican rhetoric. another example, this time at a restaurant in oklahoma:

mom: "look, robert, do you recognize who that picture's of? it's anita bryant! isn't she pretty? she's a miss america who went to OCU and is from oklahoma!"
me: "we don't say the name anita bryant, mom."
robin: "why?"
mom: "well, we all knew her as the florida orange juice woman. but she got famous for saying some things that weren't really very nice about some people."
me: "actually, robin, she went on a crusade in the late 70's, trying to convince people that homosexuals were immoral perverts who were out to do nothing but recruit their children into the homosexual lifestyle. she said a lot of really horrible, ignorant things, and did a lot of damage to a lot of people."
mom: "oh, i thought it was the 80's."
me: "buh?"

don't get me wrong, i love my mother, and to say that we weren't cut from the very same cloth would be a big, fat lie. (see slave labor.)

all arguments aside, i appreciated going home, and wish that the weeks i'd gotten to spend there when i was younger weren't wasted on such a bratty little shit.

that's me, the bratty little shit.