crwr213-jg

[crwr213-jg]

Crocs are a revolutionary tool

When I was a kid I had to play with legos and action figures. It wasn’t that this in itself was a torturous existence it was more that the theology and thought behind it didn’t have any freedom associated with it. I once wore crocs to preschool and everyone made fun of me because they were a light blue. Everyone said that they were a female shoe. Fine, whatever. I went home crying that night and my mom told me it was fine. She brushed it off and was quite nurturing as mothers are. The next day I showed up to school and everyone had light blue crocs on. Literally everyone. Everyone thought they were cool, I’m sure this wasn’t because of me absolutely pulling them off (I was super shy about it and didn’t strut my stuff all over the preschool). I think that all the boys just wanted to differentiate themselves I’m sure and get the same kind of attention. Yet, I was really put back by this. Not because I was happy that everyone was taking my fashion advice but because they were free to wear what they wanted to wear. I’m sure this wasn’t some kind of statement by my preschool class about the nature of conformity to a gender norm but it may have been to one kid and I felt pretty proud about that.

Later on in life I situated myself as an outlier of high school in the theatre program. That’s just not what boys are expected to be like in high-school. I remember I had to choose between drama and sports in high school and I chose drama. This was because rehearsals and practices were the same day. I chose drama even though that’s not what boys were expected to be like in high-school. The boys on the team immediately didn’t talk to me much. Fine, whatever. I didn’t care as much this time. I didn’t cry or make a scene, I just trucked on living my life. Later that year my friend from theatre came out as gay and it started a chain of people coming out and I felt like in some small way that I did something positive. That I helped them (which they said I did, not to flex 💪). I’m sure it wasn’t because of my defiance against the gender norm or anything like that but I feel like I did something which is a good feeling to have at the end of the day.

This isn’t a story about how I defied the gender norms through violent revolution. That would be too masculine of a way to do it anyway. It is the story of how I overcame my parental preconditions and made a small impact on people around me which I hope created some good in the world. Not every revolution has to be violent, some can be small tokens of defiance that may ripple out to the larger group and become something more.

[crwr213-jg]

Bloody anus caused by mac’n’cheese!!??

My brother is a bit older than me and he went to University at Queens (which is a university in Canada). He grew up with me and my fam in a pretty conservative environment in Calgary, Alberta. Y’know we did the typical stuff that you did in Alberta. We tractor raced, jumped in piles of hay, smoked cigarettes at like 9, y’know typical type of Alberta stuff. But the main thing that I wanna illustrate is how independent our parents pushed us to be. It was like toxically independent. One time my brother got his clothing stuck on the truck and couldn’t really move free so instead of y’know like CALLING FOR HELP??? He instead just kinda stood their and the worst part is when I came home he didn’t even ask for help then he just like stood real still and thought I wouldn’t see him but obviously I did. I helped him out and stuff and he was like fine.

Another time he split his pants during a game of ping pong at school(don’t ask me how I wasn’t there). But instead of calling my mom to bring him new pants he just stayed in the bathroom for the rest of the school day. Now this wouldn’t be too bad if it was like during the last period or something but this was at 10 in the morning. School finished at like 3:30. So this man stayed in the bathroom for like five and a half hours just to be toxically independent in everyone in the family’s eyes.

This would all be fine if my parents like told him and myself to not act like this but they supported this kind of behaviour. They said it was the way it should be for boys. They were totally proud of him the entire way…

Until College…

My brother was in college at Queens like I said. I don’t know if you guys know this but the way Queens’ first year cafeteria works is it has like a buffet and stuff where you can choose like anything you want. My brother’s favourite food at the time (“at the time” being an important part of that) was macaroni and cheese. That meant that with this buffet style of dining my brother could eat as much Mac and cheese as his heart desired. He then proceeded to eat this same wretched food for like four months until he got very sick. The hospital called my dad one day to tell him what happened. My brother was shitting blood for the past couple of days and they had concluded that my brother had scurvy. Here’s the kicker though, my brother knew this for like a month before the hospital visit. My dad is a doctor and could have told him to like eat a single spoonful of fruit or vegetables during this time but my brother decided to suffer in his sickness without asking for help. My brother eventually had to go to the hospital and they told him he had scurvy.

tldr: My brother was so fiercely independent that he literally shit blood for a month without asking advice from my father who is a doctor.

[crwr213-jg]

The Masculine Urge to Absolutely Destroy Your Wall Until you Literally Cannot Sleep at Night

I was short. I’m a bad kind of short too. Not short enough that people don’t view as an actual insecurity but short enough for it to be ammo for friends and family. My brother is tall. A relevant little morsel of information. We would often go to war with each other and understandably my brother always used my height as his primary, secondary and tertiary weapon. If our wars were a game of Call of Duty he would be spamming whichever button insulted my height. I was also very angry as a kid. While some may accredit this to insecurity or the fact that my brother brought up my height I honestly think it was a normal type of anger that a boy is to have. Little males just kind of suck at being people and since we can’t really cry or do anything we just become angry often. So the stage is set. Me being angry and small and my brother being painfully aware of the latter of those two facts. One day the same old thing happened. He mentioned my height and I got mad. I actually got so mad that I punched the wall in our shared bedroom. I’m embarrassed by this fact because obviously that’s not the way to express your emotions but I was like 6 so y’know. My brother, in this moment of time, was also pretty scared of the repercussions of my parents since he instigated me and I was in the same kind of headspace. So we decided to move our posters and cover it up and…

This part is kinda weird but it became like a kind of tradition for us. Every time we got angry at each other and needed to let out our steam then we would just give a quick one-two combo to the wall like it was Wii Boxing or something. We would hang up a poster in order to cover it up. It was actually a very endearing thing, me and my brother both voicing our frustration in a way that wouldn’t hurt each other. We also covered it up together, it was our little terms of war. Our Geneva conventions. Nobody said anything about the wall. Eventually, though, it was pretty hard to sleep in the winter in Canada considering our wall was broken and we had to tell my mom one day. We both told her and we made sure to emphasize the fact that this was a way to show our anger at each other without hurting each other. My mom did not think that this was remotely constructive considering the fact that we could have just punched the pillow. Yet, the really shocking thing was my dad laughing at us when he got home from work and my mom told him. I think deep down he understood our situation which is why he laughed but then he said “y’know what’s better than that? Not showing your anger at all…” I see his point, anger isn’t generally a good emotion but it does make you think about how we raise kids nowadays… That and the absolute chaotic headspace two kids have to be in to literally destroy an entire wall meticulously over the span of time of like half a childhood.