a lady just for me ...

“This is my nephew, David. He’s a student at Gallaudet University and a real great guy!”

“Well! I wish we had a nice young lady here for you, son. Hardy-har-har …”

I attended my first church choir practice in about 8 years last night with my aunt in Delaware. Delaware equals a lot of really old white people who pronounce their “o” a little funny, and who “ooh” and “aah” over anything that comes through the door that was born after Vietnam.

The choir director’s remark (above) was ironic considering how flaming he was himself. But it really stuck with me that people make immediate judgments on who and what you are and, more importantly, who and what you like.

I’m a white middle-class 25-year-old man, so I must be just finishing school and looking for a noble yet boring career while modestly cruising the dating scene looking for a wife to support my 2.3 children, a golden retriever, and a white picket fence. Right?

I remember a friend of mine saying something similar to a 7-year-old boy at a Christmas party recently. She said, “Well, girls are only impressed if boys have their rooms cleaned you know.” The comment was innocent enough, but think of all the socialized information packed into that sentence. At 7 that boy is conditioned to think that normalcy means liking girls, whether his body is telling him that or not.