Incongruities

Put a Bird on It

This morning I woke up far too early (10:05am is the crack of dawn, okay??!) to the sound of what I presumed was a squeaky dog toy being compressed repeatedly outside my window.  “Make it stopppppppppp” my sleepy little grey cells moaned, “we want REM cycles, not shrill attacks on your ears!”  The noise grew louder and louder, until I could no longer take it and I dragged myself out of bed and to the nearest window.  (Let’s be real–this was about 16″ away.)  Opening the curtain, I saw a baby bird grasping the screen and calling out to the grey clouds above.  Instantly, my heart melted from “ugh” to “awwwww” and my singer’s brain snapped on, propelling me from “why can’t I just sleep forever?” to much more important questions like “how thin must its vocal cords be to allow it to produce such high, piercing notes?”

But the real question is: why is it only when I move back to the city, out of the middle of nowhere, that I’m awakened by a baby bird?

CoD: Call of Duty Crumble Old Dichotomies

Conversation with le brother (age 15, into video games…duh) yesterday:

Le bro: I just explained to one of my friends that there’s more than two genders and he was like, “whaaaaaa?”

Me: Wait, you explained this over the headset while playing?  How did that come up?

Le bro: He was registering for something and had to select male/female/other.  He was like, “Other?  Hahaha.”

Me in my head: I love the world.

Le bro: So I told him that yeah, you could be born biologically male or female, but that doesn’t define whether you’re a man or a woman or a different gender.

Me in my head: Wait, I really do love the world!

Me out loud: Wow, so what did he say to that?

Le bro: He was like, “Ummm, I’m gonna drop this conversation here.”

Me: Ya know what?  You were exactly right and hopefully he’ll think of that again some time in the future.

Me in my head: I HAVE CORRUPTED THIS KID SO WELL!!  Time to move on to phase two of casually schooling him in terms/concepts* he should know…

It gives me hope to know that somewhere out in the world, there are 10 or so people who are listening to a teenage CoD star tearing apart biological determinism and the gender binary, while all on secret missions to drive tanks through dangerous computerized terrain and blow things up.

*Next up: there are more sexes than male and female; bodies are assigned M/F at birth.  And why is CoD such a compelling game?