Friday, August 31, 2000

 

3:06 a.m. Hard to believe that the month is over. Harder even still to believe that it's going to be September. Is this one of the harshest transitions we go through each year? I think so. No matter how much you try to convince yourself that time isn't drifting away, you look at the calendar and you sigh.

Now, before August is just another one of our pleasant collective memories, I would like, in conjunction with this month's On Display collaboration, to propose a holiday for this month without holidays, at least here in the States.

I've had this idea for a while now, and so I will just spring it on you. It's a national day that I think we really need, and I call it:

The idea came to me in a blinding flash about ten years ago this past June when I was watching the annual Gay Pride parade in New York. As I remember the parade, it was a fun, big, raucous sprawling thing and there was lots of mixing between people marching and people watching. Even the cops seems to enjoy themselves.

Of course, the underlying message of the parade was and is tolerance and acceptance and just general live and let live. There were lots of handouts and feathers and plastic necklaces tossed to the crowd, and you couldn't help but dance along with the -- obviously -- fab musical numbers.

So, what better way to learn tolerance than to walk a mile or so along the parade route in somebody else's platforms? Guys could slap on a button or a t-shirt and then go shopping for linens, if they think that's a somewhat gay behavior. Or sing along with Bette or Judy or Barbra, if they've wanted to, but kept themselves in check.

Just small, simple actions -- nothing life-shattering -- just a day to turn the jokes the other way and to knock down a few of the more flimsy barriers we erect between our strict and individual ways of life. Plus, you increase your chances of getting kissed by a whopping 50 percent, so it could end up being a very good day.

Ok. That concludes my collaboration effort for this month. I thought I had more to say on the subject but instead, I find that I keep on brushing away my own stereotypes as not worthy of being typed out. I guess I know a lot of tough, hard women and soft, delicate men ...

... and no rats. Ever since I saw him lumbering down the stairs last Saturday night, it's been quiet around here. He's not been back to either of his little food (poison) boxes, and there's been no other evidence of him. Maybe he did, indeed, manage to get back outside. Maybe he ate some grass, felt better in the morning, and how he's scampering in the fields.

Maybe.

Maybe birds actually do fly over the rainbow. Maybe I'll get some serious writing done in the more serious milieu of September. Maybe the three burr-like objects on the new calendar page don't signify trouble ahead. Maybe something other than rats will fall through my window one of these fine, new days.

See you in September.