Gack. Another gag me news item of note appears. This is the kind of deeply weird and even embarrassing story I really wish didn’t need amplification, but – here we are. A handful of Republicans in Missouri, the Show Me state, are showing themselves, saying the quiet part (almost) out-loud in regard to child marriage laws in the state, blocking a very common sensical update to their current law regarding the marriage of minors in Missoooo’. The law as it stands allows child marriage with parental consent as young as age sixteen; the Senate in the state has updated the statute to ban marriage before the age of eighteen, which is also the age at which you can file for a divorce. I add that because if you are sixteen and are parentally forced to marry, say, a thirty-year-old who raped and impregnated you, you can’t file for divorce in the state because you’re too young. The sound you hear is my head banging against my dining table. JHFC.
But, let’s not do that, okay, let’s not update that law – say a handful of Republicans in the Missouri House – because ‘parental rights’, as in children are the property of their parents, and if the parents want to marry off their sixteen-year-old daughter against her will, well, dammit, that’s their right!! Do I need to say (yes, I do) that the sixteen-year-olds being married off in Missouri are girls? Because of course it’s the girls. No one wants to see their young son/man of sixteen or seventeen married at such a young age, FFS!! That might derail his entire life, as it does for these unfortunate girls, who are more likely to live in poverty, largely because these children – teenagers are children, period, full-stop – are highly likely to drop out of high school and have many fewer choices and opportunities as a result.
Rep. Dean Van Schoiack, one of the bill’s opponents and therefore a pro-child marriage creepazoa, called the proposed update a government intrusion in people’s lives, and when asked what would be lost if 16 and 17-year-old kids couldn’t get marriage permits anymore, permits that are only able to be accessed with parental consent, Van Schoiack replied, “Liberties that people currently have.” Ooooook. His photo is both featured and posted below – isn’t he the very picture of wise, and kind, grandfatherly energy? Gack!
Child marriage is bad, for the kids involved, for the kids unfortunate to be a product of those forced marriages, for our society as a whole, and especially for girls, who are no ones property, other than their own.
P.S. – the whole ‘Dems/drag queens/teachers/librarians are grooming our kids thing – um, no – it’s guys like this POS who are the groomers, or enable it. Guys like this. The Missouri legislature is running out of time to fix this issue, and vote the updated law out of committee, let’s hope they do so, and right soon. Show us, y’all!
*from the archive and oh maybe the early 2000s? who knows at this point, but, in increments I will share and, knock wood, you will enjoy, this old-ish story. Mildred Jensen was an actual math teacher I had in middle school, she was tall and leggy, but everything else is entirely fictional here. I really liked her, a lot, even if – at the end of her career when I had her as an instructor – she was showing not only her age but the age of some of her ideas (boys are better at measuring things, for one).
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Mildred Jensen, now a teacher, became almost immediately famous for her smart, pithy statements to boys and girls who weren’t paying attention: ‘time will pass, will you?’, lobbed toward those caught peeking at the wall clock, anxious for the buzzer to ring, and the rhetorical ‘am I right or am I wrong?’ Once she put a boy out the window for talking back, making him walk around the entire building with the math textbook balanced on his head to meet her at the front door from where he went straight to the Principal’s office; the story ran around the school for weeks and became legendary in the town, including how the parents, along with the administration, backed her up. She was tough, that Miss Jensen, as well as funny; she made them sit up and pay attention, she got through to them, she stayed on top of the material and the students’ vagaries, and really cared; she made them laugh, and memorize the times and division tables whether they wanted to or not.
She thought she would never forget the boys and girls of those first few years, particularly the group she had in her room when the news of Pearl Harbor came down the wires. She and her students fretted and prayed together during the long years of the war, and, despite what was going on, she kept them on point, learning math, working hard; this was not always easy to do, so many of the local boys, older brothers, uncles and fathers, were part of the overseas forces and more than a few were lost. When the war was over, only one of her brother’s, the youngest, had survived, and Mildred felt as if her family, her community, and nation as a whole took a deep breath as the jubilation of the war’s end moved all too quickly to a sober reassessment of America’s place in the world, as well as of how much had been lost.
She had grown-up, they all had, in the war years. Mildred had volunteered, organizing scrap metal drives, serving as assistant secretary for the local draft board; she made do with less, as they all had to, wherever and whenever she could. She tried, and failed, to stop thinking about her brothers, and the pain in her parents’ eyes when she visited the farm. But no one, no one family, was entirely untouched by loss. Even those whose brothers and fathers return had been celebrated weren’t entirely if the person they’d known before the war was the same as the haunted stranger set in his old place.
Mildred was good with money; the year after the war she bought her first car, a Packard with deep leather seats, a true thrill for a country girl who had learned how to drive in the seat of a tractor, moving row by row through her father’s fields. She named it Polly the Packard and told her colleagues and students so, unashamed of her eccentricity, finding too that she really loved making others laugh. She visited home more often now that she had ‘Polly’, and freedom of movement. She brought the outside world to their door, describing life in her new town with all its characters, characters whose charms she embellished to astonish them, savoring their belly laughs and shaking heads as darkness fell. She was still their clever daughter, a good girl; it was a comfort.
Mildred, along with several other women teachers, also unmarried, spent their weekends and holidays traveling, days trips, going on local hikes up Catskill peaks, easily doable in a single twelve hour span, taking picnic lunches along. They hosted raucous card games in their apartment in town, serving sandwiches and sherbet, feeling young and good about themselves, doubly blessed that the war was over, grateful for life and all its riches. Mildred tried smoking and drinking, learning that for her, smoking was not going to work for she hacked so after the tiniest puff she decided that it was best not to try, and she learned as well to stick to an occasional beer or small glass of wine or sherry, despite the other girls touting the sophisticated delight of rye, gin, and fancily named and colorful cocktails.
They spent longer vacations, Mildred (the dependable one) at the wheel, traveling to Niagara Falls, Lake Champlain, and down the east coast to Washington, Monticello and Gettysburg. Mildred loved seeing American History up close; it made everything so real. She told her companions this, who liked Mildred but laughed at her earnestness (‘it is real, Millie!’) and her blunt way of speaking, laughter she joined in on, enjoying it, knowing it was entirely good natured. She confessed, to some hilarity, standing in the bedroom at Monticello, that she had always been a little in love with Thomas Jefferson. She had always liked, she said, red heads, still did, although it was known, she solemnly pronounced, that their tempers were quick. The other teachers smiled while Mildred mused on about flame-headed people, ‘their minds are generally quick, too. Not that I suppose it’s been scientifically proven.’
Mildred’s life was good; she was happy. As her contemporaries married, one by one, some moving away, wedding boys and men they’d know in college or from their childhoods, others staying put, marrying local boys, she made up her mind that single-hood was good enough for her, as she had always suspected it would be, and that she would set an example for ‘another way’. And if it hurt her never to be asked for bridesmaid, or maid of honor, she didn’t say. She was a good sport, that Mildred, or Millie as she was now so often called. Everyone said so, about her being such a nice girl, such a sport; she didn’t even use her extra inches and those long arms of hers to grab the bouquet, almost, although you couldn’t tell, stepping aside for the prettier young women to make the happy catch. It was a game she would rather not play, grimly thinking in her room at night that this was one prize she would never win; let the others who cared so much have and savor this particular triumph.
*a poem by Louise Gluck, from her 1996 collection Meadowlands
When I was a child looking at my parents' lives, you know what I thought? I thought heartbreaking. Now I think heartbreaking, but also insane. Also very funny.
*I suppose myimpression ofmy parental units, and their lives, always included the fact that they were definitely funny, my dad for sure. As I knew more, heard and witnessed more - yes, it was clear that their lives were also heartbreaking, past and present, present being all those moments during my childhood into maturity, and their eventual deaths. The hopes and dreams they both sacrificed to the gods of conventionality, to mid-century ideas about men and women and what kinds of lives they 'should' lead. My mother was built to lead a college or company, built; my dad loved his kids and was a funny, fond fellow who wanted more than anything to design, make, repair and refinish furniture, old and new. I believe, and of course I don't know this for sure, he would've been a terrific stay-at-home parent. I also know I was lucky in my parents, despite many challenges, and that they both did the best they could with what resources they were given, and discovered. I am also very funny, as is my life. Heartbreaking, too - but mostly, funny. Like, JHFC, what the fuck was that, all of that? Did that really happen, to me?! Well, yes, Virginia, it really did. All of it. My life, my insane and wonderful life.
*I do not have children, and as a single woman, have often been told ‘Oh, you don’t like children, then’. No, not true. WTF. I love children, and young people; they are so much more authentic and unguarded than adults, so much more honest. If I had been fortunate enough to find a partner who wanted to have kids with me – as a full partner, not sperm donor and ‘hey, you’re on your own, honey’ careerist or checked out lazy-bro – I would have loved to have had children of my – of our – own. And, having escaped my suffocating family of origin, I was extremely cautious about creating another with men who weren’t showing up emotionally, psychologically, financially, etc. while we were dating. I also approached any possibility with caution as I witnessed day in and day out how miserable and resentful my mother was raising her four children with a husband who worked seven days a week during most of my childhood. It wasn’t pretty, but it was instructive.
I was not, ever, interested in having kids wholly on my own because – whadda ya know – in my view, it really does take a fucking village (Hillary was right about pretty much everything, which is one aspect of her intellect that makes her many haters crazy), or at least a lot of effort, and I believe strongly that children need at least two people working together, if not more, for their benefit.
Of course, I have been thinking about children, having them, loving them, in light of my best friend having lost her 10-year-old son. She always wanted children, many children, and was willing to go it alone if need be; whatever it took. Many years ago a man I worked with told me he and his wife – a former call-girl (a story for another day) – were considering having children. He said their decision would be based on where they were in their marriage, which was very young when I knew them, a year or eighteen months long at that point, at most. He said that he believed children should only be brought into this world when there is a surfeit of love in the marriage or partnership, when love is spilling over, is so omni-present that adding children to the mix would serve to merely amplify and spread it around. I’m reminded of that line from the musical Hello Dolly, ‘Money, pardon the expression, is like manure. It’s not worth a thing unless it’s spread around, encouraging young things to grow.’
Currently, there are just under 400,000 children in foster care in the U.S.Where, however, is the love?Deep breaths.
This past week I got away with something I have – and I imagine many others as well – fantasized about getting away with for years, years!! Let me set the scene for you, and yes, I felt guilty about it, a little, afterwards, but still, it was gloooooorious! There is a road that leads through my rural neck of the woods, a road I have been driving for as long as I have been driving (a long damned time). For most of this long damned time, there was a yield sign at a particular point, but about eight or ten years ago, it was changed to a stop sign as the result, no doubt, of damned interfering agitators and boring ass bad drivers.
Now, to be entirely fair, there had been two accidents near this inflection point prior to the change, but neither was due to the yield sign being there instead of a stop sign; both were the result of drivers going too fast on a road that had recently been oiled, and stoned, a common road treatment in these here parts and one assumes many places. When the oil is not completely ‘worn in’, when the loose stone has also not been worn down and into the road, when there is rain, when a driver who is going too fast and is, moreover, slow to react, skidding results, and – occasionally – boom bang bust. No one was seriously hurt in either skidding incident, but noisy bro-fos got their damned stop sign installed.
Needless to say I invariably blow through this stop sign because there is almost no traffic hereabouts, and habit is a powerful thing. I admit, this is a terrible, terrible flaunting of the law on my part. Terrible! My sainted and much more cautious brother even blew through it once, giving me full permission to be as lawless as I could get away with, which means 99.99999% of the time I have entirely got away with it. Until last week.
Last week, as I was coming down the mountain (when she comes, she’ll be coming down the mountain when she comes…) I saw that there were three vehicles heading toward me going in the opposite direction. This is the normal flow of traffic at this inflection point, as 95% of all traffic goes up or down the hill, which leads into town, the other 5% heading toward more middle-of-nowhere intersections on their way to somewhere. I noticed – a bit too late to stop heeheehee, and eeeeek – that the middle of the three vehicles was law enforcement, and, after blowing through the stop sign, looking in my rearview mirror, I saw his lights immediately flash on – whoops! Adrenalin already pumping, I had a choice: stop and take my punishment, or fly like the dogs of hell were after me the measly three plus miles to my remote wee home.
Reader, I went 80 the whole way. The calculations I made were the following: I knew he would have a hard time turning around, because he was in the middle of three cars going up a hill – can’t cause an accident to catch a teeny, tiny lil criminal like moi, now can he? – and, there are enough off-ramp roads along the way to my off-ramp of a road, he would have to struggle to find which one, and, once I was up my road and in my driveway, well, I would literally be home safe. Why would he pursue it, and me, any further, looking up various side roads, having lost sight of my car in the dust of a nice spring day?
I got into my house, turned on the podcast I had been listening to earlier in the day, and was half-way through (‘Why officer, I’ve been home all morning? What’s that, the hood of my car feels warm? Well, while of course I don’t want to question your judgement, the sun is shining directly on my car, and has been all morning!’), let the dog out, and quickly stowed my take-out lunch away and out of sight. I waited. I took a few deep breaths to slow my heart rate.
He gave up. I got out of a traffic ticket, got my heart pounding big time, lived my fantasy of a car chase (the over 60-years-old version), and felt guilty enough to feel bad about it for – oh – a whole half hour. It was gloooooooorious!
