On the first
summery day of the year, our teen diarist goes to buy a soda
and finds a wealth of stereotypes washing over him. Is it
something he wore?
The author is a junior at Notre Dame Academy, a private
Catholic high school in Middleburg, Va., and the
founder of the Virginia LGBT activist group
Equality Fauquier-Culpeper.
Today was the
first day I felt that summer had spun down my spine,
boiling every tear of sweat. My black hemp necklace made a
niche around my neck. Sterling silver rings with
Celtic designs reflected the setting sun, blinding the
store display windows. I was decked out in a pair of
black jeans with a navy-blue shirt imprinted with white
arched words: Fauquier County Fire & Rescue. I
would wear this shirt during 12-hour night shifts at
Company 6 in Warrenton—I got my Virginia EMT-B
certification last summer.
I passed by a
group of Hispanic teenagers smoking Marlboro Reds, making
every disregard as I walked by them on the street. I picked
up my pace as one of them blew smoke in my face and
the boy with the red hat stared directly at me,
shouting something in what sounded like an exotic form of
Spanish—probably a snide remark.
I ran into Rite
Aid to buy a drink for my friend Allie. The clerk leaned
down: “I have a kind of weird question,” she
said in a whisper with a thick Southern accent as her
manager walked out of the store to smoke. “Now,
I know who you are—I’ve seen ya in the
papers—but,” she laughed a little,
“do you smoke weed?”
I kind of stopped
for a second, squinting my eyes as I put a dollar bill
on the counter. I looked at the window behind the clerk,
where I saw my reflection. I looked at my T-shirt,
under which I wore a long-sleeve black shirt with
holes, my rings, my hemp necklace, my black beanie, and
my tired unshaven face. “No, I don’t.”
The clerk smiled
slightly and started ranting about how her friend was
caught smoking marijuana and had to go take a drug test
soon.
Everything is
based upon stereotypes these days, intentionally or not.
Among the smallest rant is the notable: our addictions, our
advances in technology, the ability to maintain life
while stopping a patient’s heart on the
operating table, but not the ability to grant equality to
all citizens. We lack the ability to come together as
one human family regardless of differences—by
counting our blessings, our organizational ability,
our political muscle, our economic diversity, our love,
life, and family. For all I know, the boy with the red
hat could have been saying, “Nice
shirt.”
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Satre can be reached at tully@efcva.org and
via MySpace.com.