Last month I told a story at Carapace that my friend Barry - despite liking it - said sounded too much like “Look at me, look at me. Aren’t I crippled and interesting?” So this month, if I get to tell a story, I’m hoping it doesn’t turn out that way. And to avoid that, allow me to start the story this way.

Ten years ago on the Fourth of July after the fireworks, I got into a fight. And it defined who I am. Now, whether you guys think the central conflict of this story is “man vs. machine” or “man vs. man” will affect your appreciation of it. But then, hey, that’s most literature.

I was working at the bookstore at Mall of Georgia that night. And because of the fireworks and because of traffic, we workers didn’t get out of the store until 11 p.m.

getstooobsessed:

“Mommy, they are just like me.” 

My oldest son is six years old and in love for the first time.  He is in love with Blaine from Glee. 

For those who don’t know Blaine is a boy…a gay boy, the boyfriend of one of the main characters, Kurt.

This isn’t a ‘he thinks Blaine is really cool’ kind of love.  It is a mooning at a picture of Blaine’s face for a half hour followed by a wistful “He’s so pretty” kind of love.

He loves the episode where two boys kiss.  My son will call people in from other parts of the house to make sure they don’t miss his ‘favorite part.’  He’s been known to rewind it and watch it over again…and force other to, as well, if he doesn’t think people have been paying enough attention.

This infatuation doesn’t bother me or his father.  We live in a very hip-liberal neighborhood, many of our friends are gay, and idea of having a gay son isn’t something that bothers either of us.  Our son is going to be who he is, and it is our job to love him.  End of story.

He is also six.  Six year olds get obsessed with all kinds of things.  This might not mean anything at all.  We always joke that he’s either gay, or we have the best blackmail material in the history of mankind when he’s a 16 year old straight boy. (Take that naked bath time pictures!)

Then the other day we were traveling across the state listening to the Warblers album (of course), and in the middle of Candles, my son pipes up from the back seat.

“Mommy, Kurt and Blaine are boyfriends.”

“Yes, they are,” I affirm.

“They don’t like kissing girls.  They just kiss boys.”

“That’s true.”

“Mommy, they are just like me.”

“That’s great, baby.  You know I love you no matter what?”

“I know…” I could hear him rolling his eyes at me.

When we got home I recapped this conversation to his Dad, and we stood simply looking into each other’s eyes for a moment.  Then we smiled.

“So if at 16 he wants to make a big announcement at the dinner table, we can say ‘You told us when you were six.  Pass the carrots’ and he’ll be disappointed we stole his big dramatic moment,” my husband says with a laugh and hugs me.

Only time will tell if my son is gay, but if he is I am glad he’s mine.  I am glad he has been born into our family.  A family full of people who will love and accept him.  People who will never want him to change.  With parents who will look forward to dancing at his wedding.

And I have to admit, Blaine would be a really cute son-in-law.

I can’t do it.

I can’t bring myself to delete people from my phone, be it a month, six months or a year since I last spoke to them. Even if the friendship is pretty much clearly over or if it’s run its course. I cannot bring myself to part with people.

So, as the New Year hits and I don’t want to repeat the same mistakes over and over, I still can’t manage to let some people go, even if it’s best to leave the past in the past.

I am going to need to be in a better mood if I’m going to go out tonight. Right now, I’m at work, and it’s quiet. Very quiet. But, by tonight, I want to relax.

Even if I have to be back at work tomorrow.

So my Kindle is causing me to read faster and read an assortment of things that I usually would be afraid to undertake. I think, since I bought it, I have read the thoroughly satisfying HUNGER GAMES trilogy, then the latest TALES OF THE CITY book MARY ANN IN AUTUMN got my attention, then I worked my way through some of WRITING DOWN THE BONES, then I read all of THE HELP in a rather rapid clip, then I thought I might do a classic of some sort. Since that new JANE EYRE movie is coming out, I thought I would finally finish that book - which is always really good when I start it, then it takes a turn for the dark and righteous that I find off-putting.

So then a new friend of mine started talking to me about GONE WITH THE WIND, which I didn’t read in high school because most of the girls in Honors English were obsessed with it (and my senior English teacher once got in an argument with all of them about it and memorably called Scarlett O’Hara a bitch, which caused some of the Christian girls to gasp).

The last time I was tempted to consider reading GONE WITH THE WIND was, of course, when I was taking those great writing classes at the Margaret Mitchell House here in Atlanta, which is the “dump” apartment building where Peggy Mitchell first wrote the book. She hated that apartment, but it’s where she wrote the book. So the city renovated it, turned it into a museum for both the book and the movie and restored Mitchell’s original apartment to its decent, modest, cozy glory.

Walking through the tour of that building and taking a class in the same room where they house the door to Tara from the movie, which I watched at least a dozen times as a kid, it was tempting to pick up the Pulitzer Prize winner, but something kept me from ever doing it. Maybe because the book is damn long, amusingly melodramatic and occasionally bald-faced racist and politically backward in its depiction of loyal, happy slaves and the glorious Old South.

As a member of the Phi Kappa Literary Society at UGA 14 years ago, I occasionally got an ear full of anti-Lincoln rhetoric and pro-secession politics. I didn’t know that I wanted to dredge up those feelings of “Are some people still feeling this bad about the War Between the States?” dread.

But leave it to a friend shaming me, saying that it was strange of me to dare visit the Margaret Mitchell House without reading the great book, to get me to see if it was available on Kindle when Stephen King’s IT couldn’t grab my attention for very long.

So now I’m reading Scarlett pine for Ashley while Mammy yells at her. And I’m writing my notes on it as I go. And thus far it’s a lot of fun in an antiquated, infuriating, really well-written, funny way.

I guess it was the world’s second most popular book for a reason. I think I’m going to stick with it, even though all the historical markers around Atlanta pretty much tell me how it ends for the Confederacy.

This is my aforementioned old blog, now temperamental and difficult. It used to be my favorite thing ever. Then, I don’t know, I outgrew it.

I’m not sure I intend to blog full-scale ever again. And, because Blogger has apparently noticed my reluctance to do so, it has decided to shut the majority of the stuff off my old blog down. The comment board is malfunctioning. The program no longer recognizes my URL and won’t allow me to post new material. It’s all very ridiculous.

So I’m taking note and following my friends to this Tumblr place so that, when I feel like doing a blog entry, I can do one. HUZZAH!

(Photos by Scott Boyette, November 2009)