\u201cMy granddaughter tells me, get this, I need to call her they.\u201d Fairlane Freddie is stirring another bucket of sugar into his already sucrose saturated coffee. The Flatheads are assembled for their Monday morning soiree at the Diner, vintage cars parked in a line outside that would make a scene in American Graffiti look modern. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey what?\u2019 Little Jimmy wants to know. \u201cWhat what?\u201d Fred mutters, \u2018what they.\u201d Two Toke stifles a laugh and coughs caffeine into his nose. \u201c Another educational morning for the unwoke,\u201d he finally manages to squeak after cleaning the coffee off his beard and out of his sinuses. \u201cYou never heard of gender neutral pronouns?\u201d<\/p>\n
Pretty obviously Fred hasn\u2019t. \u201cWhat the hell are you talking about? My granddaughter is a girl. Daughter, get it? That makes her a she, not a they. They is plural last time I was taught English.\u201d Little Jimmy asks, \u201cWhen was that, sixth grade? Times have changed in the past 60 years, Fred. You need to get up to speed. Speaking of which, you drop in that V-8 yet? You been talking about that for years.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cScrew the V-8, I\u2019m trying to figure out what\u2019s wrong with my granddaughter who thinks she\u2019s not a girl. What does that make her, then?\u201d Jimmy says why don\u2019t you ask her and Fred, shuddering so bad he spills his coffee, admits he\u2019s afraid of the answer. \u201cWhat if she identifies as a he? Or worse.\u201d<\/p>\n
A terrible silence descended on the Diner as the Car Guyz pondered the possibilities. Worse? Holy Hemi, breakfasts sat suspended as they whirled through the horrible potentials. Animals? Cat might be okay, but \u2026? Maybe one of those make-believe things, whatchacallit, an avatar, could be anything, nothing real. A they? Sure, a they. <\/p>\n
Two Toke finally interrupted the s\u00e9ance. \u201cShe\u2019s just saying, Fred, her generation wants you to quit making assumptions about who they are. She gets to choose, not us old farts.\u201d Fred shook his head. \u201cThey, you mean.\u201d TT smiled. \u201cExactly what I mean. Be glad we\u2019re old, the kids got a complicated world.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cMy granddaughter tells me, get this, I need to call her they.\u201d Fairlane Freddie is stirring another bucket of sugar into his already sucrose saturated coffee. The Flatheads are assembled for their Monday morning soiree at the Diner, vintage cars parked in a line outside that would make a scene in American Graffiti look modern. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[6073,6075,6074],"class_list":["post-17176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rantings-and-ravings","tag-flatheads","tag-geezers-on-gender","tag-gender-pronouns"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17176"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17176\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17177,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17176\/revisions\/17177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}