Sick Day
Today I slept in without guilt, because I am sick and because I feel my primary job is to recover as quickly as possible so I can enjoy my weekend in Dallas with my husband. I did get up and do school with Jasper and felt very noble for doing so. I am taking the maximum dosage of zinc and feeling quite nauseated as a result.
I went shopping to get food for the kids for the weekend. I worked on geography, because geography runs my life, and that won’t stop just because I want to go somewhere this weekend. This week’s geography research has me feeling very nostalgic for my high school days, because Kenya is one of the countries we’ll be covering. Funny how the memories come flooding back when you look at certain pictures . . .
I also found myself pondering a phenomenon that has puzzled me for many years now. You know why I originally got on Facebook? It was because when Mary was a teenager, some students at the university started a hate group on Facebook. What did they hate? Anyone who wore a cloak. They posted hateful and malicious things that were aimed at shaming and humiliating anyone on campus who wore a cloak for any reason.
I felt I had to be on Facebook to see what my kids were up against. And frankly, I was and still am bewildered by it. Why should someone be so offended and outraged by someone else’s outerwear choice? I see people every day wearing things that I think are totally ridiculous, but I don’t hate them or want to hurt them or publicly humiliate them. I just resolve not to emulate them!
Then recently someone started a “confessions” page where people at the university can post whatever they want to anonymously. Out of curiosity, I checked it out and found that it was a repellent hate-fest, much of it aimed at cloak-wearers. Why? How does the fact that someone wears a cloak make someone else so angry and full of spite? And how can you go to an engineering school and not expect it to be full of nerds and geeks? If you are a cloak-hater, please enlighten me. I do not understand this particular prejudice. How do cloaks personally offend you?
Cloaks are so practical and useful. I think the primary reason they are no longer common is that they are admittedly a real pain to drive and wear a seatbelt in. But why the hate? Whatever happened to “to each his own?”
Of course, I really don’t care what people think about my cloak-wearing. I’ve never been mainstream in my life, and I doubt it’ll ever happen now!