Pronouns, ugh.

A new student showed up last week. A kid. Just graduated from high school. Works at the hospital in the kitchen. Lives in a house he owns. When I expressed amazement that he could own a house at such a young age, he said, “You ever see the houses in my town?”

Yeah, from what he said, his house is a total fixer-upper and probably more of a blower-upper. But he’s a kid, and he’s been working on it, and he’s interested in yoga, and he listens to self-dev books on Audible, and he asked me for recs. 

He waited around for a long time to talk to me, too. I had a few lengthy conversations with other people, and he sat there quietly and waited them all out. 

He holds your gaze and doesn’t say much. He doesn’t return the conversational ball.He’s kind of spooky that way. 

I keep forgetting that people are no longer called spooky. They’re called neurodivergent. 

I think I am more neurotypical. 

Part of me doesn’t even know what that means.

And can I just say here, because I can’t say it anywhere else: I don’t have a lot of patience with people’s pronouns when they are plural. I don’t mind switching from he to she or vice versa, but when she becomes they, I go into the land of confusion. 

I can’t help it. I am neurotypical. 

We’re all going to have to accept that. 

I will accept your neurodivergence, but when it collides with my neurotypicality, I never know what to do. 

I feel like a jerk when I write this because I want to be all chill and accepting. 

And I am. Sexual fluidity, I get. It’s the plural pronouns that are my problem. When you call yourself they, I have trouble taking you seriously. 

And just an aside here: I am so very glad I’m not parenting a middle schooler right now.  I know I would default to the long-suffering parent eye-roll. 

“Sure honey, get a tattoo, dye your hair green, call yourself they, I’ll meet you on the other side— when your prefrontal cortex has fully formed. In the meantime, stay on your meds, go to therapy, and try to be happy until this fever dream breaks. When you’re twenty or so, we’ll talk again. Things will look much different then. For both of us. Good luck and Godspeed. I’m here for you.” 

I know this is probably not the best approach. 

I also know that the fever dream may not break. At least in the way I imagine.

As a society, we are trying to come to a more nuanced conception of sex and personhood. 

And I applaud us and wish us well. 

But you have to admit these early iterations of this new social paradigm are turning out to be rather clunky. 

The college I live near gave out Pick Your Pronoun stickers to all incoming freshmen.

Cute.

Business mastheads now sport he/him, she/her they/them parentheses after names.

Very with the times.

I’m not there yet. I overly rely on the fact that they means a few. Especially when I’m making dinner. Or buying tickets to an event. 

Because if they are coming for dinner, I have to make more. And if they are coming to the concert with us, I have to reserve more seats.

But on the plus side, if I can be they instead of just plain ole neurotypical me, I can at last claim my true identity, my essence, that multifaceted disco ball of selves I sense inside me and which I can only usually access when I’m on mushrooms.

It would be cool to identify and be seen as that.  Except it doesn’t work. Changing my pronouns from me to they is just a semantical trip hazard and not a metaphysical perception shift. 

What I mean is that when they walk into the restaurant, the receptionist doesn’t see all her disco ball selves shining out in a pulsating cloud of light.

No.

She sees, “Table for one.”

I wish the pronoun disruption would cause a metaphysical shift, but I think that’s too heavy a lift for such small words. 

Even if Walt Whitman is right and, I am large, and I  do contain multitudes. I think I prefer to see myself as small and singular. 

There are a hell of a lot less people to manage that way, and my life is much less confusing. 

A person can only handle so much, you know?.

And people, even less.