I gotta tell ya – this need some people seem to have to share their sexual orientation, latest flames, recent break-ups, and the nitty gritty details behind their lives is really beyond me. I have never understood it, but this week’s “bare-all about myself� disclosures got put to good use at my house.
Everybody knows how cruel kids can be to one another. They’ll pretty much use any verbal weapon they can find, and this week’s hurt-words were “gay� and “lesbian� in my daughter’s elementary school. Never mind that hardly any of them have the slightest clue what they’re talking about. Telling a kid he smells like a table can hurt feelings if the intent was to do so.
So when my child got called “lesbian� this week, I took advantage of the recent personal overexposure of Cheryl Swoopes to make a point – because Cheryl is a Houston person… and my daughter has met her. Not only has she met her, she has met Cheryl’s son, too. And guess what! She liked them! Turns out they’re “just people, huh Mom?�
Did we really need to know that Cheryl Swoopes is homosexual? No. I probably could have gone the rest of my life without that information and done just fine, thanks. But as a parent, you use the opportunities that come along.
As it happens, I really don’t have a way to leverage Sulu (er… I know he has another identity but that’s the one that sticks with me). I guess I’ll have to file his recent proclamation under the TMI category with everything else – Too Much Information.