Thoughts inspired by Larry Wachowski’s sex change
Recently, I saw a post on Facebook from someone who had learned of Osama Bin Laden’s assassination an entire year after it happened. As a well informed American, he was shocked that he had initially missed the story. I’ve never missed news as big as Bin Laden’s death (as far as I know), but I can relate. I was just as shocked when I learned recently from a New Yorker article on the upcoming Cloud Atlas Movie that the Wachowski Brothers are now the Wachowski Siblings and Larry is now Lana.
What concerned me on learning about the “siblings” was not the news (who really cares?), it was the thought that I may be out of touch. Supposedly, the big news on Lana was in 2008, I was way behind. I was forced to justify my ignorance by either (1) convincing myself that I should be proud of my chosen news sources for withholding such frivolity or (2) convincing myself that the daily proliferation of ever-changing information means everyone (you included) will eventually miss something important. I chose the latter.
Hopefully you don’t choose the day Osama Bin Laden is killed to go overnight camping in a wilderness without cell service and spend the week after in a self-loathing pit of media avoidance and drunkenness due to a breakup, but it could happen. As a child, you could miss the bus the morning you were supposed to learn what a BJ is and decades later, be mocked for your ignorance at work.
How does it feel to know that there are probably obvious things you don’t know that everyone else does? That these things may be waiting to surprise you when you least expect it? Depending on your personality, the thought can be scary or fun. It reminds of something that happened to my sister recently.
As a child, I liked to play pranks on my younger sisters. I told them my peeling and sunburned skin was the result of standing too close to the microwave, that barbies were shrunken bad people, and that the hard wax housing Laughing Cow Cheese was edible. Most of these lies worked themselves out, apparently others did not. No better evidence exists than a recent call from my 26-year-old sister telling me how her request to eat her boyfriend’s Laughing Cow Cheese wax was met with bafflement.
This shows, in addition to what an awesome kid I was, how fallible we are to similar time-bombs. I pronounced Celtic as “seltic” until early high-school and I still hear adults mispronouncing it today. It took a teacher correcting me in front of the class to correct the mispronunciation. We can do the same to help improve others and ourselves. As Michael Jackson sang in his classic song Heal the World, we can make the world a better place. We can be forgiving of simple mistakes, offer correction, and avoid offense when corrected or informed. BTW, I can’t wait to see Michael in concert when he comes to my area!
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