So I’m watching a Sir David Attenborough (Natural Curiousities on Netflix), to cope withe the crushing lonliness of solo housesitting, and he’s on about Really Weird animals and talks about the origins of the pheonix- a bird that people travelling though Africa only rarely saw shrouded in the streamy mists of volcanic soda lakes (which are literally boiling hot and also extremely caustic).
And all they’d see is the occasional bit of bright red plumage and see these things bobbing in and out of the horrible death clouds coming off the lake, and naturally came up with the myth of a firebird what the fuck ELSE would be living IN A GODDAMN VOLCANO??
The Central Africans told this to the Egyptians who told the Greeks* about this mysterious animal, and they ran hog-wild with it to create the now-famous Pheonix, but-
The bird they were seeing in those volcanic lakes?
*There is significant academic debate about who told who what when (esp as the firebird myth has cropped up multiple times and been culturally exchanged many, MANY times) but the Flamingo>Egyptian Bennu>Greek Pheonix>European Pheonix chain is fairly well agreed upon.
Someone told my ex-dad (not a sex thing; he just disowned me) that I’m trans and now he’s threatening to come to work and make a scene, and I know I should be upset, but like. What’s he gonna say exactly? And to whom? Because imagining a haggard and likely shitfaced Pennsylvania construction worker barging through the grocery store like, “HEY!!! THAT BROAD-HIPPED 5’3” EFFEMINATE KID WITH THE CONSPICUOUSLY BIZARRE NAME WHO SPEAKS IN A CARTOONISHLY AFFECTED CARICATURE OF MASCULINITY AIN’T GOT NO DICK!!! YOU GONNA BUY SCRATCH OFF TICKETS FROM SOME KINDA DICKLESS ABOMINATION??“ is wild. What’s it going to accomplish? Or is he gonna call my manager? “HELLO, I’D LIKE TO REPORT A FRAUD IN YOUR DELI DEPARTMENT. THERE IS NOT SAUSAGE AS ADVERTISED.” What the fuck.
Odds are he’s more embarrassed of having a trans ex-kid than I am of being outed at work, so what if I go to his job and tell everyone I’m trans first? What then, coward?
That’s such a power move.
This is exactly the struggle I’m having with my own mother right now and honestly? i sort of did that, but at the church i grew up in. my mom was like “oh so what if i tell the whole church youre trans” as if she had forgotten that nearly everyone who goes to my church is actually gay, like elderly retired gay couples, so i was like “haha okay,” and told everyone.
And lemme just say, watching a 5’2", 87 year old gay man stop my mother mid-sentance to say “Actually, I think he prefers to go by Aiden now.” was the BIGGEST dick energy ive ever seen.
how did my ancestors survive the brutal unforgiving wilderness when I get anxiety sweats from going to Target
to be fair im sure your ancestors would have the exact same reaction going to a Target
In the brutal unforgiving wilderness false positives cost nothing and false negatives are expensive. You’re better off being afraid of something that can’t hurt you than not afraid of something that can hurt you.
In a world where we mostly aren’t in danger, day to day, as long as we don’t play in traffic or jump off something, that’s no longer quite as adaptive.
We got our anxiety from a long, unbroken line of ancestors who were scared enough to survive, and pass on those genes!
It helps me sometimes to think about that at night, when I can’t sleep because my heart is pounding over something like “what if my usually reliable alarm clock doesn’t work in the morning for some reason and I’m late for work and lose my job and everyone hates me.” There’s nothing wrong with me, I just have a lot of extra, unused run-from-tigers juice that my grandparents left me.
“Unused run-from-tigers juice.”
I love that.
Our brains have been running Hunter/Gatherer 1.0 for 60,000 years without a software upgrade.
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