Put Me Down

Please put me down as someone who paid off their student loans and is totally cool with having everybody else’s student loans wiped out completely.

You can also put me down as someone who paid off their credit card debt, and would have no problem at all with other people having their credit card debt erased.

Put me down as having healthcare through my job, but wanting to see other people have healthcare regardless of their employment status, even if that means my taxes go up as a result.

Put me down as making a fair wage and wanting others to make one as well even if their jobs are easier than mine.

Put me down as being cool with the money I pay for taxes going towards education even though I don’t have kids and clinics that, among other things, provide abortions, even though I’m never going to need one, because someone else might, and it’s none of my business why.

Put me down for saving the environment even though I might not live long enough to see global warming at its worst and even though I may not have children who will see it either.

Put me down as someone who is not at all concerned with who is or isn’t on welfare, who doesn’t think people on food stamps should be drug tested, and thinks that everybody is only one horrible life experience away from living on the street, so we should all protect the systems that are designed to catch us if we fall, and if—a big if—they occasionally get abused, it’s still worth it in the end.

Put me down as lucky.

I am lucky.

I am no better than the people who have less than I do.

I’m just luckier.

Have I worked for what I have?

Sure.

But there are people who have worked ten times harder than I am who have way less to show for it.

Put me down as believing that hard work no longer equals success and the reason nobody’s in a rush to change that is because the CEO does not want to have to work as hard as the janitor does.

Put me down as not caring who marries who or why or what anybody would like to be addressed as.

I know a woman who goes out of her way—as if it’s a point of pride—to let everyone know she doesn’t believe in letting people choose their pronouns.

I have now started calling this woman by her maiden name.

She doesn’t like it.

Maybe at some point, she’ll start to connect the dots.

Who knows?

Who cares?

Put me down as passive aggressive.

Put me down as someone who has no problem with people entering this country to have a shot at a better life.

As far as I know, my ancestors were not Native Americans, which means at some point, some distant relative of mine got on a boat and came here without permission.

You don’t get to decide to close the gates five seconds after you walk past them.

In the grand scheme of time and space, the amount of time between when my great-great-great whatever’s got here and now is about five seconds so who am I to say lock the doors?

Put me down for thinking that pride is something you have in yourself, not in your country.

Not in your geography.

Great people and serial killers come from everywhere and anywhere, so it’s silly to attach pride to a place and not a person or accomplishment.

Put me down for thinking it’s weird that we still have symbols for things—flags, old documents, traditions.

Some of us are trying to make this a much more literal society.

Put me down as one of those people.

This isn’t meant to be a statement of personal belief as much as it is a reminder that none of us contribute enough to make the rules and all of us have opinions anyway, so the best we can do sometimes is let people know where we stand.

And usually as soon as you do that, someone comes along to make you feel bad about it.

So go ahead—

Put me down.