Quit Snickering About 4/20!

4/11/2002

This week so far has summed up all the happy things in my life right now. Of course, I’m completely worn out. This week was possible because I’m living in Boston, doing exactly as I please. Yay Boston!

Saturday I was handed a flyer in Coolidge Corner that told me about the big day of peaceful protest that’s planned on April 20th. There’s going to be a local Stop the War movement in Copley Square, and a national protest in D.C. I thought “If Kati and Dust and a bunch of my other friends who are anti-war lived up here, they’d go to the protest with me. But of course they’re in Tennessee.” I realized I needed to go protest the current crazyness in Washington anyway, by myself. But I wanted my friends to be with me! So I e-mailed everyone and told them that if they wanted to go with me in spirit, I would write their names on my tee-shirt to show everyone at the protest I represented more than one person.

And wow, did people e-mail me back! I have 7 signatures so far for my tee shirt, but the best thing was when Dust called me and told me that he, Kati and Michael are going to drive to D.C. and meet me at the protest! Yay, we’re gonna march! Also, we’re gonna hang out with Mat of Olympus-Mons a bit! Yay, Internet community!

In other news: Wednesday was a long and fabulous day like no other. I got up that morning and went to the dentist. I can do that now because I have some kick-ass dental insurance through my job. It was my second trip in a week to see Dr. Yu, a very nice lady who works in an office with 4 other dentists. She and her assistant were filling 3 of the 5 cavities I managed to accumulate in the years since I last could afford a cleaning. They were clucking over this when I informed them, ‘hey, I lived in Rutherford County, Tennessee, for a decade. I’m lucky I have all my teeth.’ Dr. Yu laughed, and told me I have immigrant teeth. She’s from China, and she’s seen a lot of bad dental work. I have to go to the dentist about once a week for the next couple of months to straighten out all the problems I have just because I was silly enough to be poor for an extended period of time. All together, I have 5 cavities, I need two crowns (both repairs from earlier bad work I had done back in LaVergne) and one of the crowns I get to keep is cracked and something has to be done about that, too.

But I have insurance, and the dentists I get to go to were trained at very good schools. I get to have good teeth because I live in Boston. Of course, when Aral went to the dentist a few months ago for the first time in 3 years, she had NO cavities. Despite her travels through poverty and back, her teeth are just naturally shiny and strong. I have bad teeth, which I got from my dad, who called me a couple of days after my phone got turned back on to say:

“Hey, who’s a Ferguson?” laughing, as if dodging the phone bill were something he had gifted me with genetically, like bad teeth and freckles. Which, in a way, I suppose he did.

After my trip to the dentist Wednesday morning, I went to work for the second half of the day. On my way through the Harvard campus, I saw two people, bound and gagged, standing on top of wooden crates. They were dressed all in black, and the standing looked uncomfortable, as their hands were tied behind their backs and the cloth gags stretched their months out of shape. There was a sign in front of their boxes. Silenced by Homophobia, it read. I thought about saying “Right On” or something, but I knew they couldn’t answer me, so I walked on away. After work, I went to the Allston Public Library and checked out a book about Washington, D.C for the trip. Then I went to a meeting in Brookline to find out more about the protest.

And the meeting reminded me of why I don’t join a lot of things. It was totally old hippies vs. young activists. Everyone there wanted to be in charge, and there were two distinct groups: those who wanted to form a “club” sort of structure, electing a treasurer and secretary and all that (mostly older people). Then there were the younger people, who thought that was ridiculous, and just wanted to make plans to DO things. When I told Aral about this, she laughed and said: “It always boils down to: let’s make a newsletter and have a bake sale’, doesn’t it?”

As I left, there were actually two women in the hallway arguing about weather to have a table to hand flyers out on, or to use clipboards. Dear God. But I at least got the contact numbers for the American Friends, who are running buses down and back to DC for the march. So I’m doing something. And I did meet some interesting people. I’m going to go tell the government I think they’re acting stupid in person next weekend. With lots of friends! Yay Kati, yay Mat, yay Dust, yay Us! We’re participating in Democracy, hooray!