Hi. Today, I had a life-changing experience.
I was in Target looking for some nail polish, when I walked passed a middle-aged looking woman with a younger boy. he looked older than me, maybe in his late teens or early 20’s. They were near the isle I needed to look through, so I overheard their conversation. I overheard it quite clearly, actually, because the older woman was yelling. She yelled, “I refuse to have a fag for a son! You are not my son! I thought I taught you well enough to know that homosexuality is wrong! Where did I go wrong as a parent?” I was shocked. I looked over, and the boy was tearing up. I wanted to hug him. I looked at his mother, and we made eye contact. She said, “My son is a fucking queer! Tell me what I did wrong!” I stood there for a moment, stunned. Then I looked her dead in the eye and said “What did you do wrong? Let me ask you this: Do you still love him?” She looked at him, then back at me. “No”, she said, coldly. “What you’ve done wrong,” I started, “is you’re selfish. Sickeningly selfish. You don’t care about what your son thinks, or how your son feels. Did you ever think of the courage it took for him to tell you? The least you could do is love him unconditionally, the way any mother should. The way I see it, you’re more worried about your feelings than your son’s.”
She retorted, “You don’t know anything. He was angry with me, and this is his way of getting me back. He wants to be a rebellious son of a bitch and call himself a fag because he wants attention. This is all an attention-seeking stunt.” She looked at him. “You’re going to hell for this. You’re a disgrace of a human being.”
I interjected “With all due respect, if anyone here is a disgrace, it’s you. People like you, sicken me. How quickly you can turn away your son, your own flesh and blood, as soon as you find something out about him that displeases you. With all due respect, you’re ignorant and selfish.”
She looked at me, her eyes like daggers piercing through my skull. Then she stalked away. Just like that, without another word. She just left. And I was standing there awkwardly in the middle of the nail care isle in Target with this boy. I looked around, shocked that all this commotion hadn’t caused a crowd to form. Maybe nobody needed nail polish today.
He looked at me with an awkward smile. One of those “What do we do now?” kind of smiles. I hugged him. “Thanks.” he said. “Thanks for standing up for me. That meant a lot.”
I may never see him again, but I feel good. I feel good knowing that I did the right thing, and he’ll probably remember me for quite some time. I’m sure his mother will also. I can feel comfortable with the knowledge that after all these years of trying, I can finally be comfortable with the fact that I’ve made an impact on someone’s life. And all at the age of fourteen. I don’t know how he’s doing now, but I wish the best for him, whoever he was.
