I dunno. I had to get a new driver's license photo the other day, and of course silly Memphis has one counter for everyone in the whole city, which meant four hours of standing in line.

It was nice. I mean that. Folks were really, really nice. Some had DUIs and were trying to get reinstated. Some had money troubles and couldn't pay tickets and had gotten their licenses yanked. There was a kid with his certificate saying he had gotten an "a" in Driver's Ed which allowed him to skip the test and another kid taking the test for the first time. Two folks had just moved here from out of town. Several people just wanted to reup and get a photo like me, but all the automated kiosks were broken, so they had to wait with everyone else.

We talked a lot about politics, mainly about the goofball who wrote the Magic Negro song, who as it turns out is from Memphis. No tempers were lost. Everyone either agreed that it wasn't appropriate or pretended to agree because they suddenly realized that there were real actual black people who could hear them and they weren't willing to be hateful face to face with actual people. I got my hand shaken three times, got blessed twice, and got hugged once. The young lady taking the test was wished good luck, teased about her choice of car, and offered free advice about everything from her boyfriend to her hairstyle. She took it with extremely good grace. We took turns sitting on the chair somebody brought. I went away from what could have been an unpleasant waste of a day thinking, Gee, that was nice.

On the other hand, reading the letters on the Commercial Appeal, our local paper, makes me want to spit bile and die. On the CA forums I am regarded as a dangerous idiot if not a Muslim terrorist in disguise. I have been told that it's a shame the other readers are opposed to abortion because they would make an exception in my case - post natal abortion, that is.

Presumably the same community that reads the paper visits the DMV. What's the difference?

Not too long ago my mother told me about her experience in the 60's in Italy. She was a young woman working as a secretary for the US State department. She had just left her gorgeous opera singer husband after discovering he was sleeping with not just one but all of her best friends. Thus she was not only without a husband but also without most of her friends. All her money and property was in her husband's name and when she tried to open a bank account for herself she found she was considered to have no credit history. Then she missed her period. Stress, right? She was on the pill; she couldn't be pregnant. Then she missed another period. By this time she was having morning sickness and in other ways felt pregnant. She talked to an older woman she knew, who advised that she should take all of her next month's pills at once, since that was what doctors did when they needed to induce abortion.

It worked. To this day she's not sure whether or not she was actually pregnant, as nothing identifiable came out. But she did bleed severely, with large clots and chunks. She also spent the next three days locked in her apartment, twisted up with cramps, with heart palpitations, nausea and vomiting, hot flashes, and dizziness. In her own words she was "sick as a dog." She told no one (besides her friend) and never saw a doctor. As I understand it the pill wasn't legal in that country at that time, so she was breaking the law by taking birth control (which she got in the States) to begin with, much less having an abortion.

Freedom of choice is better.

The letter writer responded a couple of pages back. From the looks of the letters since, it doesn't appear that anyone is paying attention.

Letter writer: I had a feeling this was more of a "What can I do to stop him from being a bump on a log?" thing than an "I desperately want to pay my debt to him" thing. That's okay as long as you recognize it. Our true motives are squirrelly little critters and it's hard to figure them out sometimes.

It's sad to think that he's given up his dreams, but most likely that's not the case. It's more likely that his dreams have changed. Maybe his dream this year was seeing the kids' faces light up on Christmas and knowing it was because of the things he was able to provide for them. Maybe he has a dream of owning a sailboat instead of a dream of writing a book. You've lived together long enough to grow a little; instead of trying to push him into living the dream you think he has, try getting to know him well enough to learn what his dreams really are.

To the numerous people who have asked why the letter writer doesn't just talk to him about this: well, duh, it's because "I bought you supplies and here you are sitting on your ass killing zombies again instead of using them, what's wrong with you" isn't an attractive position to take.

Not for buying an SUV, but for writing an article about how much of an environmentalist you are while buying an SUV. Seriously, dude, you suck. Go back to your job of telling everyone else how you expect them to make sacrifices you don't plan on making yourself, while the Big Three crumble because they have spent so many years making giant behemoths that now they can't remember how to make normal cars.