Why I Am A Home Schooling Mom

Colin Saltry and Joey Daniel, students at Scranton High School in Pennsylvaina, were suspended for one day after skipping gym class last week when they noticed Senator Barack Obama’s caravan pulling into a diner and decided to stop by and make history. Saltry was also forced to resign as senior class president. Senator Obama wrote notes asking the school to excuse both boys from missing class, but to no avail. This incident screams out the lack of common sense employed in our modern day educational system. Let’s look at the big picture, folks! These kids had a chance to talk to the first viable black candidate for president and be a part of the crazy, history-making campaign this democratic contest has been. And even though I’m not a fan of Senator Clinton, heck, chatting with her on an unplanned campaign stop still trumps calesthenics or dodgeball any day!

Part of what kids need to learn to be members of society, employees, and grown-ups is common sense. Life is not about following a prescribed set of rules–it is about using your brain to sort out what’s truly important. Missing once-in-a-lifetime opportunities, which come around all-too-seldom, is pure foolishness. As a thirty-nine-year-old woman barreling toward 40, I wish I’d skipped more classes. Why don’t we reward these boys for taking a chance, being part of something bigger than high school, the memories of which will fade into oblivion before they graduate from college?

I wish I could say that I’d briefly contemplated this issue and let it stop there, but, alas, I was so worked up that I actually called Scranton High School (I later remembered the proverbial injunction about not getting involved in a quarrel not my own, and let it go.). When the person who answered the phone refused to discuss the issue with me, I called back and selected an extension which got me a guidance counselor, who verified that the students did indeed attend Scranton High, and who just kept repeating, “but they broke the rules,” over and over again. When he transferred me to the principal’s secretary, I got more of the same, as well as “you don’t know the whole story.” No, I don’t, but frankly, I don’t see what the rest of the story has to do with this particular incident. Whatever the case is with these boys, discouraging them from being politically aware doesn’t seem like the best way to address it. I was unable to find much information about Joey Daniel, as he has a popular name, but when I googled Colin Saltry, I found that, in addition to being senior class president, he ran track and performed musically at a public venue a couple of years ago–certainly all indications of a chronic ne’er-do-well just making excuses for skipping class rather than an astute, responsible young man enthusiastic about life and his part in it!

Following rules is necessary, sure, but as children become grown-ups, the onus is on the adults in their lives to let more and more of the freedom and responsibility of their choices to fall squarely on their shoulders–that is how it will be when these young men go to college–no one is going to be punishing Colin Saltry for missing class next fall–he will just have to make his own choices–and I can’t think of any college professor I have ever met (and there have been many of whom I was not particularly fond) who would penalize I student for missing class to visit with a major presidential candidate. Give me a break!

I worked at a university in a college of education, and saw many teachers pursuing their masters’ degrees, mostly so that they would get a bigger paycheck. In my own graduate coursework, I was in class with many of these people as well, and the sad fact was that a large portion of them were intellectually lazy, and it seemed from hearing them talk that many of them were teachers in large part so that they could have their summers off. This is pathetic. I have a rambunctious, creative six-year-old who I am home-schooling, and my house seems to be in constant chaos from her artistic endeavors and scientific experiments. I am also asked a seemingly endless number of questions. ( I am a person who could sit at a coffeehouse by myself for five hours just reading, writing, and thinking, so this endless stream of noise makes me really nutty sometimes.) I would love to dump my daughter off at a school some days just to hear myself think! But if the price is teaching her to be a sheep, to choose following a rule rather than being a part of history, I’ll take the noise.

Letter From an Unloved Neighbor

Dear coat donor,

Did you know that the coat you donated to the local thrift shop had a faulty zipper? The coat was clean, a name brand, in nice shape, and we tried the zipper in the store to make sure it worked when inspecting the coat, because I have shopped in thrift shops enough to know to look for this sort of thing.

The zipper worked fine in the store—the problem only arose when the coat was worn for awhile—but came unzipped, from the bottom up, nearly each time my daughter wore the coat. Surely you knew this and got rid of the coat because it was no longer suitable for your child to wear.

I don’t know you—don’t know if you follow the Bible, don’t know if you are a Christian, although I think there is a good chance because this is a very Christian-y community, and folks who donate things are often church-goers. What I am going to tell you is of particular relevance to Christians, but, even if you are not, just like many of God’s other laws, like not killing and not stealing are good rules for all of us to follow, the following is a good rule of thumb as well.

“Love your neighbor as yourself.” You know, the same type of thing as “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Like if your husband had been laid off work for six months from the job he got after investing your life savings into a business that failed, and you needed a coat for your child, would you be happy to receive the one with the broken zipper? Now don’t get me wrong, the coat with the broken zipper is fine for days that are not that cold, when wearing an open coat keeps the chill off, on days when the winter wind isn’t blowing in ways that seem to cut clean through your bones. But on days that are actually cold, or when a little girl wants to play out in six inches of fresh snow, the coat you donated simply won’t do. Instead, although she is a medium going on large, her stained extra small coat will do one more year, worn over $3 snow pants covered by an adult small sized thermal vest, both thrift shop finds. The vest and snow pants are in fine shape, donated by someone who no longer needed them.

In my former life, with my husband’s six-figure salary, I donated things to thrift shops that weren’t nice enough to save for a possible second child and didn’t sell on a garage sale. Nice. My husband even thought it was okay to donate stained things, because he thought poor people would be happy to have any clothes at all, especially if they were cold. Now we scour clothes at thrift shops for pants for my husband to wear to work, the job he got laid off from eight months ago, and the job he is starting in another town January second. We find jeans and khakis for two or three dollars, some of them stained so badly, no self-respecting person would want to wear them out of the house (or in the house for that matter), or, what’s worse, stained lightly in places that are only evident in bright light and that you don’t notice until you wash them or even are walking to the car wearing them to your first day at a new job. Then you have to decide whether to be late and change your clothes, or go like you are. What do you think about people who go around wearing stained clothes? That they are careless? Undignified? Someone you would want to be friends with, or probably not? Would you want to go around in stained clothes? Or would you be embarrassed? If you didn’t have enough money to go to the mall to buy a pair of pants, or even to Target or Wal-Mart, and you had to go to a thrift shop, how would you feel if someone had donated stained pants? Love your neighbor as yourself.

I went to the food pantry a couple of months ago of a large church my husband, daughter and I had attended for nearly a year. We left the church after my four-year-old peed in her pants because the childrens’ program was so disorganized and chaotic that no one ever stopped to think that maybe little preschoolers couldn’t hold it for an hour and a half and had to be offered a chance to go potty. We also had a bad experience in a small group, which for you non-church types, is a group of people who meet once a week or so to study the Bible, or something like that, and love and support each other. The group never really bonded, and the husband of the couple who led the group, his wife told us one week when he had to be out of town, didn’t want children, which many of us had, in his house, for fear they would mess it up or damage his pool table. So we met in a cold, sterile room at the church, and had to fight with the small groups minister to also get another room for childcare. We had a good time the one week the husband was gone, when the wife welcomed us into their home after a planned picnic in the park got rained out, but then the husband came back, and the group started to disintegrate shortly thereafter. But his pool table was fine.

So this church hadn’t worked out, but I knew they had a food pantry, so I went there, and, rather than being welcomed into their huge atrium and given a warm cup of coffee, I kid you not, they had assembled about eight folding chairs in a dark stairwell, not anywhere near one of the main entrances, and the first time I went there, for their rather limited hours, I was sent away because they were too busy and didn’t have time for me to come in. They told me to come back the next day. When I did come back, I had to wait nearly an hour before being escorted (as if by prison guards) back to a small cage-like structure about six by eight feet, with shelves on all sides. The fifty-ish woman wearing glasses, who was standing way too close to me (but how could she stand much further away in such a small space?) gave me a small shopping cart (how was I going to push a shopping cart around in this tiny space anyway?) and proceeded to tell me the rules. You can fill up exactly one paper grocery bag, no more, nothing sticking out over the top; paper towels don’t count, toilet paper doesn’t count (and has been bagged up neatly in two-roll plastic bags, a family’s ration for six weeks), the Spanish named laundry soap, which I could feel making my skin break out without even opening the bottle, doesn’t count; only one of each item (you can take two cans of soup, but not two of the same kind, so that, for example, your entire family could have the same meal). She would set a timer for five minutes, she said perkily (I smiled and asked if she was joking—she wasn’t) and told me to get started. Trying hard not to cry, but with tears welling up in my eyes nonetheless, I attempted to shop. The perky woman followed me around the tiny space, hovering over my shoulder, watching my every move. (Rebelling against the oppressive rules, I took two cans of chicken and rice soup when she was not looking. Not so for Spagettios—I was afraid I would get busted and locked in some other cell like this, bereft of generic food.) Now, I have gastrointestinal problems, which have included several surgeries, and have some food restrictions, and tried to quickly peruse the food labels to make sure that I would actually be able to eat the food that I took home (a difficult feat with the five minute limit). Nervous about the time, I tried to hurry, cramming things in my bag as fast as I could, like on that game show, Supermarket Sweep, when people have to race through a pretend grocery store, filling their carts as fast as they can with various items, perhaps winning fantastic prizes and cash at the end. But there would be no prizes for me. Why is there only one jar of Welch’s jelly, I wondered, don’t these people who donate this stuff eat anything but generic food? I’ve been at their houses—I know they don’t eat this stuff! Love your neighbor as yourself.

DING! I jumped, startled.

Okay, are you almost done? the perky woman asked, standing too close to me again. We don’t want to rush you or anything, but we are closing. Three or four volunteers were now all following me around, staring at me like they were running late for yoga or forgot to set their Tivo to record Survivor. Would you like some bread or bagels? What kind are they? I asked. All mixed up, was the response (do you know what a blueberry bagel tastes like after it has been in a bag with an onion one for who knows how long? Besides, they looked a little freezer burned. Would you like something from our bonus table? I looked at a table with random odds and ends, including one small can of fruit, snack packs of various foods, and granola bars. You can pick three things from this table, said the perky woman, positively beaming at me. I took two granola bars and the small can of fruit, mostly to please her, because I sensed that somehow her day would be a massive disappointment if I didn’t take something from the bonus table and seem at least marginally excited about it. Thank you, I squeaked. We have some deer meat, that’s all we have (from the men’s hunting club, no doubt). You can have as much as you’d like; it kind of tastes like (pause) hamburger. Smiling and standing too close again, she said, do you want some? No thanks, I replied. They offered to help me carry my stuff to the car. No thanks, I said. Now remember, you can come back in six weeks, someone said, giving me a giant sheet of paper with October 12 written on it. Not before. I left the building as quickly as I could, and the tears poured out as soon as I escaped into the sunlight. I cried all the way to my car, and had the urge to fling the bag of food across the parking lot. Out of respect for God, I didn’t.

An Open Letter to MSNBC Spokesman, Jeremy Gaines, on Chelsea

Mr. Gaines,
“Pimping out”is a colloquialism. It was not, I’m sure, intended to be offensive. However, by kowtowing to the Clintons through your suspension of Mr. Shuster, you have given Hillary a platform to cry “Sexism, ” which will undoubtedly be used to further her campaign, particularly her support among feminists. MSNBC’s job is to be journalists, to inform voters about issues so that they can make wise, well-informed voting decisions. The way this issue was handled instead detracted from issues and just allowed Hillary Clinton to gain a lot of free advertising at your expense. I formerly enjoyed watching your network a great deal more than CNN, because I felt that you didn’t pander to the Clintons as they did–now I’m not so sure. Please reinstate Mr. Shuster immediately and spend more of your network’s time on what matters–not what is politically correct.

Sincerely,
Michele Franks

Why I, A Lifelong Republican, Support Barack Obama

I don’t remember much about September 11th. Fifteen days earlier, after my water broke at only 27 ½ weeks gestation, my daughter Isabel was born, weighing only 2 pounds.

It is September 12th I remember, when I drove nearly an hour to Lucille Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford University. As I drove past the hospital toward the parking area, I noticed that it seemed like everyone, doctors, nurses, and patients, was outside of the hospital. I asked someone what was going on, and they told me that there had been a bomb threat. My two-pound daughter, her wrist small enough for her father’s wedding band to fit it like a giant gold bangle bracelet, was still inside the NICU, one of only two departments not having yet been evacuated. The only parking spot I could find was at the Stanford mall, and I ran, c-section scar not entirely healed and all, breathless and crying, and told the security guards posted at the hospital door that I had to go inside because my daughter was still in there. Somehow they let me in, and I waited, anxiously, with my daughter and the nurses, pretty much the only people left, until we were assured that all was clear (how do they really know that, anyway?). Days later, someone told me the incident was instigated by a prank call from a Stanford student.

In the days and months that followed, with all of the fear and trembling we as individuals and as a nation had to endure, George W. Bush made me feel safe, like I could rest well at night, because he had things under control.

Six years later, after my husband was laid off from his high tech job, and we went from a six-figure income to digging for change on the floor of our car to have enough money for gas, George W. Bush vetoed providing health insurance to my uninsured, formerly two-pound baby.

A lifelong Republican, I am looking for, as the Poison song goes, “Something to Believe In.” Yes, I know that politicians are human, and disappointment is inevitable, but there seems to be a core of integrity that some people possess, and others don’t. While some Republican issues are important to me, like abortion, I think it’s important to face the fact that it’s extremely unlikely, after 35 years, that Roe V. Wade will be overturned. Other issues, like loving the poor, have been virtually ignored by the party I have been told embraces my values. (How does a “compassionate conservative” deny health insurance to any child?) The agenda set by the moral majority these last many years doesn’t accurately reflect the Bible I read. In the end, the only way to change people’s behavior is to change their hearts. You can’t legislate that.

Partisan politics don’t appeal to me. I don’t think I am alone. Proverbs 13:12a says that “Hope deferred makes the heart sick,” and I think there are a whole bunch of us out here tired of being heartsick. We want to hope again, believe that we can be more than we are, while also stopping along the way to lend a hand to the oppressed and the overlooked. We want to dream again, listen to a president whose words send chills down the backs of our legs, whose speeches make us cry and remember who we are. In the end, our country is not simply an intellectual exercise in democracy, but rather an enterprise in which we invest our hearts, souls and minds. It’s time to fall in love with America again, and we’re looking for someone to light the spark. Obama’s the one.

Michele Franks

On Seeking Jesus and Eschewing Vanity

I have been upset for about a week after reading in the appendix of a Christian book on motherhood the author’s words of advice on plastic surgery (she has had at least one surgery, and offers advice from her own plastic surgeon on how to select a plastic surgeon). I was horrified. How does plastic surgery fit into the Christian’s life? (And how does a discussion on plastic surgery fit into a MOPS book about being a mom?)

I have scoured the internet to find words of wisdom on the topic, to get a definitive Christian position, and today I realized I am looking in the wrong place. I need to look at God’s word.

First of all, let me say, that if you are saved by the blood of Jesus, you are covered with immeasurable grace, as am I, and our screw-ups, mistakes, and even rebellion, can be forgiven. In addition, surgery to correct some disfiguring condition is not what I am discussing.

What I found on the internet is that there are Christians using all kinds of Bible verses to both justify and condemn plastic surgery. (One Christian woman in a panel discussion questioned how her teenaged daughter was to find a mate if she did not make herself as attractive as possible, even using plastic surgery, if necessary.) In short, to those who want to advocate plastic surgery, grace allows it, and we need to make ourselves attractive to be winsome Christians; those who oppose it cite admonitions to be self-sacrificial and not proud, and to use our God-given resources more wisely, like to spread God’s word, or to love the poor.

As followers of Christ, how then shall we live? What is our focus to be? Are we dancing up to the edge of wordliness, asking what is okay, what we can get away with, trying to justify our self-centeredness, or are we so preoccupied with being more like Jesus that we just don’t have much time to look at how the world, even our brothers and sisters in Christ, are doing things? (And, by the way, if we weren’t watching so much television, looking at so many magazines, following so many Hollywood celebs, where would we have gotten these notions about beauty and aging anyway?)

I think this falls into the Matthew 6:33 “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you” (ESV) category, “these things” referring to what we shall drink, what we shall eat, and what we shall wear (and plastic surgery and our appearance also kind of loosely falls into that “what we shall wear” category, doesn’t it?). How I need to look, over all, can be left up to God, can’t it? I’ll still highlight my hair, put on my makeup, and shave my legs, but you see, all of these things are temporary, daily maintenance sorts of things, and I just don’t think that having someone cut your skin to pull it tighter, or sucking fat out, quite falls into the same category.

(By the way, the Christian woman who wrote the book on motherhood advocating plastic surgery indicated that surgery was one of the “options available when no amount of stomach crunches” would “do what you really want to have done.” After Googling pictures of this woman, I can say, with confidence, that she certainly doesn’t appear to be someone who has done very many stomach crunches.)

The Proverbs 31 woman “laughs at the time to come” (v. 25, ESV). She is way more preoccupied with taking care of her family, and honoring God and her husband by how she lives her life than she is with vanity about her appearance.

Caleb, Joshua’s right-hand man, was described in Numbers 14:24 as having “a different spirit,” (ESV)” and following God fully. Caleb says in Joshua 14:10-11, “Behold, the Lord has kept me alive, just as he said, these forty-five years since the time that the Lord spoke this word to Moses, while Israel walked in the wilderness. And now, behold, I am this day eighty-five years old. I am still as strong today as I was in the day that Moses sent me; my strength now is as my strength was then, for war and for going and coming.” (ESV)

This strength described by Caleb sounds like the kind accompanying glowing, good health. When I take care of my body and am in reasonably good shape, I don’t think about getting plastic surgery or about changing this or that about my body. Do you? If we live lives constantly seeking God, and care for our bodies as the temples that they are, we will have far less time to devote to the pursuit of vanity, because we are spending our time actually doing something worthwhile! Seeking God, and living our lives in a way that honors him, I believe, will make us glow from the inside out!

As a woman who has struggled with weight problems and body image my whole life, if I can trust God with my body, anyone can.

Why Did Hillary Win? It’s the Tears, Stupid!

I’m so glad I have some hot sauce, fresh salsa and sour cream to make this big bowl of crow I’m eating this morning more palatable. How did she win? It doesn’t make sense—that many polls aren’t wrong and I can’t bring myself to believe I live in a country where the Wilder effect (in which people tell pollsters they are undecided or plan to vote for a black candidate and then actually vote for the white candidate) still exists.

So my husband and I started our own optimistic analysis, in the midst of our, “I can’t believe Obama lost” slump.

The conclusion?

It was the tears. Come on girls, how many of us haven’t turned on the tears in an attempt to get out of a traffic ticket? When you’re young and cute (Hillary isn’t) the tears work well on men; apparently when you’re old and tired, they work on women. Hillary took 47 percent of the female vote in New Hampshire, compared to Obama’s 34 percent. In Iowa, the female vote was startlingly different: Obama soundly beat Hillary by winning 35 percent of the female vote to her 30 percent. Yes, there are certainly demographic differences that contributed to the difference, but this seems like too big of a swing to be purely due to that. It was the tears, which she used masterfully to manipulate the women of New Hampshire. Bone-tired and road-weary, Hillary cast herself as an overworked, aging Everywoman, relating to overburdened, tired women everywhere. This Everyman/Everywoman theme is something she’s been slow to grasp, but this year, we want to feel like our presidential candidate is one of us. To use her husband’s now clichéd phrase, we want to know that she feels our pain. And her tearful “share and care” session let us know that she does. Or at least that she wants us to believe she does. I believe it was a sham, an emotional manipulation the likes of which we haven’t seen since Steel Magnolias. The question that was asked before her public display of emotion did not really fit her answer. A 64-year-old freelance photographer asked her how she kept going, and who did her hair, and received the now famous response. This was a prepared outburst, waiting in the wings for an opportunity to be presented. It looks like it worked.

Women of America, I know a lot of you loved Steel Magnolias, but please don’t fall for this again. If Hillary was really an emotional, touchy-feely woman, we would have seen it in her post-Lewinsky interview. These are just crocodile tears.

Michele Franks

Happy Warriors We Shall Be!

Mark Shields, on the MacNeil-Lehr Report the night of the New Hampshire primary, talked about one voter he had spoken to who was trying to decide between Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee. He said that the voter “saw virtues and values in both of them.”

This is the thing the pundits are missing—the inexplicable reason for the soaring popularity of both of these candidates: Partisanship is dying off among us regular folks—we are focused on the person, not the politics. I like Bill Kristol; I have watched him on Fox for years and eagerly read his debut column in The New York Times today, and then found myself becoming angry when I read him dissing Obama because of his leftist politics. I felt like he was saying he didn’t like a friend of mine, a guy who I might not agree with about everthing, but who is a stand-up, honorable guy who doesn’t deserve a bad rap just because you don’t agree with him. NBC’s Brian Williams discussed the difficulty reporter Lee Cowan had being objective when covering Barack, and described seeing “middle-aged women just throw their arms around Barack Obama, kiss him hard on the cheek and say, ‘You know, I’m with you, good luck.’ And I think he feels it, too.”

I have a been a pro-life Republican most of my life, and I love Barack. His words mesmerize me. When I read stories about his rallies to my husband, I cry. We talk about his vision, his charisma, his inspiration, how seven years ago he was so broke his debit card got declined (did this ever happen to George Bush?) and his wife shopping at Target and saying that the only reason their student loans are paid off (ours aren’t) is because her husband had two best-selling books. He is one of us. He was raised by a single mom, didn’t see his dad much (me either), knows how to use technology (is a master of using it in his campaign), and is thoughtful and contemplative. I don’t get the impression that his answers are canned. He has become Everyman.

I think the thing that a lot of pundits are missing is that many of us just don’t care about, and are even angered by partisanship. We are free thinkers, and after all of the divisiveness of the 90s, we all just want to get along, to rally behind a hero, to cheer for the same team. We are weary of all of the finger-pointing and angry words—we want to feel the love, baby.

Newt Gingrich said awhile ago that if the country wants therapy, they’ll elect Barack Obama. Well, Newt, maybe we do. After all of this country’s collective dysfunction over the past few years, we want to heal, to feel good, to trust someone again, to believe that someone with a passionate poetic voice could lead us all on to be “happy warriors.”

Michele Franks

musingmom.wordpress.com

Hillary, It’s Over; Go Home.

Hillary, honey, come on—are you dense? The snarky statement you made this weekend that “you campaign in poetry, you govern in prose,” showed exactly just how out of touch with the American people you actually are. We are looking for a little poetry, and by the way, Barack Obama could prose circles around you! Even John Edwards, whether sensing his campaign’s ultimate demise, or (despite his denial) jockeying for a VP slot, has jumped on Train Obama, as was evidenced by the ABC/Facebook debate, in which he zinged you with the words, “I didn’t see these kind of attacks from Senator Clinton when she was ahead. Now that’s she’s not, we hear them, anytime you speak out for change, this is what happens,” after you sharply criticized Obama.

The likability campaign didn’t work. We don’t like you. We don’t want to have a beer with you, a cup of coffee with you, and we are sure glad not to have been one of the people whose door you hiked through the snow to knock on in Iowa.

Just like your Tammy Wynette-like Stand By Your Man support of your lecherous husband, you will not let go of your tired “Ready on Day One,” strategy, even if it is not what the American people are pining for. Here’s a tip: IT’S NOT WORKING. YOUR POLL NUMBERS ARE DROPPING. You are not even trying to adapt your campaign strategy to what the American people are obviously looking for. America’s favorite pundit extraordinaire and Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me panelist Mo Rocca called your boilerplate spiel plodding and uninspired and went on to describe your weary posse: Bill looking miserable, and Madeleine Albright “looking more and more like Aunt Clara from Bewitched.”

The reason Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee are doing well and you and Mitt Romney are not can be neatly summed up in the words of a song from the Broadway musical Damn Yankees which I have altered a bit for the occasion.

Coach:
[Spoken]
See boys and girls, that’s what I’m talking about. Being the leader of our country is only one half skill, the other half is something else…..something bigger!
{sung}
You’ve gotta have heart
All you really need is heart
When the odds are sayin’ you’ll never win
That’s when the grin should start
You’ve gotta have hope
Mustn’t sit around and mope
Nothin’s half as bad as it may appear
Wait’ll next year and hope
When your luck is battin’ zero
Get your chin up off the floor
Mister you can be a hero
You can open any door,
There’s nothin’ to it but to do it
You’ve gotta have heart
Miles ‘n miles n’ miles of heart
Oh, it’s fine to be a genius of course
But keep that old horse
Before the cart
First you’ve gotta have heart

Hillary, you have no heart. If you want to be our president, you gotta have heart. Thanks for playing, and entertaining us with a few more months of Clinton dramatics before exiting, stage left. But like Ferris Bueller said at the end of the movie, it’s over. Go home.

Lester Prynne?

Someone I care about went to jail today. He will be serving 4 to 5 months in a county jail after pleading guilty to sexual battery. If he hadn’t agreed to the plea, which carries with it a lifetime label of “sexual offender,” he would have risked serving up to eight years in prison. In addition, he is now a convicted felon who has lost his job and his real estate license, as well as the rights to vote, hold public office, and own a gun.

So what’s the story? What happened? Two dumb twenty-something guys and a girl were drinking at my friend’s house. Everyone got too drunk to know what was going on, and the next morning, although no one remembered what had happened the night before, there was a digital camera with pictures of the girl naked. She found the camera and got mad. No one remembered having sex—no one remembered much of anything at all, but the girl got mad and talked to her uncle who worked in law enforcement and decided to go to the police. She didn’t remember any sexual activity, she was just angry that someone had taken naked pictures of her.

The police recommended that she be examined and a rape kit be used, which found no evidence of any sexual activity. A more detailed test performed a few weeks later found some type of DNA material not belonging to the girl.

The police tried to get each of the boys to turn on each other, offering them a chance to get off the hook if they would sign a statement incriminating the other, which neither one would agree to do. Eventually, my friend was offered the aforementioned deal, or told that a DNA test would be conducted to see if the genetic material found was his, and if it was he could land in jail for eight years. Now, my friend was 99.99% sure that he had not had sexual intercourse with the girl, but the .01% uncertainty was too much for him to bank on when the gamble was eight years in the slammer.

What I want to know is this: how can a man be charged with rape if the victim never claimed to have been raped and no one present even remembered what went on? Why must a young man engaging in a prank spend the rest of his life labeled a pervert? Foolish? Yes. Rape? No.

When I was in junior high and went to slumber parties, the consequence for being the first girl asleep was to have your bra dipped in water and frozen solid. Did you see the Friends episode where Ross and Rachel got drunk and got married and ended up with permanent marker on their faces because they were too sloshed for either of them to remember what had happened the night before?

Here’s a newsflash: guys like to look at boobies. If a girl voluntarily takes off her clothes in front of guys, they will look at her boobies. (Have you ever heard of strip clubs or pornography?) If you are a girl and you don’t want boys to look at your boobies, KEEP YOUR CLOTHES ON!!! If you are not capable of keeping your clothes on because you drink too much, maybe you need to go to AA, but please don’t blame someone else for your poor judgment!!!

Anyone who has been drunk or stayed up to late at a slumber party knows that as it gets later and/or you get drunker, silly things become funnier and funnier. Let’s put shaving cream on her hand and tickle her nose so that when she reaches to scratch her nose she gets shaving cream on it. Let’s dress him up in drag and put makeup on him and take pictures to show him how stupid he looked! Okay, she’s naked, let’s take pictures of her boobies!

When did girls who got drunk and took off their clothes in front of men they barely knew stop being hoochies? Apparently some women want equal rights with men unless those rights include being responsible for their own drunken, foolish behavior.

My friend has been labeled a sexual offender for the rest of his life. It will impact his ability to get a job, make friends, what his neighbors think about him if they find out there is a “sexual offender” living in their neighborhood, and his feelings about himself. All I am asking is, couldn’t the girl be required to wear a scarlet H?