Out of the mouths of a couple of feisty female octogenarians (back in the day, they are both dead now). Say it with complete disgust! (Barbara was a long time friend and moominbeach neighbor of ours. I knew her all my life and she taught all of the beach urchins in my generation how to swim.)

This (it’s a screenshot of a tweet) keeps showing up in my “memories” in various places on this date. It was The Commander talking and I wish I could remember when she said it. I mean, I can’t seem to get all the way back to the original pic. It wasn’t 2012 because she died early that year and didn’t get to vote (for Obama). It might’ve been 2008 but she definitely voted for *one* of “those men” that year. Obama of course. My once Republican-voting mother had shifted firmly to the other side.

Why? Well. Reproductive rights was definitely one of her hot-button issues. A life-long pro-choicer, her stint as a high school “home-ec” teacher did nothing to dissuade her views on that issue. She taught many “disadvantaged” kids (mostly girls) and in my high school — BEFORE ROE V. WADE — there were a fair number of unplanned pregnancies. Hey, those happen!

Some of those situations turned out better than others and my mom cared about those kids and their babies. Options were limited. Get married at an early age, get a New York abortion (if your parents could afford to pay for one), sit out your pregnancy somewhere no one could see you and give your baby up for adoption, or raise your child as a single mom with the stigma that was still attached to that in those days. Make no mistake, all of these options *can* work out well but are excruciatingly hard decisions for women to make. Especially women without financial and/or emotional support.

But she also chafed under the male domination of our government and the way a lot of those “*men*” seemed to get away with breaking “rules” (I’m oversimplifying here). Another quote from her regarded Mark Foley (google him): “Why under the *sun* do we have somebody like *that* in the government?” About all I could think of to say was “Indeed!” Thinking about some of the people (men but also women) we have in the government *now*, Mark Foley almost seems tame.

My mom did teach a lot of girls and most of them were not on the “college track”. But one semester, a bunch of senior football players needed an elective and they were steered into one of her classes. I think it was child care (a class she designed) but I’m not sure. As a high-school senior myself, I was not generally a fan of “jocks”. I had a cute college sophomore boyfriend and could be kind of a snob about that🐽 But these guys were really good people and if I remember accurately, they had a blast in her class and she had a great time teaching them. I am Facebook friends with some of them now.

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