{"id":1959,"date":"2017-06-26T20:02:34","date_gmt":"2017-06-27T00:02:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/000af36.netsolhost.com\/wordpress1\/?p=1959"},"modified":"2017-06-26T21:26:03","modified_gmt":"2017-06-27T01:26:03","slug":"be-nice-to-kristen-its-all-she-asks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/2017\/06\/26\/be-nice-to-kristen-its-all-she-asks\/","title":{"rendered":"Be nice to Kristen. It’s all she asks."},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve got to unsubscribe from the Tampa Bay Times. <\/em>It\u2019s a good paper, but the problem is Karla reads it cover to cover. It\u2019s fine that she keeps up on the news. That\u2019s one of the reason I fell in love with her. As my father once said, somewhat amazed but not surprisingly given his chauvinism, \u201cShe knows things.\u201d<\/p>\n

But she reads everything, including all the announcements of upcoming events. And because she\u2019s now retired and looking for something to do, she wants to go to all of them.<\/p>\n

So Pride Week, we went. Actually, I was able to beg off a party and then the parade, but she wanted to go to the festival on Sunday. She said it was billed as an art show. It was a festival, all right, with plenty of edibles, though nothing you would call a cuisine. The art, alas, was trinkets and trash. But we got out on our bikes and strode through the sauna that was a Florida summer afternoon.<\/p>\n

The one event I dreaded, however, was the Friday night screening of \u201cLady Valor, the Kristen Beck Story.\u201d<\/a> Beck is an ex-Navy Seal transgender. I was not looking forward to the movie, much less the reception with Beck beforehand. I successfully dawdled before we left, retrieving my glasses and then my wallet and then something that would get me through the evening. Once we got there, I found a reason to go back out to the car, so that by the time I set foot in FreeFall Theatre, the movie was about to begin.<\/p>\n

I found sympathy with Beck\u2019s mother who told her, \u201cWhy can\u2019t you be sort of normal, like just being gay?\u201d I know I\u2019m not alone in this. There are plenty of guys who find transgenders just a little far a reach. Our youngest daughter is gay, so I\u2019ve gotten passed that a long time ago. And my liberal politics help a lot. Intellectually, at least, I\u2019m cool with transgenders.<\/p>\n

But not really. It\u2019s like dining formally and not knowing which fork to use. I\u2019m just not comfortable. There\u2019s potential for a hell of a lot of faux pas\u2019s. And Beck\u2019s appearance was not what I expected. She didn\u2019t look feminine. Rather, she looked and sounded like a guy in drag\u2014and not very convincing at it.<\/p>\n

The movie was pretty good at first, though like many documentaries, a little too long. (Hell, most movies are too long for me!) Yet, I couldn\u2019t help feeling sympathy for her. She apparently (because the documentary was a bit unclear of some key points) came out while working at the Pentagon. Safe to say, that\u2019s a tough audience for a debut. She recognizes that she made some mistakes by not helping people come to grips with her journey. She suffered mightily as she not so much peeled off the layers from Chris to Kristen but ripped the scab off.<\/p>\n

With two kids from her previous marriage cut off from her, her mother not accepting her, and the continuous hate mail, often from ex-Seals or military gung-ho types, she was alone and lonely.<\/p>\n

But there were a few who stuck by her. Ex-Seals. Beck worked with a couple of them in various consulting assignments. She can still rip the bullseye out of a target. She is a woman. She is tough. And the ex-Seals still were there for her. Certainly not all. But how many good friends do you need?<\/p>\n

She spoke to the audience after the movie. She is not particularly eloquent or concise, but she drove home a point: She would like everyone to accept her and understand what she\u2019s going through, but she\u2019s OK with folks just being nice to her.<\/p>\n

As I listened to her speak, I began to think, hell, I can be nice to her. That in fact is pretty easy. She is a bit spiritual and new age, what we called in my generation a hippie: Peace and Love!<\/p>\n

Yes, I could be nice to her. There was nothing not to like about her. If the Seals could do it, I could. After all, it\u2019s about the only thing the Seals do that I can, too.<\/p>\n

We left before we had a chance to talk to her one on one afterwards. I was OK with that.<\/p>\n

At the festival on Sunday, I met another transgender, someone Karla had hung out with at the parade. We talked briefly. I tried not to stare at her head, which was half shaved and with hair on the other side down to her shoulder. I barely said more than, \u201cNice to meet you.\u201d But I made it through without thinking, I don\u2019t understand this. I was nice to her.<\/p>\n

That is a step forward for me, and enough for now, thanks to Kristen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve got to unsubscribe from the Tampa Bay Times. It\u2019s a good paper, but the problem is Karla reads it cover to cover. It\u2019s fine that she keeps up on the news. That\u2019s one of the reason I fell in love with her. As my father once said, somewhat amazed but not surprisingly given his… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[225,224],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1959"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1959"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1959\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1967,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1959\/revisions\/1967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}