René Brooks, who runs the amazing website Black Girl, Lost Keys which has given me so many amazing insights about ADHD that I’ve never seen anywhere else, posted this on twitter yesterday and oh boy people are mad:
It’s true though, and respectful. Being places on time is not something I can do well. If all of our hang outs hinge on precision timing, that is a recipe for us both to be upset. I don’t think it’s right for you to have to wait around for me if it’s gonna upset you, so we should make other plans. There are actually lots of ways to hang out that don’t require a super specific starting time. And if timeliness is overall very important to you regardless of plans, we may not be very compatible people. It’s not a dig, it’s just how relationships work.
If your idea of a good hangout is a football game over anything else, we may not be very compatible people. If you like to hang out in long stretches of companionable silence, we may not be very compatible people. If you feel like being on time is the biggest indicator of someone’s respect for you and that lateness is a choice…we may not be very compatible people.
People are in her mentions so angry and determined to see this in the worst light possible, when actually what she is saying is deeply respectful. You have the right to not be kept waiting if that bothers you. Draw the boundaries you need to feel respected and comfortable. But what you don’t have is the ability to just wave a wand and make your friends and loved ones magically different people. And so many people in the comments are just very, very insistent that lateness is an active choice people make that they could just decide not to be late anymore one day if only they cared enough, and that is what is aggravating.
Like so many other things, the ability to be punctual is a privilege frequently framed as moral superiority.
Being disabled or reliant on public transport due to income is not a moral failure. If someone you know is persistently late try talking to them about why and what you can do to help.
Hint: the answer will usually be ‘be flexible about punctuality’.
Wen Ning, Wei Wuxian, Lan Wangji, and Lan Xichen sit around a table swapping stories about a-Yuan’s childhood, with particular emphasis on the cute or embarrassing things he used to say.
Lan Sizhui, as the youngest person present at this family dinner turned impromptu history lesson, obediently pours tea for everyone while wishing the ground would open up and swallow him.
(Secretly though, he loves it. Every fond shoulder touch or teasing laugh from his Xian-gege, every soft glance from his Fuqin, the gentleness of his Bobo’s wry smile, Wen-shushu’s quiet eagerness.
So much of his family and memory is gone, but he still has this.)
Straight Parents: We just want to decide when our kids are introduced to the idea of relationships!
Also Straight Parents: (watch a one year old baby boy playing with blocks with a one year old baby girl) HAHAHA he is already such a ladykiller
I am used to people assuming my long haired dmab child is a girl, that is what 99% of people think, no matter what Baby is wearing. Despite the fact that I use gender neutral terms for Baby on tumblr, in real life I do not even attempt to raise them gender neutrally because I don’t trust society. However, I also do not rigidly enforce their gender. most people refer to them as a girl when they meet them, and typically I do not bother to “correct” them because I don’t care. The only time I “correct” them is when it gets weird or the interaction is prolonged.
One time I was at the store when another dmab child started following mine around. The family of that kid thought it was the cutest thing they had ever seen. They laughed, “look, he’s following that little girl around!” I smiled politely and kept shopping
They didn’t go away, however. They kept following us. My child didn’t really understand what was going on, and they kept saying things like, “look, he has a crush on the little girl!” I don’t know how long this went on, but it got really weird. Finally, I turned and said, “actually, he’s a boy.”
They disappeared. Not another word was spoken. I don’t think they even acknowledged what I said beyond a shocked “oh”. Suddenly, it wasn’t cute. Suddenly, it wasn’t Innocent. Suddenly, their boy didn’t have a crush on my boy, like they had insisted before.
I see many posts about how it’s okay to have a bad day or a bad week or a bad month, and I want to add that it is also okay to have a bad year or several bad years. It’s okay if it takes you longer than a day or a week to work through your problems - and even if you’ve been struggling for years, that doesn’t mean your entire life is doomed. Sometimes it takes a year, or two years, or five years or more to get better and that is okay. It’s okay if your recovery takes time. It doesn’t mean you’re failing.
Anyway if you’re from the US and you ever wanted to know what tumblr feels like from a non-USAmerican perspective (please note that the rest of the world is not a monolith either and none of these apply without exception):
Everybody’s talking about brands and stores you’ve never seen in real life. You generally assume they exist, but they might as well be one giant prank the rest of the internet is in on.
You find a post that just sounds wrong. It makes no sense. It’s like OP lives in a weird alternate reality. 9/10 times, it’s just some USAmerican Thing.
You’re still not entirely sure how much an inch is. Or a foot. Or even how many of the former there are in the latter. You maybe know your height in feet and inches.
You have no idea how much a pound is. You’d also like to know how the fuck pound shortens to lbs.
What the fuck is “military time”
Somebody talks about some legal process or something similar. They don’t mention which country’s legal system this pertains to. You know anyway.
People talk about politics. None of it pertains to you. Many posts contain guilt tripping. “How can you not care about this?? Why won’t you reblog this?? People need to know this about x candidate for y position!” You’re busy trying to stay on top of the political landscape in your own country.
You pick up some random slang from the internet. Monkey see monkey do. You’re called racist. You didn’t know it was AAVE. You learnt it from black letters on white background, not from the mouths of people whose faces you could see. How would you have known? You try to unlearn it.
People tell you that you must publicly denounce Chick-fil-A or you’re homophobic. You don’t even know what a Chick-fil-A is.
People say you don’t know LGBTQ+ history. What they mean is you don’t know USAmerican LGBTQ+ history. Nobody cares about your country’s history.
You’re “called out” on using an “offensive” term. It’s (a direct translation of) a completely harmless word where you live.
People expect you to have an idea of how far apart 2 USAmerican states are. You barely know geography past your country’s immediate neighbors.
You randomly switch between British and American spellings. Nothing’s real and there are no rules.
People talk about multiple hour car rides and you get twitchy just thinking about it. You suddenly understand why USAmerican cars are so big.
Somebody talks about school shooting drills. You only ever had fire alarm drills.
You see a cool statistic. The study’s only about the US. It’s unfortunately of no use to you.
People misuse/misspell words and names from your native language. It’s tiring.
(You feel sorry for the French. Nobody should be allowed to mangle the word déjà vu like that.)
You’re still not over the fact that USAmerican school children are supposed to say that pledge thing every morning. You’re never getting over that.
You still don’t know why the men are fresh or what the fuck a sophomore is.
Who the fuck pays up first and then fills up gas??? That’s made up, right??
Everybody has a weird obsession with some comfort food you’d never even heard of before you signed up here.
Fellow non-USAmericans, please add anything else you can think of.
Everyone’s obsessed with this bill guy and keeps chanting his name
Moreover people are getting excited about all these remakes of old cartoons you’ve never heard of much less seen
You still don’t get how people can eat that stuff for breakfast
And you still don’t know how people can afford all that takeout when usually that means doubling the price
You have no idea how to calculate a tip. When are you supposed to tip, anyway?
You know more about the general layout of a typical USAmerican high school than the one you went to
It wasn’t that long ago that you realised that ‘cheer leading’ isn’t the leader of the cheering group, but the actual term for the sport itself
You see a cool survey. It’s USA only.
You see a cool competition or raffle. It’s USA only.
You see a cool movie/series that’s supposed to be on Netflix. It’s USA only.
You see a cool movie/series. It’s on Hulu/HBO/Prime.
You see a cool
movie/series. It won’t be released on a platform you have access to, or in your country, for another 6 months.
People will guilt you for not “supporting the writer” of said movie or show.
A friend links you a song on YouTube/Spotify. It’s not available in your country (unless you’re using a VPN).
Your own Netflix has a 1/10 of the content and most of it is shitty old documentaries you have no interest in. You’ve seen it all already.
People keep talking about 1 day shipping??
And then they complain if it takes a few days to arrive? Honey, I order my Halloween stuff in August out of necessity.
Especially because local stores don’t sell Halloween things.
And even then it’s like, $70 in shipping
And Halloween is only something you celebrate in your own home. You’ve never carved a pumpkin, never gone trick-or-treating. You think hayriding is when you slide down a hill on a bale of hay and try not to fall off.
You’ve been shamed by Uncle Roger who says you should get a rice cooker but they’re nearly $100
You ask your friends what you should have for dinner and they hit you with a dozen really good ideas, all of which either include an ingredient you don’t have access to, or a crock pot.
You’d have a lot more fandom related stuff like shirts and figures and posters, if they were actually physically sold anywhere near you and you didn’t have to order it online and pay $70 in shipping and wait a month and a half for it to (maybe) arrive and suddenly you’re not a ‘real fan’.
You can name more USAmerican states than municipalities/counties/provinces in your own country because USAmericans always tell you which state they’re from rather than just the country itself, even in international chats.
You know the difference between cloths/clothes, breath/breathe and there/their/they’re and you can’t fathom how it’s possible to so consistently make those errors in one’s native tongue
You keep seeing all those neat promotional stuff and exclusives like those plastic cups you get at the movies with your favourite comic book character on them and you know that you’ll never see one with your own eyes
ARE YOU TELLING ME YOU CAN BUY IRON MAN PASTA?? Like, pasta, but in the shape of arc reactors and Iron Man helmets???
Coffee Shop AUs are one of your fave fic tropes even though you’ve never been to one
You shudder at the idea of washing your underwear in a public washing machine.
While you’re having a heatstroke you’re being told that that’s not hot? THIS IS HOT. IT’S SO HOT THE STREETS ARE MELTING. WE LIVE IN A LITERAL DESERT.
You’re then told how hot it is in the literal desert over in the USA and you have no idea how hot it is but you assume it’s a lot because it has three digits.
You make a post about an issue in your own country without mentioning where it is.
You get multiple annoyed/confused comments from Americans, assuming that you were writing about the USA and complaining that you’ve misrepresented it.
Next time you make a post about a your-country specific issue, you make sure to mention the country, give some basic cultural context and possibly even include explanations in brackets for certain concepts.
You get multiple annoyed/confused comments from Americans, assuming that you were writing about the USA and complaining that you’ve misrepresented it.