Wednesday, November 25, 2009

A 30 yr old American Woman's List


- I am thankful that I have a home, and in that home I have a computer, and for that computer I can easily buy as much access to the Internet that I want without having it rationed or go out all the time, enabling me to instantly search for things like “actual entrances to hell” and “cranberry chutney”, or read about new designer drugs in the UK, or waste my time refreshing Mystery Google.

- I am thankful that the police do not beat down my door, and drag me off to a dirty prison in a cave, where they tear off my fingernails and toenails because I wanted to take a class in political science or religious history, and that I am daily concerned with how my hair looks because I don’t have to walk around with it covered, or shaved because my husband died.

- I am thankful for the fact that if I get raped, I know where to go and what to do, and I know it’s not my fault, and I’m not going to hell.

- I am very thankful that I know I’m not going to hell. Or anywhere else. I am thankful for the opportunity to know that.

- I am thankful for having a job that does not require me to get dirty or slaughter things or get a terrible lung disease or have awful back problems or stand up all day.

- I am thankful that my biggest concern with food is the inconvenience of going to the grocery store the day before Thanksgiving just to buy garlic, which I forgot when I went to the grocery store Monday, because I can go to the grocery store whenever I want.

- I am thankful that as a single unmarried girl, I can own a large, expensive, complicated machine that is entirely mine and takes me wherever I want to go when I want to.

- I am also thankful that I can rent my own place.

- I am thankful for having the skills and means to meet lots of different kinds of people, whomever I feel like meeting, and collecting a large and varied group of friends who make all different kinds of salaries, and come from different places around the country, and know all sorts of different things.

- I am thankful for having thumbs, and not being a cat or a cow or a bug.

- I am thankful for having an entire closet of clothes, even if I wear the same 5 shirts every week.

- I am thankful for not being shunned by the community because I don’t go to church and sometimes show cleavage.

- I am thankful for not having children, and for cheap accessible birth control.

- I am thankful for having no diseases or major health problems. I am thankful for having health insurance, free clinics, county hospitals, free flu vaccinations, student loans, unemployment services, and welfare.

- I am thankful my country owns most of the guns, even if I don’t always agree with how they use them.

- I am thankful I live in a temperate zone, with seemingly endless fresh water within walking distance, fertile land, and very few monsoons/hurricanes/tornadoes/hail storms/ blizzards/man eating animals.
- I am thankful for being aware of how much I don't know, so I can be continuously interested in stuff.

- I am thankful for being safe, independent, alive, and educated.

- I am thankful my family members are not Republicans, or Evangelicals, mean, or stupid. I would still love them. But it’s nice that I don’t have to try too hard.

- Oh, and cats.

- And cable.

2 comments:

Who wants to fuck the Editors?