I was recently lured to another social networking site, and discovered a community for my high school graduating class. Skimming the profiles of the members, I am flabbergasted by the number of them that are still in the exact same city, and the number that self-identify as deeply conservative Christians. It has served as a vivid reminder of just how much of a freak I was by the standards of that time and place.<\/p>\n
One member of the community (hence, one of my former school mates) friended me and said, “I see you managed to escape!” Umm, well yeah. It’s not like I had to carefully time the guards’ patrol and sneak out between the sweeping searchlights. I didn’t have to tunnel under a barbed wire fence. There are maps that show all the major routes, you know. Maybe I should send her one. \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n
I can still remember the dissonance I experienced when I went from being considered a total mutant by the standards of the bible belt, to being considered almost boringly vanilla in my new home on the west coast. It was disconcerting at first, and then I learned to really appreciate it. Liberating.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I was recently lured to another social networking site, and discovered a community for my high school graduating class. Skimming the profiles of the members, I am flabbergasted by the… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[35,36],"class_list":["post-681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-memories","tag-memphis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/laughingmonkey.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/laughingmonkey.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/laughingmonkey.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/laughingmonkey.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/laughingmonkey.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=681"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/laughingmonkey.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/laughingmonkey.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/laughingmonkey.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/laughingmonkey.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}