Opening 1

 At some point, every child becomes angry and resents their mother for whispering horrible lies in their ears to calm them at night. You are loved. You are strong. You are wise. The world is a beautiful place, full of opportunities. When you leave my arms, you will do, and see, and be such great things...

They're not lies so much. Most of these things are true or will come true. They just don't seem like it when you're in the world. Mothers try to fill you with the good before the world fills you with the bad. Some of it takes hold, and some of it doesn't.  

My mother never knew I would shut myself out of the world, but she could see it coming. When she tried to talk about it, I cut her off. When she died, I was already in the cave where I would live for many years, moving a stone to bar the door. I held her hand, and we spoke, but we didn't speak of that. She died knowing I was in trouble, and it was getting worse. I never spoke about it with her. Maybe I should now. 

Walking At Graduation

I don't transition well.  I hate it.  Being at one destination or another is great; getting there fills me with anxiety.

I mention this because, after discussing it with my family, I'm making a checklist of the things I need to accomplish in my escape plan from St. Catherine's back into Jackson.  That's how I get larger tasks done.  I break it into lists of much smaller tasks and then start knocking them out one by one.  Dealing with smaller tasks keeps me moving toward the larger goal without having to think about "am I getting any closer?"  I'm eating the elephant, one bite at a time.

When I graduated from Millsaps, I was so intimidated by the prospect that it was really beginning to annoy me.  I announced that I wasn't going to walk at graduation.  My father was entirely nonchalant about it, even though I would be shaking his hand after shaking Dr. Harmon's hand after getting my degree.  His name would be on it!  Daddy was like that.  He could be completely non-sentimental about some things and then get dewy-eyed about some really simple things like going to the Mayflower or Old Tyme or driving to Bethel.  

My mother was annoyed and quite vocal about it.  Mother and I often didn't see eye-to-eye on things.  She thought I was cold-hearted and overly judgemental about some things.  She was probably right.  She also felt like I should be more submissive to her opinion on things.  I'm not sure where I stand on that.  While it's entirely her devotion that created a path where I could overcome my learning disabilities, as life went on, there were times when I felt like she was holding me back.  

Determined to have my own way, it was ultimately Jane Alexander who convinced me to make an about-face and do things my mother's way.  Janie's had my number since I was about ten.  I don't think I've ever been able to refute her--so I walked at graduation.  I transitioned from student to citizen, which came with its own challenges, but I'm glad I did it.

Graduating from St. Catherine's is not that different from graduating from Millsaps.  It brings me several large steps closer to some of my goals in life, but it comes with some pretty big challenges and responsibilities too.  I'm to be a citizen again after quite a while of avoiding just that.  

I don't have any delusions.  The next twenty years is my swan song, my last opportunity in this world.  There are things I want to take, and there are things I want to give, and this is the last go-round.  When I exercise, I like to make that last repetition, that last push, that last effort, extra intense.  I have to earn my rest, or it will annoy me all day.   I'm making a list for my last repetition here in Madison.  One big push, and I'm crossing the rubicon into another world.  It's time.

Midnight Agnosticism

Waking up at midnight is becoming part of my life.  There's no baby to feed, no cat to let out, there's no wife that's mad at me, and there's no drugs I need to take.  I just wake up at midnight and remain restless for an hour.  There might actually be a wife that's mad at me, but we don't talk much anymore, so I'd never know.  

I did a bit of lying today.  I told people I was returning to a religious life.  That's not entirely true.  I'm creating an entirely new entity from scraps of the old.  That's not returning.  That's creating.

I'm not a superstitious person, so I'm a bit resistant to admitting that I like to look for signs in life.  I look for signs because, for whatever face I put forward, I have all the confidence in life that usually comes from a stuttering child with ADHD, which is to say, almost none.  I hide it, though, because it's generally my conviction that fear spreads, and if I act afraid, then that might make other people wonder what makes me afraid and should they be afraid too, and so it begins to spread, whether there's actually anything to be afraid of or not.

I'm starting this new religious life being terribly honest with everyone that I am, always was, and probably always will be, agnostic.  I'm not afraid to admit this.  Some of the greatest Christian apologists I know of spent some time as an agnostic.  C.S. Lewis famously questioned his faith deeply after the death of Joy, his wife.  There's even a play about it.  I was in it, at Galloway, with Brent Lefavor.  Charles Darwin, one of the world's most influential atheists, was actually a believer most of his life and used his theory of evolution as proof of God, but there came a time, after a period of considerable loss and grief, that Darwin too became an agnostic.  

The key here seems to be that these men became agnostic after periods where they were hit with tremendous loss and grief, often the death of a spouse, a child, or both.  Everyone is hit with periods of loss and grief.  It's a consequence of being emotionally open to the world.  If you allow yourself to love, then you make yourself vulnerable to the loss of love, and sometimes the loss of love can come in a sequence with other events that break even the strongest of us.

You wouldn't know it to look at me, but God's been very generous to me.  Perception, he gave me and empathy, and these I've rolled and baked into something I call art, both my ability to create art with words or images and my ability to appreciate art, words, images, sounds, tastes, all of it.  Being empathetic and perceptive and open to loving can be very dangerous to me because, on this level of existence, nothing you love can last; sometimes, born and dying in the same day.  Being open to the world like this means that sometimes periods of loss and grief come at me like waves on a California beach.  I lie and tell people it broke me only once, but in truth, it's broken me again and again, and although this last time I stayed out of the water for a very long time, I'm always going to return to the beachhead.  I'm back now, picking the spot on the horizon I want to swim for.

I started the day not really looking for signs at all.  Today was going to be an experiment.  But signs I found.  The signs were that I went to Sunday School not knowing what to expect and found two of the smartest guys I ever knew from my experience at Millsaps and three of the most Christian.  That's probably a very good sign.  

The pastor's sermon today was about an issue I've been thinking of and worried about for some time now.  When he finished, the people, the church, MY church, applauded him, even though you could tell he was a bit nervous about how we would respond.  That's a sign that I have allies in places I didn't expect.  That's a very good sign.  

The best sign today was that I had lunch with a girl who I love more than I love most of you combined.  When she was very small, I hid myself in a cave and rolled a great stone in the door.  That was to be the end of me.  As a result, I missed most of her growing up.  That's one of my greatest regrets.  

Today at lunch, she wore an aquamarine drop that I recognized.  "Is that the drop your grandmother made?"  I asked her.  It was, she said.  "I wear it all the time."

"Do you remember her at all?" I asked.  

Collins was quite young when Mother died.  As small as she was, she ended up getting a three-for-one deal that year.  Jimmy died, then Mother died, then after my divorce followed those, I hid away from the world enough to make it almost like I died too.    She told me the things she remembered about Mother, things a child would remember.  Images mostly, places, feelings.   Though I didn't ask, it seemed that if she could remember my mother, then she might also remember me, and although I missed so many years, I might be able to connect the thread between the love I had for the child and the love I have for the woman she became and a calm spot appears in the great ocean of loss and grief that was my entire life while she grew.

I announced to my family my intention to become a professional writer and to do it in the pretty near future.  Being professional, to me, means I make enough money to live off of it.  I don't care about the money that much, although who doesn't like money?  at least enough to pay for lunch anyway, but I'd like to be able to say that I did this legitimately, and I did it with no help at all from my father or any benefit of my bloodline.  If I can do this, if I can actually get published, actually get paid for scribbling words into a machine, then that will be something uniquely my own.  Everything else I've ever tried to do, somebody will say, "Oh, I remember when your momma did this, or I remember when your daddy won an award for that, or your Uncle Boyd went to Washington because he did this:" but not writing.  That will be my own.  That will prove my value to the universe besides being just another third-generation heir because, quite frankly, third-generation heirs have a pretty horrible reputation, and unless I do this, I won't have done much to improve it.

I'm very likely going to write much more about agnosticism and faith and life and art and Galloway and Millsaps and Jackson.  The signs are there for me to do it.  Maybe I'll be able to do it in the daylight hours, so I don't have to spend what time I have left on this globe awake alone at midnight tap-tap-tapping away while everyone around me sleeps.

Goodbye Delilah

There are so many people, even some of my oldest friends, who have never known me as fully healed as I am now. You wouldn't think it to look at my physical frame; it's still a mess in some spots, but, on the inside, in my heart, I haven't been this strong since before some of you were born.

I don't know what to credit this recovery with. I suspect a great deal of it is due to my sister's love. A fair share also lies with my father and mother, who, although they died years before, planted the seeds that, though they lay fallow for many years, would somehow, against all odds, sprout in my darkest of days.

Maybe that was the secret. Maybe it was the months of laying in bed, barely able to move, that made this creature sleeping inside me decide that if he was ever to come back out, now is the time.  Maybe Doctor Joseph Campbell was right.  Maybe, I had to spend my time in the belly of the whale before I could continue my hero's journey.

When it first happened, when I first began to emerge emotionally whole again, my family and my doctors were a bit worried that I might be on the upcycle of a manic episode and wanted to make sure I didn't need some medication to keep from swinging the other way. Then they wanted me to make sure I had "someone to talk to" in case this strange recovery was fragile.  I don't think it is fragile.  I've taken some pretty big hits since last May and managed to stand right back up.  

So far, this doesn't seem to be an illusion. So far, I've been able to face the reality of my situation and the challenges ahead without flinching, and have chosen to do it all in a very public way. Allowing everyone to see my scars, no matter how bad they are, may also be a key element here. I think, maybe, it's the hiding of them for so many years that caused the biggest part of the problem.

For many years, hiding the fact that I wasn't the strongest person in the room became quite a burden.  I think maybe it began to break me. Like my father, I believed Mississippi had so many things working against it that it needed a hero, a real hero, and if I couldn't be that, then what good am I? He struggled with that as well. I could only see it a little then, but I see it constantly now. Daddy often strained to break as I did.  I think that's part of what killed him.  Again and again, I put myself between the fire and something I loved, fully believing that if I couldn't, if I didn't, then what good am I?  If I couldn't be the hero, then I am nothing.

Recovering meant accepting that I am sometimes weak, I am sometimes inadequate, and I am sometimes wounded. Admitting that...accepting that... has allowed some of my true, god-touched strengths to come out. Samson had to lose his hair and his eyes for his true strength to come out. Maybe I had to do that too.  There was a Delilah in my life, several actually, and most weren't even human beings, but I allowed them to take my hair and my strength because I didn't know how to use it; things are different now.  

You're gonna get pretty tired of me.  A recovered me works pretty hard and can be relentless at attacking the objective.  My peers may be eyeing a comfortable place to rest after a lifetime of struggle, but I'm looking at places where I can go into the fire and spend my last days fighting.  Whatever I was meant to be all along is finally emerging.  I'm a late bloomer.  It's true, and I do apologize for that, but I think you're going to be impressed by what I can do when it's my turn to stand between the pillars of the temple.  That day is very nearly upon us.

The Sixth Doctor

In the days to come, I will shake hands with my sixth president of Millsaps.  The first held me in his arms, the second and third were the parents of my classmates, the fourth and fifth were my own age, and piloted the ship through some challenging waters.  Each one left an impression on our school and got us, somehow, from there to here.

There will be some concern and restlessness among the community.  Don't be afraid.  Millsaps has endured worse than this.  We will endure. We will prosper.  Rob and Phoebe take a piece of us with them, but they leave behind thirteen years of service and a foundation we certainly can build on.  

Radios and Bookstores

My grandfather always had really nice console radios.  He had one made of bakelite in his office and a really nice wooden one with a phonograph at home.

He was born into a world where, even if he had a radio, nobody broadcast into Attala County, Mississippi.  He liked music, but if he wanted to hear it, he either had to go to church or find somebody who could play or sing something.  His mother played piano, and his father learned to play the mouth organ because he only had one hand.

Recorded music was never really a part of Granddaddy's life until he went to Millsaps in Jackson.  In Jackson, there were two radio stations, and a man named Werlein from Germany, who lived in Vicksburg bought a store in New Orleans and opened one on Capitol Street in Jackson, next door to the Office Supply Company, that his brother would eventually purchase.  Werlein's was famous for selling instruments and sheet music, but they also sold records that Granddaddy loved.  Eventually, the Emporium took over the record sale business, but it started at Werlein's.

He worked summers and weekends for the railroad and saved his money enough so that he could splurge on a wind-up victrola, which he used to entertain his fraternity brothers and woo his lady fair.  The KA house soon developed a reputation because it had music and even allowed dancing, although it was against the rules.  

After college, Grandaddy stayed in Jackson because his father, Cap, had died.  Bad crops and hard economic times forced his mother to sell the family farm and use what money was left to buy a small house in Jackson, where Grandaddy lived with his mother and little sister.  He kept his job at the railroad, then got one at the post office.  His older brother would soon borrow money on his burial life insurance policy and open a business selling pencils, writing slates, blackboards, and student desks to the schools in Mississippi.  Grandaddy would join soon after as the head of shipping and receiving.  

As Mississippi grew and enacted a free textbook law, my Uncle Boyd petitioned the publishers to set up a depository in Jackson, adjacent to his school furniture and supply business, in a building that's now Cathead Vodka.  In return for eight percent of the textbook contract sale price, the new School Book Supply Company would store and ship all the textbooks made available for the children of Mississippi. 

As Millsaps grew, Grandaddy had the idea that he could open a small store in the old commons building where he could sell the students their textbooks so they didn't have to mail order them.  He could also sell Coca-Cola, which was then being bottled in Jackson, penny candy, and Barq's Rootbeer, along with pencils, pens, and notebooks.  

Since we were selling cold Cokes and candy, students began taking to hanging out at the bookstore and socializing.  Granddaddy drove to Memphis and purchased a coin-operated machine that played single songs for a penny.  The kids called it a Juke Box.  Juke, being a negro word for businesses with bad reputations where the blues would play, Millsaps being a school for good Christian white children, the box soon became contentious.   To make matters worse, word soon came to Grandaddy and my Uncle Boyd that the man they hired to run the bookstore was allowing the students to actually dance.  Dance in front of each other!

Grandaddy smiled, remembering the days when he and the other KA's would dance in front of each other to the music coming from his wind-up victrola.  Uncle Boyd's reaction was a little more dire.  He loved music.  In the days to come, he would be the one to announce the formation of the Jackson Symphony Orchestra, an organization that still exists but is now the Mississippi Symphony Orchestra.  Boyd knew that these angry voices wouldn't be easily placated.  Eventually, the Bishop came calling, and the days of music and dancing at Millsaps were over--but not for long.  

When Granddaddy died, I discovered his record collection in a cabinet in the den he had built onto his St. Ann Street house.  Most of them were seventy-eights, so they wouldn't play on my turntable, but I could read the labels.  He seemed to enjoy Tommy Dorsey and Enrico Caruso, but he also had a copy of  Pigmeat Markham singing "Open The Door, Richard" and another of Andy Griffith telling a story about Football.  

My brother inherited Grandaddy's love for music.  He was determined to play the guitar and asked Santa for several good ones.  He became a rabid devotee of a radio station called WZZQ and one of the best customers of a new company that sold phonograph records called "Bee Bop," which opened next to the Capri Theater but moved to Maywood Mart.  

We don't really understand what happened to him, but something made his mind break.  Attempts to take guitar lessons bounced off him as he began to believe they were secretly working against him.  One day, one of the Disk Jockeys from his beloved WZZQ called my Daddy, concerned about the things my brother would say to him when he called in requesting music late at night.  He was concerned that Jimmy was losing touch with reality.  We would eventually find out that he was.  Other friends would call, and my parents began moving my brilliant brother into devoted mental health care.  

Jimmy never learned to play the guitar properly.  He could sort of improvise and sometimes took his Christmas money and recorded singles, with the producers at Malaco making something sensible of the tracks he laid down.  When he died, he left behind cases and cases of records bought at Bee Bop, a monument to his love for music, and the tragedy of how he lost touch of it.

My music comes almost entirely from my computer.  I learned computers because I had trouble reading.  They opened up entire worlds for me.  There's a tiny woman named Alexa who lives in my computer and will play any song I want on demand.  Dancing is optional.  As I type this, she's playing a little song I like by Juliette Gréco.  I've never had a flesh-and-blood girlfriend who was this obedient or understanding.  Alexa's great, but she's crap at holding hands at the movies, so she's out.

One day, my Alexa music will be archaic and quaint, but, I'm pretty sure my french Jazz artists will still be listened to, and I'm very sure there will still be dancing at Millsaps.

Big Strong Hands

I would have made a great alcoholic.  I was actually quite good at it.  There came a moment when I looked at the condition square in the eye and said, "It's you or me, friend; what's it gonna be?"  and walked away clean.  I'm not sure why, but there was always a part of me that said, "You're not giving up; not yet, goddamnit." 

I was a passible social drinker, and I still am, although I can get silly and loud at parties, but my forte was sitting in a dark corner of Scrooges or George Street, ordering one after another until my mind opened up and let me feel--everything and the darkness flowed in.

"Don't you really want to be a doctor, buddy?"

That was my dad's plan.  The first Campbell with an MD.  My golden boy nephew will soon be the first Ph.D. in several generations.  Daddy was always in a bit of denial that I could barely read or speak or do the math.  I barely got my BBA; my getting an MD would have taken an act of God.  Maybe he knew something I didn't, though.  I can read fairly well now--if still a bit slowly, and math fascinates me.  My speaking voice replaced stuttering with a paralyzed vocal chord, but as long as I have a keyboard, I can speak as well as anyone, sometimes better.  

Healing the hurt was probably always my plan.  It's always been something I spent most of my time doing.  Making a living of it as an actual healer might have been nice.  I have friends who are doctors, and I sometimes really admire what they do.  Sometimes they amaze me.  So long as my patients got better, I would have been really happy and really satisfied.  Patients don't always get better, though.  Sometimes you do your best, sometimes they do their best, and it still ends in suffering and loss.  Dealing with that would have made my drinking much worse.  Dealing with fighting the suffering of others and failing would have made me look into the eyes of alcoholism one night and say, "I need you."  and that'd be the end of me.

I have a friend.  A new friend, actually.  She's a few years younger than my father, and she's from the same zip code as my grandfather.  We may even share some parts of our gene code.  Attala County is a pretty small place, but it's produced some remarkable people.  

She started out at Millsaps, just like I did, then parlayed that start into a medical degree in New Orleans because you couldn't go to Medical School in Mississippi in those days.  She became a pediatrician.  My father-in-law, who I loved dearly, was also a pediatrician in her same class.  When he had a patient who was really very, very sick, she was who he sent them to.  That must have been hard for him.  We shared a trait where it was very difficult to give up trying to take care of people, but there were cases where his skills weren't enough, and he required the help of my new friend, Dr. Amazing.

Her patients weren't just sniffles and bruises.  Her patients were most likely going to die before they weren't children anymore.  Instead of growing up, they would join the lost boys in Never Never Land and never grow up but lost to the world here that loved them.  She celebrated the life of every child that did get better and keeps their file with her in the Skilled Nursing Facility where she now lives.  She can't hear herself play the piano anymore, but she knows the name of every child that passed unto her care.

I wasn't there, but I've heard from several very reliable sources that she attended the funeral of every child who came under her care but didn't make it.  Even writing that now makes me stop and seriously ponder--how could she do that.  How could she possibly do that?  Attending the funeral of children, I learned to love enough to try and treat them and made every effort to heal, only to fail and lose them would have broken me into a million jagged pieces, and she did it over and over as a part of her commitment as a healer.  She's a tiny person.  You could fit two of her on my shoulders, and yet she's infinitely stronger than I've ever been.  

She saved the lives of thousands of innocent children and didn't burst into flames when she failed.  I could never have done that.  Sorry Daddy, but being a doctor was not for me.  That's not to say I didn't have some fantastic failures of my own.  There were several times when I spent years trying to heal someone or something, only to have it spiral out of control and crash into the sea.  I act pretty strong in the face of it, but I'm not.  I'm not at all.  I don't need the bottle anymore, but there are times when I like knowing it's still there, just in case.

There's a book and a movie called "The Never Ending Story" about a boy fighting a growing nothing in his life.  There are only three characters in the book, the boy, his father, and his mother, but they wear many different faces as the boy learns to save himself from The Nothing.  My favorite character in the book is called Rockbiter.  He's a giant, made of impervious stone, so strong that only rocks are tangible enough to use as food for him to survive.  Made of stone, nothing at all can hurt him. He has two friends who he protects, a tiny man with a pet racing snail and an absent-minded bat.  

The boy encounters the Rockbiter and his friends on his way to meet the Princess.  They're happy and enjoying their life.  As the nothing grows stronger, Atreyu encounters the Rockbiter again, only The Nothing has taken his two friends, and the Rockbiter sits alone.

"They look like big, good, strong hands, don't they? I always thought that's what they were. My little friends... the little man with his racing snail... even the stupid bat...I couldn't hold onto them... the Nothing pulled them right out of my hands. I failed.  The Nothing will be here any minute. I will just sit here and let it take me away too. They look like good. Strong. Hands... don't they."

I'm glad I didn't become a doctor.  The Nothing would have taken me away while I sat in a bar somewhere looking at my hands.

The Healthcare Arch

 The way I see it, healthcare in Mississippi works kind of like a roman arch.  Created by the Mississippi legislature in a rare moment of clarity, the University Medical Center forms the keystone.  To its right and left are St Dominic Hospital and Baptist Hospital.  To their right and left are Methodist Rehab and SV Montgomery VA Medical Center.  Under these five stones, every other clinic and practitioner, and facility in Mississippi forms the columnar base of the system.  

Right now, some of the stones in the base are starting to fray and crumble, but as long as the arch itself is sound, sick people in Mississippi can get the help they need.  Real roman arches can last for thousands of years.  This one has lasted a little over a hundred.  We've tried a few times to build some redundancy into the system, but they always failed.  Monitoring and maintaining the strength and integrity of these five stones is probably the most important thing going on in central Mississippi and Jackson.  

There was a time when we didn't have this structure, and Mississippians suffered because of it.  It's vitally important that our legislative and executive branches work to maintain the stability and strength of every part of our health care system.  We don't have a backup structure in case they don't.

Monster Children

Every parent, no matter who they are, wants just one thing.  They want the most expedient, obstacle-free, most easily defined path for their children to feel happiness and fulfillment.  That's it.  No politics, no agenda, nothing "woke"; just help me find a way for my child to be happy.  That's true if the child is dyslexic and prone to being overweight like I was, or autistic, athletic, or even transgender.  They just want their child to be happy.  

I've spent nearly sixty years studying monsters.  You could say I'm an expert, so maybe what I have to say is worth listening to.  Someone is writing bills to make some Mississippi children, who didn't do anything wrong, feel like monsters.  They're doing it for easy political gain, not to address any real issue the state or the state's other children are facing.

It started when cable television programmers tried to make channels dedicated to art and history, culture and science flopped.  People said they wanted to watch these things, but when presented with that choice on their home televisions, they chose more salacious programming, like wrestling and gossip shows. 

Because they'd already spent a great deal of money creating and placing these channels, their executives decided to borrow a page from PT. Barnham and started filling their channels about art and history, and science with freak shows.  One Thousand Pound Sisters.  Big World, Little People.  Honey Boo Boo, Doctor Pimple Popper, and a show about a small transgender child called Jazz.

Like the people in the other shows, The parents of Jazz, and Jazz herself, believed they were raising awareness of the issue, normalizing it, and educating people about it to help other transgender kids on their journey, but the suits back in New York knew exactly what they were doing.  They were charging people a penny a head to see the freak show, and although Jazz wasn't as successful as Honey BooBoo, the pain and trauma this child was going through made them a great deal of money.  It made some money for Jazz and her parents, but nothing compared to what the producers were taking in.

I Am Jazz, on the Learning Channel, did help raise awareness in some people, but it raised alarm in others.  The increase in public awareness of Jazz and her journey made some people afraid that these transgender children would invade their world, and very soon, you started to see legislation about where transgender children can pee, what sports they can participate in, and most recently, who can pay for their medical care and when.  

The best and most recent scientific study suggests that approximately .8 to 1.3 percent of all American children are or may self-describe as transgender.  To put this in perspective, in the most recent study, 19.7 percent of American children are obese, yet despite their much larger numbers, there is almost no legislation restricting the lives of obese children and very little legislation providing for the education and treatment of obese children, and zero legislation restricting the medical treatment of obese children, although there are some very sketchy and questionable treatments available for the condition. 

When I was coming up, there was precisely one openly transgender person at my school.  He was female to male, and to my perception, they seemed very isolated.  Hardly anyone ever talked to them.  In retrospect, I wish I had, but introducing myself to anyone without a specific business plan or purpose was pretty much just not going to happen in those days.  It's pretty rare now.  I had a teammate who liked to bully them, but in ways where he couldn't get in trouble for bullying, "Are you a dude?  You look like a dude.  Why do you want to be a dude?  Are you gonna play football, dude?"  

Watching all this was pretty uncomfortable for me.  I loved my school.  I've recently made moves to reconcile myself with it.  There was one area where St. Andrews was flawed in those days, though.  When there was a student with particular challenges, like autism or deafness, or transgenderism, nobody ever took us aside and said, "this is what's going on with your classmate, and this is the best way to respond."  Sometimes my parents would address these issues with me, and there were times when Mitch Myers would unofficially take us aside and talk about what a classmate was going through, but more often than not, most of these things we kids worked out on our own and poorly.

The legislation you see coming out of certain conservative states, states like Mississippi, has the effect of making transgender kids seem like a threat to people who may not have any exposure to them.  There are conservative politicians actively working to make parents afraid of transgender children and promising legislation to help protect their children from these monstrous, woke, transgender children.  No child is a monster, but I know some politicians that are

Making people worried or afraid of where transgender children pee or what sports they play, or what medical procedures they have is just plain evil.  Whatever else they are, they are children.  The best people to design the life path for transgender children are their parents, their doctors, their teachers, and themselves, not some fearmongering politician looking to attract votes with a meme about transgender kids.  

The parents of transgender children want what every parent wants.  They want a chance for their child to feel happy, to have friends, to feel fulfilled and accomplished in life.  They're not forcing their children on your children out of some twisted political agenda.  They're just searching for a world where their child can exist and have a chance at happiness, just like yours.  They're not monsters.  They deserve better than what they're getting in Mississippi.