out of context

In a college creative nonfiction class I wrote about the banalities of being pregnant. I wrote at lengths about the bathrooms in all of the buildings. I remarked on which ones always seemed to be out of soap, which were the most crowded, which ones had the green, water-saving flush handles.

In a writing workshop the professor leads the discussion. "What is meant by this detail," he asks. "What is the author saying about the green, waters-saving flush handles?"

I remember the class staying silent. Me thinking, nothing. I meant nothing about the green, water-saving flush handles.

The silence is broken because it will not be broken until someone breaks it, and someone, I don't remember who, says "It's because she had to go to the bathroom a lot?"

I don't remember the ensuing conversation on my bathroom habits, instead I thought of the intention of words, writing, speaking, sharing. How great it is, how terrifying to let go a part of you, let it float around. What it is like to have your words in someone else's mouth. To hear them with a different accent, different emphasis.

(A word is dead//when it is said//some say//I say//it just begins to live that day.)

But to be misunderstood, to be taken out of context, is this not the worst thing you can do to a person? To judge someone, unfairly, to take a piece of them and construct a picture based only on that? The greatest injustice! To take someone's skin color or religious affiliation or political party (or words said in the dark, words in response to a gaze) and to judge them based solely on that?

Oddly enough I find myself echoing the sentiments of this New Yorker piece, about the lawyer Judy Clarke, who has most recently defended the Boston Marathon bomber, and generally defends, to borrow from the title "the worst of the worst." What she does is to ask the jury not to judge the defendant on their worst moment, but to consider them as a whole.

Consider not, only, the green, water-saving flush handles, but the whole toilet, if you will.

It turns out I meant a lot about the green, water-saving flush handles. I was trying to say, look at the small ridiculous details of life. Look how much we miss, going through the motions. Look how many things are right in front of us.

Y'all. I have so many goddamn stories about bathrooms. Because when you're pregnant you have to pee all the time and literally someone asked me what I missed most about not being pregnant and I said being able to expel everything from your bladder at one time. LITERALLY. Also this is still the most satisfying feeling in the world, it's up there with an orgasm. Be pregnant, and you will never take peeing for granted ever again.

And also the green, water-saving, goddamn motherfucking flush handles. (In Greenlaw and Peabody but not yet in Saunders.)

In my preliminary examination I was told to be more precise in my language, and I get that now. And again. Be intentional with your words, I learned in writing, because they are they one thing you give to the reader. (Or the audience. Or the boy, in the dark.) And those words, those are all you can give, and it is all you can do to hope that they live on without you.

It is unfair it is unfair it is UNFAIR, I used to scream at the world. For my decisions, for my life, it is unfair. And then something flipped in me, a switch, a green, water-saving flush handle if you will, and I started to live my life with intention. With precision.

Now I am taken less out of context. Less is taken from me without my consent. But some things still are. And to them I whisper, this is unfair. And I gather my words in my mouth, and turn and walk away.