Appalled for Elliot Page

Ellen Page (above) is now Elliot Page (right)

I recently left a Conservative meme page on Facebook because of a tasteless post about actor Elliot Page. Formerly known as Ellen Page, Elliot is now a transgender man.

The meme shows a picture of Matthew Broderick from his Ferris Bueller days and states that Page looks like Bueller with AIDS. I was disgusted enough to report it as hate speech. The post garnered six reactions. It was a mix of likes and laughs, and one share. No response to my complaint, which tells me the page creators probably also think it’s funny.

Goodbye, I thought as I unfollowed and left.

The same who thought it was funny likely expressed outrage over a more recent post about meme poking fun at the submarine that imploded while going to explore the Titanic.

We try to hard to convince the world that conservatives aren’t hatemongers, and then this nonsense shows up.

For the record, I am mixed on transgenderism. I don’t believe in transitioning children as they should wait until adulthood to mature and make sure it’s not a phase they’ll grow out of. (I can remember wanting to be a superhero when I was a kid, and another time I begged my parents to let me have a shot into my pituitary gland so I’d grow an extra five inches). However, I do believe it’s possible that some are born into the wrong gender. Sometimes what looks like a boy on the outside is a girl in the reproductive organ area, and vice versa.

Transgender women don’t interest me romantically, but this meme on Page makes me pity him. Probably not the reaction the page’s officials expected as their heads are lodged into sand…

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Burning Fred, leaving the past behind

Burning Fred, prior to the pyre. (Photo by Richard Zowie)

Near the end of the 1998 movie Ever After, Princess Danielle confronts her stepmother, the former Baroness Rodmilla de Ghent. Having recently been stripped of her title by Queen Marie of France for having lied to the queen, she is just now Rodmilla.

Remembering the years of cruelty that Rodmilla subjected onto her following her own father’s death, Danielle says this to her stepmother: “I want you to know that I will forget you after this moment, and never think of you again…”

Danielle the lives her life as a French princess, wife of the future king, as Rodmilla and her daughter Marguerite receive a fate worse to them than death: living like lowly servants for the rest of their lives.

I thought of that movie last Tuesday, June 6, as I drove to a secluded place in northwest Fredericksburg for an event called “Burning Fred.” There, people relaxed, talked, danced, kept hydrated as best as they could in the warm, late Texas spring. When it’s this warm in Texas in early June, it’s a sign of a nasty summer ahead. Bands also played, some were local songs and others were covers.

Many approached a wooden, makeshift effigy, placing various things at the effigy’s feet: mementos, slips of paper, blocks of wood. The mementos were from their pasts: failed friendships or relationships, a line of work, a place where they lived, or something else that had been a thorn in their side. One man wrote a phrase down on a block of wood. He declined to say what it was. Too personal for him. One person printed out a decade-old email containing correspondence with their estranged spouse, who would later become their ex-spouse and, finally, their late ex-spouse.

Later that night, Burning Fred ignited. The event’s founder and organizer, Melissa, added things to the effigy days before so that the pyre, instead of shades of pale yellow and orange, would burn far more colorful, adding more colors.

Whether the block or the paper, once the fire consumed them and reduced them to ash, the words written will exist only in their memories.

Or, if you’re like Melissa, they no longer exist at all.

Melissa said she started the event in memory of her husband, who passed away a few years ago. He lost his battle with drug abuse. Some conquer it and emerge clean and sober and find the strength to toss a lifeline to others fighting addiction. Others can’t find the energy to finish the race and succumb to whatever chemical they’ve loved, hated, fought and finally couldn’t fight anymore.

She’s a friendly, warm lady, one of many secrets, experiences, and adventures. Like us, she has a past that includes regret. And at Burning Fred, she decided it was finally time to walk away from specific elements of her past and move onto the next chapter, never to re-read this one.

Her ability to walk away reminds me of what John Travolta once told Reader’s Digest regarding regret: if you regret, do it just enough to learn from your mistake and walk away.

For Melissa and others, along with Danielle in the movie, the next step is to turn the page, explore the next chapters, and leave this chapter behind. Leave the past pages closed, destined to gather a permanent musty smell from disuse.

Richard Zowie also blogs about writing, books, and Christian issues. Post comments here or email them to fromtozowie@gmail.com.