| Just ‘Cause I’m Pregnant Doesn’t Mean I Won’t Punch You in the Face |
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Jack from Missouri (the “Show Me” State) … A Teacher’s Journal. Once in a very great while, if you are lucky enough, you might hear a phrase, a sentence, a fragment of conversation, that perfectly captures the cultural “zeitgeist.” Last week I was walking down a crowded high school hallway when my moment came. Two girls were talking and I happened to overhear a snippet of what they were saying: “Just ‘cause I’m pregnant doesn’t mean I won’t punch her in the face.”  They were fairly typical girls—one was pregnant and the other was also about fifteen. I don’t know at whom the pregnant girl was directing her ire. In my experience as a high school teacher, I know that similar outbursts can arise from almost any trigger. The word “’ho” flung carelessly into the wind. A pencil lost from a notebook and presumed viciously stolen. Whatever the reason, some bitch is going to pay. I was struck by the poetry, the exquisite pathos, of the sentiment. Yes, I am pregnant, she averred, and yet I will punch you in the face in spite of the risks to my unborn child. I will punch you in the face not because I am pregnant—not even in spite of my pregnancy—but solely because my duty to myself as a human being demands that a bitch be punched in the face. Who knows? Perhaps one day that brave statement may inspire a whole generation of girls to embrace a new understanding of their womanhood, their humanity, in this our modern era. Indeed, as we search for those expressions that come to symbolize the hopes, aspirations, and dreams of a particular age, perhaps this pithy phrase—uttered so innocently, so unselfconsciously—may one day be regarded as the signpost that directed our eyes to our cultural future. My name is Jack, and I’m a teacher in a small town in Missouri—the “Show Me” state…. Donald Gallinger is author of the novel The Master Planets Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites               
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