You’re standing by the Civic Center Marta station, waiting to get on a bus for a three hundred mile journey and suddenly someone plants the thought in your mind you might be pregnant. Do you buy the test? Do you take it before or after your trip? What if you don’t want to be pregnant? What if you do?
If you took it before and you didn’t want to be, your journey would be filled with the worry of what do I do now? If you thought you might be, but waited, you’d be worried the entire trip. If you were trying to have a child and you took it and got negative results, you’d be depressed for hours, stuck tightly in a double-decker bus with tons of people you don’t know. If you didn’t take it, but had the desire for procreation, would you be excitedly pondering “Am I, Am I, Am I?” all the way up Interstate 85? And then there’s quite likely the most bizarre scenario of them all: You haven’t had sex in ages, but you take the test just for the hell of it. Turns out you’re pregnant. Is it some sort of divine intervention, a scene from “Rosemary’s Baby” or another remake of “Village of the Damned?”
Who came up with this totally strange notion that selling pregnancy tests at a bus depot was a good idea?
I have to admit I’m happy it’s an issue I’ll never have to face.
There were other things lurking about, however, waiting for me on the Megabus, posed, coiled and ready to strike – like the woman sitting next to me who insisted on having a rather lengthy philosophical debate about celebrating Halloween.
She was of that curious mindset that dressing yourself or your children up in scary costumes (generally about as scary as a 1950s B-horror flic) in some way paid homage to “the devil” and could lead to nothing short of banishment to a flaming dark pit of fire and brimstone where there would be “weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth.” Sounds fun, huh?
She even went on to confirm that her church had presented an annual “Hell House” (kind of like a haunted house, but based on various sins cited in Christian teachings), although they had ceased the production a few years back.
“I’m not really sure why,” she offered sadly. “It just wasn’t as popular anymore.”
Gay bashing going out of fashion, even with the most fervent bashers?
I was speechless. But only for a moment. She had crossed a line.
“The world’s changing,” I replied flatly.
She looked at me with a blank expression as the bus rolled in to the Charlotte stop.
“But then we aren’t really supposed to be pointing fingers at others or any of that negative name-calling stuff in the first place, are we?”
Still the blank expression, but this time you could tell it was tinged ever so slightly with contempt.
“What’s that line?” I asked. “Judge not, lest ye be judged?”