Misandrist: The Implications of a Dead Kitten

Misandrist: The Implications of a Dead Kitten

I was 13-14, wearing my Chuck Taylors.

We had a kitten, a tiny little black ball of freak out and fuzz.

And as I was running from my room (we were late for something)

The kitten freaked out and ran to meet my step.

Though I checked my step, there was just enough compression to break vital things, and cause a violent death throe.

Kitten was dead, I was crushed.

But ever after, when self-medicated, my mother would recount the story shrieking “You were stomping around in your big black boots!”

She hated combat boots, or engineer boots, because, in her mind, they were male. They existed because of Y Chromosomes, therefore were signs of stupidity and needless evil.

And, in her mind, all her problems were because of men. Including the death of a kitten.

Knowing, after trial and sickening error, she could not hear or understand truth through her madness and liquor, I stopped trying to tell her she was cruelly false.

Years later she had been forced to dry out, the state of Maine not allowing her to drink and receive their hospitality. She recounted the story again, still insisting on her anti-man version.

This time, though, as she was not chemically altered and could form memories again, I borrowed my father’s Marine Corps voice to briefly drown out every sound in the apartment building to say “I was wearing sneakers, god damn it! No matter how much you want it to be some blatantly male symbol of evil, it was not! Don’t ever tell that story again unless you’re gonna tell the truth!”

And she never told the story again.

Where I could hear.

Chris Walters,

February 10, 2014