Kathryn Mayer • Writing Out Loud
I write stuff down. writer • humorist • activist
“The male humpback whale …” – the male announcer singsongs into the video. I’m already pissed. Biologists studying the male humpback whale. What it’s like for them to sing and memorize songs, how smart they are, these copycats, plagiarizing each other and taking the leisure time to dance and swim, look how strong and handsome and brilliant I am. How elegant and athletic and deserving. “Look at me, look how
For almost a decade, I’ve had writer, humorist, activist on the bio of my Instagram, Facebook, and even here on the blog. FFS it’s on my business card. I’m slowly but surely taking activist off the list, because as little as I did before, I’m doing less now and the term should be devoted to people in the fight, not those on the sidelines. Where I firmly am. For now.
New neighbors moved in across the street, a young couple, man and woman. No kids that I could tell, peaking out through the upstairs window where the tree doesn’t block the view. A white couple. No surprise there. I’m a white woman living in a sleepy white somewhat suburban town on a white street with white neighbors. I prepped my welcome to the neighborhood gift, a basket chock full of
It’s hard to be funny when the world is falling apart, and while maybe Dave Chappelle and Steven Colbert and Samantha Bee can do it, I cannot. People read me for the funny, for the lighthearted jabs life gives us, how I interpret them then regurgitate life’s snippets from maybe not a point of view previously considered. All that stopped when the shooting paralyzed my community, almost a decade ago
(repost from 2010 essay. The thigh story still stands the test of time.) * Apparently, their phones, email and customer service call centers don’t work. Let me say this first. I like LOFT clothes. I like the fact that I can try something on and it fits. And I often look swell. And people that shop there aren’t saying words like “swell” quite yet, but neither are they sexting their
Written 3 years ago. This is old; and written mid-POTUS 45 term, pre-covid, but the fear was real. • I’d seen the signs but chose to ignore them. For years. I told myself: he’s just kidding around. He’s young. Undecided. Experimenting. He’ll figure it out. Maybe slightly confused. Trying new things – he’s just testing me. Seeing how much I can take. I can’t take much more. I’m not afraid
“When one door closes, another opens.” Seriously? Who says that? Everyone, or practically everyone. Except me. Fuck that shit. Who wrote that? Who said it first? Probably a middle-aged white man and he probably didn’t write it, but overheard a woman say it then repeated it as his own and whammo – memes, posters, bumper stickers, tik-toks, billboards, a goddamn bible. Probably got paid a bundle too, residual royalties, while
“GET YOUR FOOT OFF THE GODDAMN CLUTCH” His voice thunders, and he’s restrained in the passenger seat not by a seatbelt, but by gigantic dad hands braced against the dashboard, like he could bench press the car up the hill through sheer will, while I struggled behind the steering wheel of a shit brown Datsun hatchback, jerking up the steep dirt road like a roller coaster lurching toward a peak
An irreverent storyteller with a foul mouth and big heart, Kathryn Mayer (aka Kathy and/or Kate) is a writer, humorist, and (former) activist writing out loud with humor and grace about little life moments with big ripples, including the space between parenting and aging parents, social issues, angsty reflections of midlife, and, sigh, gun humpers. Still. Sometimes a big deal, sometimes not Mayer is a national award-winning columnist, according to the National Society of Newspaper Columnists, and her essays have been recognized as Voice of … Read More Here...
kate[at]kathrynmayer[dot]com
xo Kate