{"id":706,"date":"2014-10-17T12:49:26","date_gmt":"2014-10-17T16:49:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/typingmonkeys.com\/blog\/?p=706"},"modified":"2023-05-02T15:51:31","modified_gmt":"2023-05-02T19:51:31","slug":"so-theres-that-day-25-a-really-good-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/typingmonkeys.com\/blog\/so-theres-that-day-25-a-really-good-day\/","title":{"rendered":"So There’s That, Day 25: A Really Good Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

So There\u2019s That: Adventures in Transgendering chronicled my transition in 2014. One hopes the gentle readers will forgive any awkward or anachronistic language within.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014<\/em><\/p>\n

Thursday starts with another morning coffee meeting, this time with a colleague I\u2019ve worked with on and off for years. He\u2019s a good guy, a straight talker, and shares my low-bullshit threshold. In other words he\u2019s from Philly just like me.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s dub him Mr. No B.S.<\/p>\n

I start with my standard spiel: I\u2019m moving to New York. I\u2019ve harbored two secrets for most of my life\u2026<\/p>\n

But as I set the stage for my reveal with a story about how I dealt with stuttering, I can tell he\u2019s biding his time until I get to the juicy secret. Stuttering just isn\u2019t cutting it today.<\/p>\n

So I pick up the pace and cut to\u2026 transgender.<\/p>\n

\u201cHuh. Y\u2019know, you probably should have led with that. You can\u2019t tease two secrets and then start with stuttering.\u201d<\/p>\n

Okay, maybe he\u2019s got a point. And in a way, it\u2019s refreshing that the mild rebuke is over my presentation and not the substance.<\/p>\n

He admits to not completely understanding, but he\u2019s cool with me moving my life closer to being who I really am. I mention that I\u2019ve come out to just about everyone I know in New York (except for one), so as long as he doesn\u2019t share with that final notch on my New York belt, I\u2019m cool if he happens to mention it to other people.<\/p>\n

He then notes that his wife is a real estate agent in New York, and shares her email with me to help in my apartment hunt. With my coffee done, we head over to his offices on Broadway so I can scope out his new digs. He introduces me around to everyone in the office, but I need to get back to work and I\u2019m out the door moments later.<\/p>\n

Unbeknownst to me, he outs me to the entire office within minutes of my departure.<\/p>\n

Okay, that\u2019s probably an exaggeration. It\u2019s more like 20 minutes, but when I learn of this later, I envision, with much amusement, the scene unfolding as follows:<\/p>\n

\u201cThat guy who just left? Transgender.\u201d<\/i>
\n<\/i>
\nPause.<\/i>
\n<\/i>
\n\u201cOh, and he used to stutter.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

I return to my office and in a few hours I receive one of the nicest emails I\u2019ve ever received.<\/p>\n

[Mr. No B.S.]\u00a0<\/i>gave me the update so I feel inclined to offer my ear should you ever wanna talk. As a guy who\u2019s spent his whole life stuttering (years of speech therapy as a kid until I finally figured out, as I\u2019m sure you did, all the ways and tricks to hide it on a daily basis without ever actually getting rid of it), and as a guy who\u2019s also part of the LGBT world, it\u2019s always good talking to someone to whom you\u2019d have to explain very little because they\u2019ve lived most of the same experiences. Anyway, congrats on making such brave moves. Here\u2019s to bigger and better days.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I am gobsmacked. I mean, I kinda knew this guy from before, but this is such a welcome note of support and so completely out of the blue.<\/p>\n

We email back and forth in the evening, closing our surprising correspondence with\u2026<\/p>\n

Once you actually put people to the test you\u2019ll be surprised by how many of them pass it and make you realize that you\u2019re your own worst criticizer.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Truer words have undoubtedly been uttered, but not tonight and not in an email to me. And while he might be right about putting people to the test, I never expected someone to volunteer for that test out of the goodness of their heart.<\/p>\n

Too often we dwell on the negative. But let me tell you, in the past two weeks, I\u2019ve only witnessed the positive.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s to bigger and better days, indeed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So There\u2019s That: Adventures in Transgendering chronicled my transition in 2014. One hopes the gentle readers will forgive any awkward or anachronistic language within. \u2014 Thursday starts with another morning coffee meeting, this time with a colleague I\u2019ve worked with on and off for years. He\u2019s a good guy, a straight talker, and shares my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-so-theres-that"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/typingmonkeys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/typingmonkeys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/typingmonkeys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/typingmonkeys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/typingmonkeys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=706"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/typingmonkeys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/706\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":707,"href":"https:\/\/typingmonkeys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/706\/revisions\/707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/typingmonkeys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/typingmonkeys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/typingmonkeys.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}