Look around you.

Yee-haw! I live in cowboy kuntry, gun tott'n, right wing Texas. A place where everything is 'all good' as long as you are a straight white male. That's what most people think about Texas.

I understand this prejudice. Where I grew up there was a sign across the main road into town that read 'Welcome to Greenville, the Blackest Land, the Whitest People'. When I went to school, there were no gays, their existence was vehemently denied. Women were housewives, not police officers or firemen. Nurses, not Doctors. We had Hispanics, but you rarely saw them in public spaces.

Last night my wife, daughter, son-in-law and I went to a local English pub style bar. A popular night spot, it was full. I have been going here for years, a few months ago I introduced them to my female self. I'm always treated like gold and last night was no exception.

  Midway through the evening I took a long look around the room. There was at least one guy in a cowboy hat, a lesbian couple, a large hispanic family, an interracial couple, two tables of gay men, several mid-twenty girls dancing by the bar, and scattered couples of various ages.

So how had I gotten here? Star Trek transporter? Tear in the time space continuum? No, I was still in Texas, it's just that Texas is not THAT Texas anymore. At least not in cities like DFW or Austin.

Every day, small changes in society happen. Small enough we rarely notice. But when you go back and compare then to now, well Wow! Society has changed tremendously since I was a child, and I'm grateful.

Let's do the time warp again...

My wife and I were watching 'Keeping up with the Kardashians' together. Kim Kardashian was talking about Bruce(Jenner) to her friend Jonathan. She told him that the family thought his transition was going really fast, but Bruce felt it was moving very slow. Sixty-five years slow. 

 This spawned a glance between my wife and I as it's something we are very familiar with. She relates to the Kardashian family view, I relate to Bruce. We have experienced these same feelings. 

I spend every waking minute thinking about my gender issues, and I'm sure that most of you (trans people) do as well. Our loved ones think about it some times but certainly not constantly. Where I feel like this has been 50-someodd years coming, it's flying at my wife with breakneck speed.

 I think about it while working, cleaning, watching TV, sometimes even while sleeping. Add up the time I've spent on the subject during my life and it's a very large amount of time. Probably a thousand times more than she thinks about it. So when I suggest some new course of action, I've been thinking about it for years, but it is relatively unknown to her. She needs to consider it, I feel like it's been considered from every possible angle.

She wants to 'slow down' a bit so she can catch her thoughts. To her every day seems to bring new challenges, and she has not yet digested the day before. I think that it is taking forever, any slower and it seems to be going backwards.

If's this were a Sci-Fi flick, I would be in a time warp, watching the world around me move in slow motion, while she see me as a barely recognizable blur.

These are not insurmountable problems. We pause, try to see things from each others view, then decide how to proceed. She and I understand why this is, but it took some time to realize what was happening. Love and understanding can cure even Sci-Fi problems.

I hope that the Kardashians can keep up with Bruce!