Olympians

This last weekend was my niece’s graduation from high school. Saturday night was the big graduation party at my sister’s house. The house, festooned in black and orange looked like a tasteful Halloween party. It took me awhile to calculate that the “fighting Olympians” have the black and orange as their signature colors.

My niece is an out going and fun/smart girl. She lettered in Theater, just like her uncle. This means that after four years of being a theater nerd, she is friends with every gay black and orange covered Olympian.  All of which were bouncing around the big graduation party.

I find this amazing. The fact that my niece has a circle of gay best friends, yet more importantly that they are all out of the closet and living honest lives. It appeared to be just no big deal, a normal group of kids. I immediately called my Ex/Best Friend to relay the scene. Both Dalton and I had struggled greatly through our high school years. Closeted and repressed as we found our only refuge in the Theater Club during our high school years.  I relayed the extraordinary idea that guys now come out of the closet in their freshman year and are considered “cool.”

What is cool is the fact that kids are having a completely different childhood to my generation. Their teenage years are filled with dating, having fun, and just being normal. They are now getting teased for average stuff like having dorky sneakers or for wearing glasses, not for who they are down to their very soul.