text: [ âSome of you have forgotten that only three years ago you were perfectly capable of writing an essay, writing a eulogy, telling a bedtime story to a child, and it should worry you that powerful companies have convinced us we canât do things weâve been doing for 5000 years.â ]
ADHD affects how I experience time, not how I experience attachment. I love you. I miss you. I just don't realize how long itâs been since I last said that, let alone messaged.
I understand that most normal functioning brains need regular engagement to maintain a bond. Absence doesnât diminish my affection. My silence isnât neglect or disinterest. Itâs time blindness and object impermanence. The contact gap is purely neurological, not emotional. Thank you for being patient with my inconsistency and holding a seat in your heart for me.
I don't go here but I feel like "It's a metaphor. Don't force it to do the work of a fact." is a great statement about literature and fan-content in general.
My mom likes to tell me about how when I was a little kid riding public transport with her I'd always smile and giggle and chat with weird old ladies who smelled like cat pee and homeless folks and strangers dressed in bizarre outfits but any time a tidy and respectable businessman in a suit and tie waved at me I'd immediately clam up, and she takes a great deal of pride in my supposed inherentability to clock personalities but the truth is I do vaguely remember those bus rides, and it was never about the clothes or the hair or the smell, but more because everyone "strange" asked interesting questions and listened to what I had to say and seemed to think about what I said while the neat and tidy and rigid folks only ever acted like they were going through the motions, which was boring as hell and also pretty annoying
when i was a little kid (age 8 and on) i had 3 veryyy intense special interests i constantly infodumped about to anyone who gave me the time of day. these were:
The Bubonic Plague
Vampire Folklore
Tree frogs.
So as you can imagine my mom spent many years prepping me for social outings by doing a call-and-response litany with me that went "let's focus on tree frogs tonight. let's tell people about tree frogs."
pov you are an unsuspecting adult at a social function who made the mistake of talking to me like i'm a person for 37 seconds and now you're going to learn everything about vlad the impaler from an enraptured third grader
because if I wore these underwear the universe would conspire to constantly put me in situations where my pants would get pulled down or destroyed and itâs so hard to find good pants
I have a few pairs of these exact underwear, which I wore whenever possible as a camp counselor.
The reason was that, if you get pantsed, and you weren't in on the joke / it wasn't planned, that's a massive breakdown in respect and discipline, and you have to make an example of that kid (generally by wrestling them, and in serious cases, taking away candy privileges). But getting pranked is still a bad look, and makes it seem cool to rebel against your authority.
However, if you get pantsed, and you are in on the joke, everyone has a good laugh, including you, and no one was actually rebelling. It both makes you look like a cool authority figure and makes the person doing it look like they're the sort of person in cahoots with counselors. Then, if there's a behavioral issue, you can have that quiet conversation later, away from an audience.
And since those underwear are so culturally specific as punchlines in a pantsing gag that the only plausible reason to be wearing them is if you're in on a slapstick act, you can retroactively Shanghai any would-be prankster into looking like they did it with your consent and planning, which not only keeps you from indignity, it makes sure that they're rewarded by laughter and attention for looking like they're cooperating with the staff, encouraging that in the future and bringing them in from the outside of the social-reward structure you're trying to set up, where it's cool too be wacky but responsible.
That preparation effort paid off maybe four times across three years, but it was completely worth it.
The downside, of course, is that when one of your kids goes missing in a storm when it's hailing and pouring sheets of water, and you don't have many dry clothes left, you're reduced to running through the rain looking for them in your underwear, which are situationally inappropriate / jarringly comical to the full extent possible.
Every day I handle more money than I will ever make. Every day.
At the start of my employment, my boss showed me videos of people stealing, and we both had a chuckle about it. How silly they were! There was a camera overhead, and itâs not to watch the shoppers. See, we canât actually stop shoplifters. They get away with it maybe nine out of ten times. But we, who are watched and tallied and witnessed? We are always caught.
At first it was hard to hold one hundred dollars bills. An amount I had never seen before. An amount that didnât exist in my household. Itâs normal now. Here is something that is not for me.
âWhat the hell, Iâll take another,â says the man, pondering our 200 dollar watches. What the hell. Total comes to 580 and not even a flinch in his face. I have been working for 11 hours today and made only 110 dollars. It will go to my rent. Today I work for free, it feels. When I get my check, I will have 35 dollars left for food and saving.
The six hundreds he hands me go into the cash register. For a moment, I imagine having money. Then I put it away, counting out his change.
I know for a fact we sell our products for double what they are worth. That I could be making commission. That they could hand me those 580 dollars and change my life and not even mark the difference in their checkbooks. Heâs not the only sale they make today, but I am the reason they made it. Heâs not the only one spending 600 dollars, but if I hadnât spent two hours with him telling me about his life, he wouldnât have spent any. I go home. I donât own a watch.
I have watched and rewatched a video on how to make salmon four ways. My shopping list is always the same. Pasta. Rice. Tuna. If I can afford butter it was a good week. I dream of the world I will never walk in, where I can throw the best fish fillet in the cart with a shrug. I hold hundreds in my hand and look up at the camera. I put them under the cash drawer.
I go to work. I scrap together my savings. I eat my bowl of rice slowly. My manager takes a paid week off from work just for his birthday. He owns a yacht.Â
i wrote this while i was working at orlandoâs walt disney world parks.
i was part of their college program. i moved to the state for it. they legally owned the building i was living in and still charged me rent. i ostensibly was being charged to work for them. it was a 2 bedroom apartment and they placed 6 adult women in it in forced triples.
as many as one in ten disney employees have experienced homelessness while working for the company. despite huge efforts to unionize, strike, or otherwise demand fair treatment; disney has refused to increase employee quality of life.
disney admits publicly that a good portion of their success is because the employees (âcast membersâ) are dedicated, passionate, and selfless. this is never reflected in pay. even âfaceâ characters (ie those that are princesses etc) make barely above a minimum wage.
at the time that i worked there, i made $8.50 an hour. at one point i was asked to create a human shield around a bag because a bomb dog had alerted to it. for eight fucking dollars an hour.
i now work a very cushy office job. i have bought the salmon and cooked it all four ways.
i go to the store. i am nice to the person behind the counter. she looks up at the camera while she counts out my change. there is nothing fundamentally different about her and i.
Leen Hijaz, a Palestinian Muslim valedictorian at Clayton High, tried to end her graduation speech with a call for humanity. Instead, she wa
Holler and Hammer:
Principal Melissa Hubbard got up and crossed the stage when Leen Hijaz, Palestinian, Muslim, early graduate, valedictorian, tried to finish her speech by naming Palestine, Sudan, Congo, Afghanistan, and families ripped apart by ICE. Leen tried to say every person deserves dignity, safety, and the chance to dream.
That was the line that made Hubbard stomp across the stage and shut her down in front of the whole crowd at Nixon-Fowler Stadium for Clayton High Schoolâs graduation on Thursday, May 28, 2026.
The ceremony did not stop there. Less than five minutes later, Senior Class Vice President Cecelia Trader stepped up, asked the audience to bow their heads, and opened with a Christian prayer: âDear Heavenly Father.â Hubbard stayed seated. A few minutes after that, Student Body Vice President, Mallory Kuykendall introduced senior class president Gates Hale through his church work and mission trips, then Gates quoted Proverbs 3:5-6 and told the graduating class the Lord had a purpose and path for each of them. Hubbard stayed seated. At the end of the ceremony, Allison Lowery, Student Body Historian, closed the night with a prayer and a Bible verse. Hubbard stayed seated for that, too.
The approved part of Leenâs speech was the kind of graduation talk schools love, because it doesnât ask anyone anything risky. She welcomed students, staff, families, honored guests, and the whole Class of 2026. She talked about hard work, growth, memories, sacrifice, perseverance, parents, guardians, teachers, coaches, loved ones. She told her classmates to be proud. She said they will always be Comets. She gave the school the safe version, warm enough for the program, broad enough for the bleachers, careful enough to slip past whatever adult hands were holding the gate.
Then she said, âBefore I leave the stage, I have one last thing to say.â
That was the part she left out of the official draft, because she already knew exactly how this place works and who gets to speak.
âEvery single person here has a voice,â her written speech says, âand we are privileged to have the freedom to use it when so many people around the world are suffering and struggling to be heard.â She named âthe millions suffering in Palestine, Sudan, Congo, Afghanistan, and so many other countries around the world,â and âthe families being torn apart by ICE.â
Then came the line she was trying to finish.
âMy point is, we were not given a voice so we could stay silent in the face of suffering. Every person deserves dignity, safety, and the chance to dream for their future just like we do. As we all move forward, I hope we choose to speak up against oppression, support one another, and use our voices to bring compassion and humanity into the world.â
Thatâs all she tried to say.
Dignity, safety, compassion, and humanity. That is what Principal Melissa Hubbard could not let finish. Not a threat, not a disruption, just the wrong truth from the wrong mouth in the wrong county.
Leen Hijaz is Palestinian. She is Muslim. She graduated early, a junior with the highest GPA at the school, and was valedictorian of the Class of 2026 at Clayton High. She did not walk onto that stage as a prop in somebody elseâs culture war. She walked up there carrying a life that most of the room had never had to understand.
Leen did not keep the final lines separate because she misunderstood the rules. She kept them separate because she understood the rules too well.
In our interview, she explained that the approved part of the speech was written to do what graduation speeches are usually expected to do. She wanted âto make a good impression.â She wanted it to be âa reflection of everything that weâve gone through the past couple of years.â She kept it âvery simpleâ and âsomething that everyone could relate to.â That was the safe speech. The warm welcome speech that thanks everybody, offends nobody, and lets the ceremony keep moving.
The second part came from somewhere else.
âI wanted something to be spread about the awareness about everything thatâs going on in the world,â Leen told me, âbecause I knew that they werenât going to bring it up, especially because I am Palestinian.â Then she said the part that should embarrass every adult pretending she is just some kid who doesnât know what she is talking about.
That is why she wrote it. She did not write it because it was a political talking point she learned from a TikTok clip. That was a student explaining why the final part of her speech mattered to her, why she wanted to name suffering beyond Clayton, beyond Johnston County, beyond the comfortable little ceremony adults wanted.
That is also why she knew it would not survive approval.
Her senior quote for the yearbook had been âFrom the river to the sea,â and Clayton High made her change it. Leen said it was âapparently too politicalâ and âtoo offensive.â She did not describe it as a threat. She described it as âjust a simple phrase that a lot of Palestinians say because of our ethnic cleansing.â That experience told her what the school would do if she submitted the final part of her speech. Nobody had to spell it out. The lesson had already been taught.
That lesson did not stop with the yearbook.
Clayton High has student groups like Turning Point USA and First Priority Christian Club, and Leen was blunt about how that looked from where she stood.
Clayton High School in Clayton, NC has a graduation speech that is going viral worldwide, and it's because valedictorian Leen Hijaz-- a Palestinian Muslim-- used her valedictorian speech to call out ICE's atrocities and suffering worldwide in Congo, Sudan, and Palestine.
As Hijaz was about to close her speech, Melissa Hubbard-- the school's principal-- rudely snatched the mic from her. On top of that, her diploma was unjustly withheld.
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See Also:
USA Today: Valedictorian's speech cut after unscripted immigration comment
Not even in an "I'm outraged" kind of way, in a "genuinely perplexed as to what could be going on behind the scenes to produce these outcomes." I want to stop staring at the shadows on the wall and exit Plato's allegory of the website moderation
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