Guess I need to be more "woke" than I am

Short takes from a journey through a disorganized mind:

Goodnight, ladies?

CALL ME A RECIDIVIST: When it comes to Facebook, I really have a hard time staying out of jail. And this time, I probably deserved my three-day sentence.

I had been seeing the picture to the right ever since New Year's Eve, apparently taken at a party at Trump's Mar-A-Lago.

Several other people -- who apparently were more subtle than I am -- questioned whether the ladies pictured were actually ladies.

One poster even used an Austin Powers meme in which he said, "She's a man!"

My problem was that I used a word that has been around a long time, but in recent years has acquired a meaning I should have known better than to use it.


When I came of age in the early 1970s, people were doing things openly that had been done only in secret before. One Saturday night two women came into the restaurant where I was working. Except that one of them had something odd-looking about her hands.

Apparently I wasn't being discreet enough, because all of a sudden, in a very non-feminine voice, I heard, "What are you looking at?"

I had seen my first transvestite.

So my reaction upon seeing this picture was unfortunate. I typed two words:

"Tranny alert."

Of course in recent years, the slang term has become more than just a name for boys who like to dress up like girls. It has come to mean transgendered, which is not a choice but instead a sort of mismatching of mind and body. In that context, my comment could be described -- as Facebook did -- as hate speech.

Oops.

***

QUITE A YEAR, YES: Anyone who's a fan of the New York Yankees, New England Patriots, Duke Blue Devils or a few other good teams is happy when the objects of their affection win championships but isn't all that surprised.

But if you think about Red Sox fans prior to 2004 or Cubs fans before the 2016 season, you can see how frustrating it is to never win. One of the most poignant sports stories I ever read was Sports Illustrated's year-end story in 2004 about "Red Sox Nation."

Some of the oldest people in New England hung on till the end, only to die after they saw the Sox win.

Well, 2019 wound up being a completely bizarre year in my life.

My two favorite sports teams in the world are the Washington Nationals baseball team and the University of Virginia basketball team. Washington last won the World Series in 1925 and Virginia had never won the NCAA title.

I don't think I actually said if either of them won I could die happy.

Still, if you add in the Washington Capitals winning the Stanley Cup in 2018 (for the first time) and Virginia's baseball team winning its first College World Series in 2015, I had better watch my health very carefully this year.