If you know me personally, you know I have a penchant for puns and dad jokes. Most are mediocre at best, but every once in a while, thank God, I knock one out of the park.
Also, if you know me personally, you probably know I can be an emotional basket case, crying at the drop of a hat when something “deep” touches my soul. My weekly estrogen injections obviously don’t help, but I was more or less that way before I ever started my transition to female, and that estrogen makes things, well, more fun. Still, I’d rather deal with the supercharged feelings that come with my hormone replacement therapy than not being able to emotionally connect and asking “What? What?” when female friends around me are tearing up. (“When Harry Met Sally” comes immediately to mind here.)
These days, if I encounter someone who is NOT an emotional basket case, I have to wonder what the hell is wrong with them. It seemed like the majority of this new scariness, this shocking evil started on Jan. 6, 2021, and accelerated on Jan. 20, 2025, but sadly, I now realize that it has been always going on, mostly undercover. Now, organized evil is out in the open and those involved are not concerned about trying to hide it — with the notable exception of those on the Epstein list.
All this made me think of what I remember as a calmer time. In particular, I was thinking today of my mom’s mother, my grandmother Muriel (aka Meno), with whom I was very close. The fact that our names only vary by one letter is not by coincidence. Meno, who was born in 1911, would have been my current age, 61, in 1972. There was a lot of bad news that year, plus her husband, my grandfather, died that November. Yes, Meno got the newspaper, watched the news on her color TV, and listened what was going on locally and around the globe on her transistor radio, which was always tuned to local AM station WHMP 1400 AM. She was “connected,” I guess you could say. But when she went to place a call on, or answer her black, rotary dial phone, she was not bombarded by information, both good and bad, like I am today with my iPhone. All this sometimes makes me frequently pine for those seemingly simpler days, the days of my youth.
It was a very different time, even in the midst of the Vietnam War and the Watergate break-in, things weren’t in your face like they are today — it was possible to live without media assaulting you every time you turned around unlike today. I think that is one reason I pine for the 1970s, a time I look on fondly. That said, my only real responsibilities were going to school, staying clean, and brushing my teeth. (Side note: it is interesting that 1972 was 54 years ago and the GOP is still trying to cheat to win elections.)
Despite this nostalgia for a simpler time, living as a transgender woman, transsexual in language of the day, would have been far more complicated in the 70s than today, even with all the hateful rhetoric often spewed by people like Donald Trump, JK Rowling, and any number of conservative Christian preachers. Today, more people than ever understand what it means to be transgender, that transgender people are not a threat to society, that there have always been transgender people, and that transitioning saves lives — like mine.
Perhaps my nostalgia for an earlier time is misplaced. I likely would not have had the open support to transition to female in, say, 1972. And if I did transition, I’d probably have to turn in my credit card. As we all know now, women just can’t be trusted with credit cards!
Mariel E. Addis is a native of Florence. She left the area for 16 years but returned in 2013.