Today I barely made it into work as my car struggled up a hill in the cold drizzling rain.

It seemed like the battery was really struggling to power the car, like when an alternator went out on me long ago, the same dashboard flashing and power steering issues.

I pulled off into a very affluent neighborhood and revved the engine to 2 RPMs like someone taught me to do for a bit to make sure the car had the juice to move again. Then I turned if off and on just to see if it would start back up. It did, and I puttered into the office garage a mile away and parked. I was determined to make it into the office today because I slept well and felt recharged after having a friend over to watch the halftime show. Plus, we had a new employee coming in so I didn’t want to miss saying hello until next week.

After work I went to the car to see if I could get it to start and it was starting but had no desire to really take off out of the parking spot with the constant locking of the power steering.

I stopped, messaged my fellow coworker who grew up in similar circumstances and he was clever enough to remind me in my “oh shit, I’m about to have to Uber home mind” that we had an oil change shop down the street.

I ran down there as they were close to closing time and got a guy from the shop to come up to our garage and help me out. We figured out that no matter what we did the battery was shot and it just needed to be replace. But during that walk to the garage to check out my car we had a discussion about how I’ve preferred to keep my cars for upwards to a decade or more to the point one of them burst into flames on the way home.

He said, “How did your lady friend feel about that?”. I didn’t respond, even though I heard him. He ask again, maybe thinking I hadn’t heard him and said, “How did your partner feel about that?”, and that’s when I responded with something very basic. They were just glad I made it home ok.

He helped me replace the battery and charged me a reasonable price. As I was checking out I told him that I caught that he changed the wording of his question. He immediately responded with “I’m so sorry, that was disrespectful of me.” I said, no, I’m bringing this up because I wanted to acknowledge your attempt to switch your wording to that. It really meant something to me and gave me a feeling of ease in simply being fellow humans.

As we enter the 21st day of the Trump Administration as a 45 year old married gay man in Texas. That was fucking refreshing because he knew to show me respect, and it gave me a glimmer of hope.