Johnny E. Mahaffey
BRCI-323863
4460 Broad River Rd.
Columbia, SC 29210-4012

SAYING NO

Saying "no" seemed to be my mother's favorite go-to phrase about all things concerning life: It was no to me dating Mexican girls, no to Asian girls, and no to black girls—basically any that didn't look like my mother got put on the "not in my house" list. It didn't matter how badly I wanted to date one. The only way I could was in secret. My first wife ended up being a Latin mix. We planned a child as quickly as possible to fend off any possible no to our union. My mother really couldn't say much about it once the pee confirmed it.

Marriage was no great thing in our home anyway.

My mother divorced my father while I was still an infant. Yet if she'd have said no to him a little sooner, she would have never had to deal with me. Nor would I have had to learn such suffering under her reign, with words like "existential crisis" becoming an integral part of my vocabulary. If she said no then, these words (like me) would not exist. You'd be reading someone else's "no"s. But alas, I am here and these are my "no"s.

I even did the stereotypical thing: I perpetuated my mother's shortcoming, making not only many of the same mistakes but worse ones. We assume—in youth—that the adults just say no, just to say it. To spite us for being young while they're not. It's not until we're old ourselves that we realize how much of what we're told is right. The adults weren't out to get us after all. In the basking of this age-earned enlightenment, we pass it onto our own children—who question us with as much vigor as we had once done ourselves.

Saying no isn't just a parental thing, it's human. We can't be "yes" men like Jim Carrey once was with Zoe Deshanel because that only leads to disaster. We have to say no when a no is required. My mother's reason for saying no, I first thought, was race. But that turned out to be not the case. It was choice of girl not her color that my mother resented. Though I don't regret one minute about rushing into my first kid. My oldest son is one of the best things to exist, and I couldn't imagine a world without him.