Ordinance of Obeyance: She must adhere to patriarchal urination methods lest she be ridiculed.

 

I don’t know if you’ve ever been out on a wilderness excursion with six men who were all at least three times your age, but I highly advise you run away before you’re plucked off the ground and dragged along anyhow by your behemothly muscular, used-to-be football-star uncle.

            People always jab at teenagers for how they hate spending time with their families. The thing is, maybe they dread that “quality” time for a reason. See, at thirteen, my family decided it was time I underwent my initiation into young adulthood. An unspoken ritual, seemingly invented just for me, was born, and I was forced to hike across Saturna Island with my Dad, my Grandpa, and four uncles: a pure testosterone carnival of competing masculinities—all supposedly to teach me how to be something I would rather die than have anything to do with.