Because I feel the need to 1) follow up on yesterday's entry and 2) lighten the mood a bit, let me share some other fun details with you about the pregnancy scare I faked.

• After crying and stammering my way through the whole story, I added, "Actually, we're not really sure if he's the father of if it's his roommate." At that point, I just wanted to see how many more horrified faces she could make.
• The "potential fathers" and I decided to have an imaginary child to make the situation more entertaining.
• Her name is Aurora, but we call her "Rory."
• Rory will be three years old on April 12, 2007. She was born the same day she was conceived. Don't ask how that worked.
• The one who we eventually determined to be her father is a ninja, so she is being raised to be equal parts ninja and pirate. Don't ask how that one works, either.
• Because she spends most of her time with me, she's actually more pirate than ninja. Don't tell her father, though.

. . . Don't look at me like that. I just really want to name a daughter "Aurora," and this was looking like the only chance I'd ever get.

I just finished watching Crash, which left me with quiet tears streaming down my face. For whatever reason, racism has always been a really hard thing for me to deal with. It's so hurtful and pointless; it always feels like we should be past this point by now. In fact, how did we even get to this point in the first place?

I became friends with a girl my first year at college who had been raised in a small town in Texas. There were very few black people in her town, and they all lived together in what was almost a separate community from the whites. The wall still stood in the forest outside the city limits from which blacks had been hung during the Civil War period. I still somehow assumed that she had, like everyone I had met thus far in life, not been affected by this history.

She was very conservative and had never really approved of all the time I spent with my Clubber boys on their dorm floor. But it wasn't until I started hanging out with a black guy that she really became vocal about her feelings. She quoted to me a passage from Scripture one night:

"Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness?" (2 Corinthians 6:14).

She paraphrased, though, and told me that it wasn't right to be "unequally yoked" with a person of a different race.

I blinked.

It was very hard for me to keep from yelling at her in that moment, but I'm very glad I didn't. We eventually came to an agreement that the verse was not in support of racism. Sadly, that did very little to lessen her concern for me.

Eventually, I could no longer stand to be mature about the issue, so I came crying to her one day. I told her that I was pregnant and that my black friend was the father. I confirmed every single one of her fears before telling her I was lying. I walked out of the room and effectively walked out on the friendship. I will never forget the look on her face.

Before that experience, however, I had never encountered racism to that degree. My friends and I would exchange jokes about our various races, but they were never harmful or serious. In fact, it became tradition for me to "white-ify" the sayings of my best friend, Silky, all throughout high school. He came to school one morning telling everyone, "Slow yo' roll." I walked into school the following morning and told him, "Decelerate your biscuit." (Shut up. It took me a whole twenty-four hours to think that one up.)

But when faced with the harsh reality of how cruel people can be, I just don't know what to do other than cry. How are we not past this, world? Let's try being nice to one another, for a change.

My dad has been a computer programmer for well over twenty-five years now. I don't always realize what an effect this has had on my life, but tonight, I surveyed my room and saw that I am indeed my father's daughter.

• I spent a good portion of this weekend lounging about in a S1 IT Solutions sweatshirt.
• My Linux t-shirts outnumber all of my other t-shirts combined.
• I have more Red Hat pens that I can count.
• The ten most recently purchased books in my room are from O'Reilly, with the exception of one new Dilbert book and The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide.
• A startling percentage of my office supplies are from HP, Red Hat, or IBM.

Thankfully, I've managed to retain some individuality. In fact, there are several things on my desk alone that I can guarantee my father does not have.

• That titanium spork.
• Five pairs of earrings and three headbands.
• The leftover dinosaur stickers that weren't used to decorate my mother's birthday card.
• Some of the most gorgeous little swirly Post-It notes ever to exist.
• That one Post-It note that says "Elijah Wood" and is covered with heart doodles.

I'll be the first to admit, though, that the "lots of stuff on the desk" thing is directly inherited from my dad. But, seeing that I wouldn't be alive without him, I suppose I'll have to let that slide. At least I didn't get the "drive five miles under the speed limit" gene.