[gmku]

My dad, bless his departed soul, was odd and funny, in a homophobic way. I never knew how he really felt until we had a conversation a few months before he died about a television show featuring gay characters. He said that he thought it was "awful" (his word) that a word that used to just mean "happy" or "merry" became used to mean homosexual.

I laughed and then realized he was serious.

"You know," he continued with a serious look on his face, "you can't say, 'I'm gay today!' if you're happy, like you used to be able to."

"Uh, no, Dad, you probably can't. And when was that, exactly, you could use it that way?"

"And 'gay' is used in all those old songs. I would ask kids to sing a song at school and it happened to have the word 'gay' in it and they all started snickering."

"Well, Dad, the world has changed."

"Used to be you could call those people 'light footed' or 'limp wristed' and everyone would know what you meant."

Ah, Dad, thinking to myself, how do I talk about this with someone who is old and dying? "Yeah, Dad, the world has changed."