I'm not taking your last name if you can't take my independence seriously.

In Poetry class, my fellow students always manage to pry into my teacher's life in the lulls between assignments - because yes, my school has those, be jealous. He handles it with good humor and they never really ask anything too rude, but sometimes I can't help but feel as if he should be doing some of the questioning.

Today, the topic was his wife - as it oftentimes is since she's the mother of the allegedly cutest three-year-old on the planet. My teacher mentioned that his wife kept her last name when she married him, and for some reason this set my class alight with indignation. "That's messed up." "...Why?" "I'm sorry, that just goes against tradition." "But a woman is her husband's once she's married."

My teacher looked equally as enraged as I did at the last comment, which was unnecessarily provocative and weirdly specific and just uncalled for. In the past I may have sat there and simply shaken my head at this boy's prejudice, but today I said something. "That's irrelevant and offensive and not even true, so keep your big mouth shut." My class was shocked since I almost never open my mouth unless I'm called upon.

Eventually this guy left the classroom because he became infuriated that someone with a vagina tried to prove him wrong. I walked out thirty minutes later, unscathed, but overall disappointed in humanity. The same girl that said a woman changing her last name when she got married was tradition also claimed that "the 1800s would have been my thing! I would have loved to do anything my husband asked me to." Oh, right, like to back off while he pulls a Henry VIII and slaps you around. You like turkey sandwiches? Good thing I coincidentally just started making ten of them just a few minutes ago!

I had no idea people in my school, not to mention the elective of Poetry class, thought such ridiculous things like this. I don't even understand them. But I know one thing: I don't care who you are, I'm not taking your last name and your skewed prejudices if you can't accept my independence. It's not gonna happen.