because men feel entitled to usurp vocabulary describing women's role in creation while in the business of gross and violent machinery

TO: Colonel George Bond , Fort Greely, Alaska

Dear Col. Bond:

I'd like you to know I took exception to the fact that you called the yellow cable that provides data to the EKVs (“Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicles” which intercept intercontinental ballistic missiles) - their “umbilical cord.”

I imagine, Sir, that at one time, many years ago, your mother looked down at you, just recently freed from the connecting element you shared, that fed you and grew you month after month, and she saw in you potential in a degree she knew not until that moment.

Even the most cynical among us, when set face to face with the realization of our hopes and the reenactment of our fears, i.e. our child, the being that we may well become the closest to in the world, cannot help but be driven by a ferocity of love that has every chance of outshining your missiles by bounds so large as to remain unrelatable, and that would most certainly have something sharply unequivocal to say about your careless choice of language.