Ode to four-year-olds

Four-year-olds make great friends. In fact, lately, they've been better friends than some of my friends who are my age and tell me that they are "all booked up" when I ask them if they want to hang out, don't return any of my calls or emails, even though I've left several messages and then followed up with a few emails, or send me annoying forwards but never have time to write me substantive emails.

Thus, here's to all of the four-year-olds in my life who in times of frustration have made me smile.

Why four-year-olds rule:
1. They give you a big smile when they see you and are genuinely excited to see you.

2. You can tell that they are genuinely excited, because they want to share/show you their latest cool toy, magnetic circus coloring thing, costume, halloween candy, game, etc. with you and will run off and get it.

3. They give you the excuse to go trick-or-treating for the first time in, oh, 15-20 years. :)

4. They let you eat waffles for dinner.

5. They share their prized artwork with you.

6. In this age of email, they give you hand-written invitations for dinner, and moreover, bike to your house and hand-deliver said invitation (with adult help).

7. One of them still pronounces my name better than 80 percent of the non-Spanish-speaking grown up population.

8. They say "prestidigitation" while showing me their latest magic trick.

9. I am still cool to them.

On my lesbianism

In my non-left wing workplace, I like to flaunt my lesbianism. Well, ok, I wasn't always lesbian, but on my very first day of work, within 3 minutes of meeting one of my coworkers, I was asked whether I was married. Instead of saying it's none of your freaking beeswax (hellooooo. I've known you for less than 2 minutes. Don't you want to know the proper way to pronounce my name first????????), I said no. Then she asked me if I was engaged. Perhaps you'd like to know what I did before coming to this workplace? After I replied in the negative, she then asked me if I had a boyfriend. Now, those of you who know me know that I'm pretty private until you get to know me, and even then, if I want to tell you information, I will tell you. No need to waza waza *ask* me anything. (Conversely, if you ask me 5 times when my birthday is and I don't tell you, it means I don't want you to know. So if this has happened to you, and you don't know me well enough to figure out that if I don't answer a question that you've asked five times, take a hint; I don't want to tell you.) So you can imagine how peeved I was with this person.

Anyway, I didn't feel like continuing with this line of questioning, so I said, "actually, I like girls." So I have now worked at this place for 3 years, and some people are on to me while others are not.

The other day, one of my coworkers who is on to me said, "so you want to be the
poster child of lesbianism at XYZ and associates? Well, that's kind of selfish of
you. Maybe we should let an actual lesbian be a lesbian. . ."

I wasn't trying to be "selfish", really. . ..