What kind of girl doesn’t like pink?

January 6th, 2010

I have a niece named T and she is 7. I have another niece named Mila was is also 7 years old. T’s mom carries around hand sanitizer and Lysol wipes. Mila’s mom carries around a red bandanna handkerchief and she just uses her spit to clean off the dirt. This is not a bad thing because I remember my mother doing it to us, before the invention of soap. T likes to wear pretty fluffy dresses and fancy hair ties while Mila wears funky jeans and t-shirts. T likes dolls and purses while Mila likes animals, preferably live ones. Mila is my poster faux farm girl on the front page of the blog holding the goat. T’s mom won’t let her real name, photo or likeness be used anywhere in public.

Mila’s mom is a zoo veterinarian who loves to travel to Madagascar to save lemurs and the Panama jungle to save frogs and to live in tents no matter what the season. T’s mom is a stay at home mom who will only stay in a tent if it is in The Four Seasons with 24 hour room service. I could go on and on about their differences but here is the thing. Apparently, I am not the only one that notices these differences. Even at 7 years old the girls know they are very different. They get along just fine but they know they come from very different places. Mila does not seem to care about this but T is a little concerned and needed to talk about it with my mother. “Grandma, you know that Mila is not really a girl” she said one day. “Yes she is” replied my mom. “No, I don’t think she is, she doesn’t like dolls, or hair ties and she doesn’t even like the color pink, she is not really even a real girl” T stated very firmly. “Well, those things don’t mean she isn’t a girl” my mom told her. “Well grandma, I think she is one of those half girl, half boys, you know, what is the name for them? They have a special name when they are half girl and half boy, what is that name you call them?” In the time it took for my mother’s gaze to reach my wide eyes and eaves-dropping ears about 5 names came to mind. Let’s see: cross-dresser, transsexual, transgender, hermaphrodite, transvestite – I wonder if those are the names she is thinking of of? Apparently my mom thought of the same names because we both started to laugh and she whispered to me “how do we get out of this one?” And then we were saved from a conversation that no one wanted to have when T shouted out “I know the name! I know the name! Grandma, she is one of those tom boys!”. Whew! Saved by a good old fashioned name. A tomboy. How easy was that. I should have known because that is what they used to call me when I was a kid.