There once was a little girl who was not very little at all. In fact, she was very tall even when she was very small. She looked at the other little girls and she didn’t look like them. She looked at the little boys and thought that maybe she should be one of them. But the little boys said that little girls are not the same as little boys and that very tall girl was definitely not a boy, but still a girl.
Eventually, the very tall little girl wasn’t a little girl anymore. She grew and grew until she was a very tall woman. She looked at the other women and she still didn’t look quite like them. She looked at the men, and she didn’t look quite like them, either. The very tall girl/woman was not quite like anyone.
The very tall woman had lots of very big words. Very tall women with very big words do not fit easily into a world of very small women with ordinary words. Men say that they like tall women with big words, but they do not. They like the *idea* of tall women with big words. Women who like women like tall women with big words. Being a tall woman with big words conveys that you are a woman who likes women, even if you are not. The very tall woman did not like women, in *that* way, so this did not help her either.
The very tall woman also had very big opinions. She did not think that ferrets make appropriate domestic pets and that dogs should not have people names. She thought that Neil Gaiman was a terrific writer and that white wine was a pointless exercise. She thought that all men were too lucky and that almost none of them realized this. This opinion also did not make men like the very tall woman.
She did not care very much, the very tall woman, what most people thought of her. The very tall woman loved six people and the rest of the world could go to hell. Most people did not find that that fact endeared the very tall woman to them. The tall woman didn’t care.
The tall woman was very good at doing three things. She could make wonderful sunnyside-up fried eggs; she could knit hats that were symmetrical and not itchy at all; and she loved people very hard, even when the didn’t deserve it, which is the hardest and most necessary thing of all.
©2020 by Jessie Hanson. All rights reserved.