Dots. The world is a dot (thank you, Mama for this lovely phrase). How surprised was I this morning to open up my e-mail and find a message from a college friend that started out mentioning that she saw my comment on This Fish. I haven't seen this friend (a former roommate and partner in many a boy-related crime, including talking in French about one semi-possibility when we didn't want the other people at the table to hear what we were saying, because, you know, no one else in the world speaks French) in five years, haven't spoken to her in four (since way back in my Boston days). And then I make a comment about my long-standing crush on Atticus Finch (and UC Berkeley Alum Gregory Peck), and what should result, but an e-mail from out of the blue. The world is so tiny.
I knew that colleagues and former classmates from library school have seen my posts on the professional listserves, but that makes sense, those are things that people in my field belong to, and folks, the pool is very small. But to be found on a blog written by a woman who used to live in New York but now lives in Texas by a former roommate who used to live in California but now lives in DC is just so...random. The Interweb is a powerful place, my friends, very powerful indeed.
Pink. So, apparently women are genetically predisposed to like pink or at least colors in the pink family. I, of course, see no problem with this, given my lifelong affinity for the color. I've been tomboyish. I've climbed trees. I've had summers where my knees spent nary a day without a scab. But I also did many of these things in a pink shirt, pink hairband and matching pink socks (often dayglo pink...I was super-stylin'). I have some friends who eschew pink in favor of purple. Well, that's okay, apparently that's a natural feminine tendency and also part of the pink family. I have friends who profess a love for neutrals or simply for black. But even they (yes, Irene, I'm talking to you) have been known to purchase a pink shirt from time to time, and they don't know why. Now they do. It's that double-x chromosome that'll get you every time. It will make you cry. It will make you rant and rave when you can honestly step outside yourself and wonder what the he double hockey-sticks you're doing. And it can also make you like pink. So there.
Being the Youngest in the Room. It has come to my attention that there comes a time when you have to stop behaving like the youngest in the room, even when you still are the youngest in the room (yes, I used that phrase three times in one sentence). For the last three and a half years at work, I have been the "baby," the "oh, my gosh, you're so young" co-worker that the other women treat almost like one of their own children. I've honestly had the director of a library system tuck the tag into the back of my dress and then say, "This is what happens when you work with a bunch of older women." And there are some days when I don't mind having a bunch of surrogate mothers. And there are other days when I realize that I tend to take advantage of it, tend to act as if I were in my own family environment and that if I do something wrong, someone will pick me up and protect me. There's nothing wrong with feeling protected at work, but I also have to realize that at almost 27 (GASP), the youngest one in the room is not exactly a baby anymore. I liked talking about pink more...
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