The naïveté of a rising first grader

You have a boy’s name.

I don’t need to ask you if I’ve ever told you that

because I know you know I know.

And you thought it too.

You used to complain about it to me when we were seven,

telling me that you wished your parents had named you

Alexandra, as they had originally planned.

You bitched about it

all the way up until we were maybe fourteen

when you started playing guitar,

stopped showering,

(not totally, but seriously)

started hating the world,

and, for once…

loving yourself.

That was when you decided it was okay

to be a chick with a guy’s name.

Maybe it was even cool.

For the official record,

and by official, I mean in my opinion:

Of course it was cool.

Anyway, your boy name,

back in the day,

led me to think that you were,

in fact, a boy.

No, you didn’t look like one.

Not in the least.

But, you were a new student

starting summer school

the year before we both entered the first grade,

and you were absent the first two days of class.

Nobody knew who the hell you were,

so excuse my six-year-old naïveté

for assuming that the empty desk beside me

belonged to a grimy boy that ate his boogers for fun

and saved the remaining snot for glue.

I knew too many of this type,

and, quite frankly, had had enough of them.

As far as I was concerned,

you were some boy I didn’t want to know,

and just like that,

I flippantly wrote you off.

Imagine my astonishment

when you finally decided

to show up for the third day of class

with a summer scarf tied around your neck

to match the flowered dress

that was undoubtedly a sample garment from

your Dad’s clothing company.

Your mom had curled your hair

for your first day

and as Mrs. Phillips

introduced you to us,

“Everyone, this is Taylor.

She is a new student,”

you smiled meekly.

I stared at you.

Oh my gosh, it exists.

And, it’s a girl.

I was beside myself.

Nonetheless, you sat beside me.

**Disclaimer: Any suggestions that the above may make toward fact should be considered largely coincidental. I may or may not have a friend named Taylor. However, for her own protection, whether fictionalized or real, I am writing this disclaimer. Please also consider poetic license, errr, more plainly stated in a French accent, "zeh bending of zeh truze."