you-neek...

i remember the scene so well. tony guest and i were driving down santa ana avenue, only one block from our house when he said it. you're real unique, bean bean. ohhhhhhh, i had a fit. had. a. fit. i crossed my arms tight over my chest, squeezed my eyebrows together real tight and flung my feet up on the dashboard of that big ass navy blue club wagon van. how dare he call me unique, i thought to myself. who the hell is he calling unique?! i'll tell what you are mister meanie-pants... 

wait, what does unique mean?

it was 1987. i was five years old.

i don't remember why he called me unique at that moment. probably, i was recalling (which in my case meant fabricating... i did that a lot back then) some account from the day at montessori school... oh ya, i'm one of those. 

when i was five, i had the most elaborate days of play with my pals. imaginary games, scenarios, characters and specific life events far too provocative and emotionally driven for the average school children. but what the hell did we care? 

often, we'd collect piles and piles of dried up pine needles... the really long ones that were great for practicing your braiding skills. then we'd sit between the bushes and a chain link fence and build walls of pine needles to either side and above us, making a cave. there were plenty of old cigarette butts, so we'd collect those, pretend to smoke them and use them as cash, a form of trading for goods and services, duh. oh, did i forget to mention it was the apocalypse and we were in hiding/protecting ourselves from robots and machines who were at war with our government? yup.

ps... 95% girls. usually the only boy that wanted to play with us was chris burns, bless his heart. we told him if he was going to play our game, he'd have to make babies with all of us so we could start a new world in our cave. he said he'd trade his baby making for five cigarette butts each. seemed reasonable at the time.

hmmm, i guess it's not so unreasonable that tony guest would call me unique. in fact, that was probably the most kind-hearted way to say what he was really thinking! seriously, i love this dad of mine.

here's to keepin' it unique. i think i'll wear stripes, polkadots and plaid today... and probably shout off some (workplace innapropriate) thoughts on gender-norms... all in a good day.

pps... i'm on a management team of six in-house managers. five of us are women. fuck ya. 

love you.