Make Believe

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Playing dress up with a girl and playing dress up with a boy are two radically different things.

With girls you can choose from princess dresses and tutus and crowns and high heels.

With boys you choose from safari gear, police uniforms, cowboy hats, and pirate eye patches. (Did you know that pirates are the good guys?)

With girls you walk around dragging your doll behind you.

With boys you shoot each other and imaginary bad guys and hand out tickets if you are a policeman and make them go to the blank if you are a pirate.

This doesn't surprise me overly much. After all, girls are made of sugar and spice and boys are made of puppy dog tails and snails.

But the thing that surprises me the most is something that is shared by both little girls and little boys: the insistence that I put on one of their pint sized costumes. They don't seem to understand that what barely fits them will never, ever fit me. Make-believe may turn me into a vicious law abiding pirate, but it won't get even my right leg into the tutu.

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