Her brother said, "Your ears are on backwards." She thought he was teasing her and denied it. He was persistent. She was getting kind of pissed off. "My ears are NOT on BACKWARDS!" He, an even tempered soul to the core, shrugged. Later I passed her in the hall, "Your ears are on backwards." She stopped dead still, "Wait a minute, what do you mean?" "Your ears," I said, pointing to the top her her head. "They are on backwards." She broke into a huge grin. Oh. Those ears. She'd forgotten about them.

In the grocery store yesterday as I was weighing herbs at a small scale, I noticed an old man pass my daughter and heard what he said. I could feel his intention, which had no creepiness at all. I smiled. She arrived at my elbow and stood close. I asked if she understood what he meant. She did not. I smiled again and walked up to the old man.

"She didn't understand you," I explained to him. He laughed. We both laughed. How does it feel to be an anachronism? He had sort of snapped his teeth at her, a totally incomprehensible gesture out of context, and said, "Ehhhh, what's up Doc?" I instinctively knew he had, in that skewed way of the tribe of free association, been referencing her ears. But she is completely unfamiliar with that reference which, after all, was written in 1943.

Later as we walked down the center of the grand staircase of the public library which is wide, white, and dramatically lit so that one feels oneself to be making a bit of an entrance to the lobby, we passed a man coming up. He glanced at her. I felt her resolve, straight ahead stare, correct posture. Its brave to walk around town in cat ears. It can make you a weird-o in the eyes of some. What good practice in bravery, individualism, making a statement to the world. A fine lesson, it will come in handy later when she's an adult with real and necessarily difficult or controversially artistic things to say.