Anything but ordinary

my 7th grade social studies/8th grade science teacher (he did both classes. Somehow…) had a snake lovingly named Hisser. Hisser would occasionally be taken out to crawl and he was held by kids and when there were fire alarms Hisser was taken along, usually to his chagrin. 

This was one of those days where we had in class work time and most of us were just chilling and so Mr. A got Hisser out and started passing him around.

Every girl student that he came to, he would immediately snuggle up to, wrap around their arms, and get cozy. With boy students, he would just sort of sit in the coiled lump that he’d been handed in. This was true with just about every single student, and Mr. A said that Hisser likes girls a lot better than guys and this has been thoroughly proven by Hisser’s attitude.

Then Hisser was handed to me. He was a loveable cold scaley rope as you would expect, but he didn’t coil around my arms. He didn’t get cozy. He just sat there. And Mr. Anderson said, “Huh. That’s weird. He usually likes girls.” 

I passed the snake to my friend and surely enough, Hisser wrapped around her arms and got cozy. 

I came out as a trans guy about 7-8 years later, and just recently realized that Hisser was right about me not being a girl all along.