The First Steps of a Journey

So for my AP United States History class we have to write a research paper; my topic is the gay rights movement in America. Today I began reading one of the books that I chose as a source

And I opened it up to the dedication page and found this

The word ‘calmly’ can hold different meanings in different circumstances. If you were to pass someone a bucket of water calmly when their house was burning down, it could suggest that you were the sort of brave individual who was always prepared to combat the sources of arson when they occur. If you were to ask a nervous bank teller to fill a sack with money while calmly pointing a gun at their head, it might mean that you were the kind of villainous person who practiced such odious and criminal activities on a regular basis. Or if, like me, you were to sit calmly typing the next chapter of your chronicle in the lives of some unfortunate young children, while all around you the kitchen of the reputable restaurant that you were hiding in was slowly filling with sand, it would indicate that you have a life that is often filled with peril and misfortune, and that you were bound by duty to complete your task, no matter how miserable.

Of course, the word ‘calmly’ is never used to indicate a person flying into a rage and shouting your words angrily. ‘Angrily’ is in fact an antonym of ‘calmly’, an antonym being a word with entirely the opposite meaning of the original, such as ‘villain’ and ‘volunteer’, ‘birthday party’ and ‘tragic fire’, or ‘author’ and ‘happy person’.

Most of my friends are aware that I do this, and will back me up in conversations without batting an eye when I reference my daughter. And the best part is that they literally never drop the story. They just 100% all the time accept that I have a two-year-old adopted daughter. The fact that she happens to be a sheep is an unimportant detail, not worth mentioning until an anecdote gets too weird to plausibly be about a human toddler.

Which actually takes much longer than you’d think, since human toddlers apparently have absolutely zero sense. “She bites if you stop paying attention to her” is believable, “she tries to eat rocks out of the landscaping” is believable, “she stuck her head through a fence and couldn’t get out” is believable. “She jumped a five foot fence and came screaming back into the house through the dog door when I left her outside in the pasture” does get some strange looks, though usually not for the right reason.

Occasionally the joke gets turned around on me, though. I posted a picture on my not-tumblr blog of her wearing my glasses, and every comment was “Oh my gosh she looks just like you!!!” “I would never have known she was adopted If you hadn’t told me!!” “Are you sure that’s not an old picture of you?!”

So apparently this is what I look like: