me in a tutu, c. 1972, originally uploaded by Julian.

And now, finally, lest it be said that I am too caught up in wisecrack and critique to respond to the essentially open-hearted social gesture that is a Facebook 25 Random Things About Me tagging, I give you this one true thing and the photographic evidence that confirms it:

1. I wore a tutu to school one day when I was in the third grade.

Which besides being true has the additional virtue of being truly random, as I cannot for the life of me remember why I did this or think how to fit this moment into the narrative of my life. Judging from the other boys’ attire, it wasn’t any kind of dress-up day, nor did I make a habit of cr0ss-dressing or grow up anything but straight.

On the other hand, that’s not to say that my “progressive” Southern California public elementary school wasn’t the sort of place that might encourage this sort of thing. My third-grade teacher, in particular, a wonderful woman named Billie Vincent, pretty much let us each design our own curriculums, and I’d always assumed there was some high-flying educational theory behind that, which I suppose there was. But I’m guessing now that one of the most valuable things I took away from that third-grade year was a taste for randomness.