Diverse Ponderings

When Fio was young, she wanted to live her adult life in luxury, but circumstances thankfully intervened, and she's a better person for it.
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When Fio clutches at her bosom to locate her credit card in her bra and the young male clerk looks politely in the other direction....
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When Fiorella wakes up each morning, her refreshed  brain floods with inspiration, and she immediately reaches for her yellow list and stick pen (su lista amarilla y su boligrafo) which she keeps by the side of the bed (la cama). But as the light is low in at that time of day, she has to spend the rest of themorning trying to decipher her chicken scratches.
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When Fio was born, she checked "heterosexual" on her sexual choice card and started looking for her mate. The paperboy, the principal's son, the older brother of a boy in her first-grade class--they all attracted her. She can even still remember the names of her crushes from kindergarten on.
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When you think about it, it's interesting how different we humans are from each other, not only in how we look or speak, but also how we choose to live our lives--our occupations. We're so much more diverse than, say, butterflies. Mabe that's why we've become the dominant species.

Relative Height

Fiorella's not that tall, but she used to be.  In her sixth grade picture, she's the female steeple in the back row, center, but by the time she hit tenth grade, she was relegated to the front row, edging toward the side.  Yeah.  Five-four at age fifteen did not give her the same height advantage as  five-four at age eleven had.

Not that she saw it as an advantage.  Short girls  were petted and told how cute they were while tall girls were expected to be mature and responsible.  Besides, she was taller than the boys, which was becoming increasingly important to her because Fiorella was definitely heterosexual.  In fact, she has long maintained that her first words, five minutes out of the womb, were, "Where's my boyfriend?"  .

Her first indication she had shrunk, relatively speaking, was when the sophomore girls' PE teacher lined the class up for archery practice by height.  Fio walked automatically toward the front of the queue and was relegated to the tail.  She was short and cute at last

But even today, five-three and shrinking, she still feels like the tall, gawky steeple in the back row.