If I shave Lillian's head and start calling her Charlie, this will be why.

[mrissa]

This winter we bought tickets to take my grandmother to Cinderella at a local theater.

Just now a fundraising monkey from the local theater called me.

"Is this Marissa?"

I allowed as how it was.

"This is X from the Y, you know, the lovely theater where you saw Cinderella this last Christmastime?"

"Yes, I know who you are," I said. They are large. They are connected to my beautiful palace of (very bad) hockey. It would be difficult not to know who they were.

"Did it make you feel just like Cinderella?" she gushed.

"I don't require that of a theatrical performance," I said.

I MEAN SERIOUSLY WHAT.

I am what we technically call a grown woman. And what. WHAT. DID YOU FEEL JUST LIKE CINDERELLA WHAT. No, I felt like the phantom who burns down the theater and what do you mean that's the wrong musical. It's the right musical now, lady. I didn't at the time. But now I do.

I am not a sparkly princess. I was my Grandpa's princess. I was the kind of princess he gave his compass and protractor to and all his maps and stamps and stuff with math and knot-tying. That kind of princess. Nobody else in the world gets to try to make me be their princess. The only person who did that is gone, and I am 33 years old. STOP. Not every little girl dreams of a tiara, and I am not a little girl. Little girls do not have credit cards to buy tickets to your theater. Guess who else doesn't buy tickets to your theater? STOP COOING, LADY. GO AWAY.