Here Comes the Bride

George strolls around the living room wearing a fireman’s hat, a white lacey hand-knitted baby blanket draped around himself.

“Darcy! Darcy, you want to see my wedding dress? See: it’s white!” George is being a beautiful bride, and very pleased with himself he is.

“Yeah, George, it’s nice.”

“You want to have a wedding, Darcy?”

Darcy greets this with enthusiasm. “Okay!” He crosses the living room.

“You can be the man,” George directs him, “and I’ll be the lady.”

“I’m not a man!” Darcy is quite firm on this. Well, we have one child already with some gender confusion. Why not two? George, however, isn’t ready to give up the fantasy quite so easily.

“Yes, you can be the man. You can wear my hat.” It’s close to a bribe: the bright red fireman’s hat in question has been in George’s exclusive possession for close to an hour now.

Darcy is unyielding. “No, I’m not a man. I can’t be a man, I’m not finished yet.”

“You’re not finished yet?”

“Yeah. I’m not growed up yet.” Ah. No gender confusion for this lad, then.

George tries another tactic. Born to be a negotiator, this boy. “Well, would you like to be another lady, then? You can wear the other dress!” And, after all, this is now legal in Ontario, though I am beginning to reel with the gender-bending going on: two males getting married as two females. Darcy, however, while not a negotiator, sure can hold a position.

“No. I will be a man another day, when I’m big.”

George has shot his last arrow. “Okay. Let’s play trains.”

“Okay!”

And off they go to be engineers, the not-finished man, and the would-be bride, the latter still wearing his wedding dress and fireman’s hat.

The Asphalt is Coming, The Asphalt is Coming!!