Why you hate olives

Zarf just shared Olives for the Perplexed with me, after I ate an olive at a party on Saturday and was confused as to why I found it complex and delicious when all the olives I have eaten heretofore have been flat and awful.

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If you are me, you cannot hear the name of this game without cracking up.

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I had a very detailed dream this morning. It actually came on the heels of what felt like an unsettling nightmare; I was on a bus or tram, and fidgeting that I had forgotten something important. But then the vehicle stopped and I found a good friend of mine waiting to greet me, and the whole tone shifted.

I think I was visiting her, and had not seen her in a long time. We were close enough pals that I wasn't shy about touching her (my way of greeting her was to muss up her short dark hair), and yet we had somehow fallen completely out of touch. While taking me to her home, she started to talk about her young child, and I was caught off guard, not realizing that she even had one. For some reason, I chose to fake it and act as if it were no surprise. When we arrived at her house I got to meet the child, whose name was Robin: a healthy, precocious toddler wearing overalls and short blond hair.

The thing has has me remember the dream was that my friend, as a single parent, had decided to raise the kid as androgynously as she could. Besides the ambiguous name and way that she dressed the child, she had taught Robin to answer the question "Are you a boy or a girl?" by saying "Relax!" In other words: it's not really important that you to know, so don't worry about it. Invariably the questioner, confused, would ask again, and the kid would repeat, emphatically: "Re... lax!" Smiling the whole time.

I was really bothered by this last detail, thinking my friend was taking a legitimate philosophy and applying it with very poor judgment by using her pre-sentient kiddo as a mouthpiece, but couldn't work up the gumption to say anything to her face about it. Instead I resolved to write about it in my LJ once I got back home. I remember thinking that I might want to refer to Robin as "he", and when my friend would object to this, I'd counter that Robin must be a boy "because boys have short hair," knowing that my friend (a through-and-through female who identified as such) had a boyish haircut. This may sound kind of acid but we were actually close enough friends that she'd take it the way I'd intend it. However that may have been; I'm not really sure, writing this now. I don't think I was quite myself in this dream. I found it very interesting anyway.