“Are you a boy or a girl?”
I caught my breath and looked down at Justin, who was staring at me with intense curiosity. We were standing with the rest of his preschool classmates in the stairwell outside of the classroom, waiting for the head teacher to open the door. All twelve of the jostling, chattering three and a half year olds stopped and turned to look at me. They knew me and accepted me as another teacher at their school—I had been to their classroom several times that year: to build block towers with them, to help them paint, to scaffold their play and their interactions. No one had wondered aloud about my gender until now. I hadn’t had to answer this question yet.
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