Your one wild and Precious Life

They’re practicing active listening skills, but what they really want to be doing is watching Disney on Ice. You don’t blame them. Your heart isn’t in it anymore, and they know it. Hell, they’ve known it far longer than you have. They’ve known it since spotting your illegal pop-up booth at the other end of the strip mall, and the reason why they are still pretending to listen attentively—heads bobbing, jaws slacked in an exaggerated Oh really? Tell us more!—is because they know that this recital of hastily-memorized facts about the pliability of eco-friendly, hypo-allergenic bamboo bandages is the only thing you’ve said all day. You are a watery soap dispenser that they are too lazy to replace so they put up with it.

The shorter one cuts in just as you’re about to launch into a compelling tirade on the current plastic bandage industry. “Do you have any princess ones?” What she lacks in height she makes up for in eyeliner. She must’ve smudged the edges with her fingertip to get that crazed, after-the-earthquake look. You glance down at her right hand and, sure enough, her pointer finger is stained with kohl.

“Sadly, no.” You curl both ends of your mouth down. “We at Kiss Kiss Boo Boo reject manufacturing products that perpetuate traditional gender norms and stereotypes and, like, in 2026, don’t you think that is something all companies should be striving towards?”

A beat of silence now, during which the three of you ponder the casualties of gender warfare and the institutional corruption of Big Bandage, when all of a sudden the taller one blurts, “You look like Mulan.”

It’s okay. You’ve prepared for this. You roll your shoulders back and raise your chin an inch higher. “You actually can’t say that. It’s called a micro-aggression and you could get in real trouble if I told your parents.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

But it is clearly not okay. You can sense that you are losing them based on their non-verbal cues: lips pursing, eyes scanning nearby storefronts, lingering a beat too long on the Bath & Body Works with a second exit that spits you out on the other side. The shorter one tugs on the taller one’s Elsa braid a little too hard and you catch a glimpse of red beneath polyester white.

“Wait,” you say, folding your body in half to get closer to them, level with them, to inhale them. Ah,  yes. Marc Jacobs’ Daisy. Some things are still sacred.

However, this turns out to be a mistake and they instinctively back away from you. They were trained not to let strangers put their faces too close to them. Good parenting! You suddenly wish you had a lollipop in your back pocket, or were currently driving a windowless van so they could slap it away from you and start sprinting in the opposite direction screaming MAMA! in time for a hidden camera crew to emerge from a group of fanny-pack-donning tourists like in those Just for Laughs Gags clips they used to air in-between episodes of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. Then the camera would cut to you yanking off your own princess wig to reveal the words SAFE ADULT tattooed on your forehead, and you really do look like Mulan with your hair tied back like that.

You take a non-predatory step back. Hold your hands up as if to say, Look! No nonconsensual touching here!

When the expressions on their faces fail to morph into anything even remotely akin to glee, you decide on a different approach.

“Do you know I used to be a figure skater?” The framing of the question is merely for their benefit, because how would they have known?

Still, no response. Not even a subtle look exchanged between them. You start to wonder if their unresponsiveness is due to a lack of understanding. They have stopped practicing their active listening skills so there’s no way of knowing for sure.

You begin cutting the air around your torso with flat palms, making swoosh swoosh sounds out the sides of your mouth before realizing that it maybe wasn’t the most accurate auditory depiction of ice skaters, so you switch to kee kee hoping the harshness of the k mimics the harshness of the blade coming down on ice.

You fly across the porcelain tiles as if you were on skates and not orthopedic clogs, and when you look over your shoulder at them to shoot a wink, you are delighted to come into contact with the triple camera lens of their phones instead. So taken aback you are by their awe and bedazzled phone cases that you nearly lose your balance. But you don’t. No, you’re too talented for that. You manage to spin it into an axel jump, landing right as the song—an instrumental version of “Let It Go”—comes to an end.

The food court crowd goes wild. Crochet flowers are yanked from kiosks, acrylic yarn splayed at your feet. From everywhere the shuttering of flashes, followed by wailing, then shrieking applause. It is a sound that would terrify most people, but not you. You, who have been waiting for this all your life.