"That is a girl's bike." "You're no girl, you're a boy."

Abbie and I spent this morning, like most Friday mornings, rummaging. This is an intense process that involves encroaching on complete strangers’ garages, lairs if you will, in an attempt to purchase junk that the owner no longer wants. While perusing said just I generally must engage in small talk with the owner, fielding questions like “aren’t you cute?” or “how old is she” or “how did you get to be so cute?” Today, however, the questions tended more toward “how old is he?” I’m not exactly sure why so most people thought she was a he. Abbie wore jeans and a white onesie decorated with a bluish design, which apparently telegraphs “boy” in spite of the shoes with pink highlights she also wore. Either that, or since everybody seemed to have boys’ clothes today, everybody assumed I had a boy.

While Abbie was gestating, I thought I would never bathe Abbie in pink outfits. No enforcer of Coded Gender Stereotypes would I be. The downside to that thought-process is no one can tell the gender of a baby without clothing sporting some sort of Coded Gender Stereotype, like blue (boy), pink (girl), construction machinery (boy), or Indigo Girls (girl). I assumed that people instinctually knew the gender of babies, like they were born carrying a sign saying “I am a boy. I like trucks.” Maybe I assumed everyone would simply ask the gender, then compliment me for being a wonderful father that destroys Coded Gender Stereotypes. Turns out in the real world people just take a wild guess. I know it shouldn’t, but when people guess the wrong gender, it really grates me, like when people assume that I’m a Nebraska Cornhusker fan just because I’m wearing the Nebraska Cornhusker t-shirt I got for free on a business trip.

So, long story short, as soon as we got home, I put a pink bow in her hair.

Bonus Not-Necessarily-Abbie-Related Observation: I got a phone call today shortly before noon. After answering, a recorded voice asked “are you tired of your 9 to 5 job?” I have little patience for telemarketers, especially non-human ones, so I promptly hung up, then started wondering how much sense it made to call people at home in the middle of a weekday asking if they’re tired of their 9 to 5 job.