First Chapter -- First Paragraph -- Tuesday Intros!

Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea hosts First Chapter, First Paragraph, Tuesday Intros. This week's intro is from Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress by Susan Jane Gilman:

When I was little, I was so girlie and ambitious, I was practically a drag queen. I wanted to be everything at once: a prima ballerina, an actress, a model, a famous artist, a nurse, an Ice Capades dancer, and Batgirl. I spent inordinate amounts of time waltzing around living room with a doily on my head, imagining in great detail my promenade down the runway as the new Miss America, during which time I would also happen to receive a Nobel Prize for coloring.

The one thing I did not want to be was a hippie.

"For Chrissake, you're not a hippie," said my mother, fanning incense around our living room with the sleeves of her dashiki. "You're four years old. You run around in a tutu. You eat TV dinners and complain when the food doesn't look exactly like it does on the packages. Hippies don't do that," she said. "Hippies don't make a big production out of eating their Tater Tots."