I’m truly touched by the outpouring of concern from my fan base (all 4 of you) regarding my gender confusion and I’m delighted to report that British Airways has found a way to correct all of the information in my account.  Coincidentally, these updates went into effect on January 20…..the same day that women in cities all over the world gathered in thousands to march for women’s rights.

I happened to be in New York City that day and, walking down Columbus Avenue, I wandered into a growing stream of women in pink cat-ear hats and found myself among activists holding signs with slogans that covered a broad range of issues from equal pay to sexual harassment to education . I watched the throngs of women and a handful of men make their way toward  Central Park where the march was to formally take place and although I couldn’t join them because I was late for a friend’s bar mitzvah,  I briefly considered pulling one of them aside and sharing my success in being recognized by British Airways as a bona fide woman.

Realizing that my gender fight was rather low on the totem pole of issues they were gathering for that day, I kept my story to myself…but I’m more than happy to share it with you, dear readers.  If you’d have told me in high school that one day there would be a huge letter “F” next to my name and that I’d be happy about it, I’d have just about fainted in horror.  But here I am, basking in the validation of being recognized for what I’ve always been—a big old “F”.

 

In other news, my tragus (hey!! this is the first time auto-correct didn’t change that to “triage”!! I guess you CAN teach an old laptop new tricks) is healing well and I’m now able to gingerly place my noise-canceling headphones over my ears again.  And not a moment too soon, as I’d just returned from a weeklong trip and about 45 seconds after being greeted joyfully by my sons who claim that they missed me so so so so much, they were right back to arguing loudly in the kitchen. I pulled my wireless Beats right out of my airplane carry-on bag, put those bad boys on and enjoyed the sound of silence.

Published by Gila Pfeffer

American mom of four living in London. I'm a breast cancer pre-vivor and survivor; rare, but it's a thing. I keep my mind sharp by outsmarting my kids (most of the time) and am hopeful that the day will come when they learn to flush the toilet without me having to shout at them. I'm a blogger/freelance writer and my writing has been published on Grown and Flown, The Girlfriend and It's Momtastic among others. An essay I wrote about raising teens will be published this summer in an anthology by a New York Times best selling author and I'm currently at work on a memoir about things I've survived including breast cancer. In my spare time I'm a content creator on Instagram, Twitter and Tik Tok and my work has been featured on Huffpost, Today Parents and Sammiches & Psych Meds.

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