The Transfiguration Toddler

My youngest brother is many things. For Halloween, he was a dragon one day, with a stuffed pantyhose tail and aluminum foil spikes, and a lizard the next, wearing a sparkly green acrobatics costume from dance recitals past. On normal days, he’s a sweet-faced demon determined to make me miserable. And now, they tell me, he’s going to be a rooster (insert obligatory “They told me I could be anything so I became a rooster” meme here). 

At the tender age of three and three-quarters, my brother has already morphed through a more diverse range of species than most birders witness in their lifetimes (and 97% of statistics are made up). You may wonder why this is.  And I would regale you with an intense tale of gender roles and the arts, of belonging and passions. Why keep that lovely scenario in the hypothetical? That’s what I’m asking!

My family dances.  I started pretty late with hip hop when I was eight, but my first brother began his short-lived acrobatics career at the age of five.  Both of us were born with the rhythm of a dancer in our veins -- I danced along to the whirrs of a printer as a child, and we now battle along to hip hop beats and Kpop together.  Then came the third child, and tried as he did to find his inner rhythm, all it resulted in was pain for the family watching.

Despite his natural limitations, my youngest brother came to dance one summer day and I let him try out a pair of tap shoes in the lost and found.  He delighted in the unwieldy clicks and slams that came from the metal plates, and we figured that it was time for the youngest lime to have a chance in the dancing scene.  We enrolled him in the only class available for three-year-olds: Fairytale Ballet and Tap.  As the name might imply, the class was filled with wispy, blonde-haired, pink-clad girls with lovely big eyes and the most charming smiles.  And then there was my brother, in all of his manly, dark-haired, small-eyed glory.  

Now, he's going to be a rooster, and I have been enlisted to create his headpiece.  He doesn't seem to realize that he's the only one not wearing a leotard during class, but he just might notice that he's not wearing a frilly chicken costume once showtime comes around.  I have faith in his versatility to crow among the squawks.

In case you were wondering what my little master actually looks like, here he is, in more or less the order of the limes above (other than the rooster, for obvious reasons).  And here are some extras I found while flipping through my paparazzi collection.  Honestly, I think my brother is the cutest and I hope he never changes.  But apparently that's not going to happen anytime soon.