One time, when we were persuaded our cat Tater would live forever if only we fed her the correct diet, one that involved refrigeration and shredded bison and money, we discovered that our cat would (in fact) live one more week tops if required to eat anything other than her store kibble. It was a puzzler, since our previous cat (Saint) Larry would eat anything, and lots of it. Turns out that some cats not only become addicted to a particular flavor kibble, but also the shape of it. Kibble purveyors manufacture their crud in distinct shapes, stars, or discs, or cubes, and don’t you be messing with the wrong shape kibble.

This must be true of Tater, because she will eat her kibble if it’s whole but not the little bits left behind. Wrong shape. Unfortunately, this means we’ve now spent at least twenty bucks on cheap store kibble and only gotten seventeen years out of the cat, so far.

But it seems silly to me, getting used to the shape of a food. At least it did until I remembered moving to the west coast in 1976 and seeing the butter for the first time. The shape was all wrong and it bugged me. Butter was supposed to come in a stick. Dave was bringing home shorter, fatter sticks he called “cubes” even though they weren’t Cubish. That’s all wrong, I railed! Butter should be narrower! And you can’t call that a cube!

He could, though, and proceeded to cook with it, and by now I’ve probably hidden about four hundred pounds of it on my person, and didn’t mind it at all. Until last week, when I bought a pound of butter and lo! Four narrow East Coast sticks in the box. It looked all wrong.

Really, I can get used to things in a hurry. The day I learned we are not supposed to put two spaces after a period, I made a point to type with just the one space, and within two days I had my space-bar thumb completely trained over, even though I’d been a crack typist by then for over thirty years. It looked a little weird, but I got used to it, and now when I dig up an old essay with all the extra spaces, that’s what looks weird.

So you would think I could get used to the pronoun thing. It hasn’t been that long since people began having preferred pronouns, and by now I know a number of people who prefer to be referred to in the third person plural. I’m okay with that. In general I like to call people what they want to be called and see no reason to argue with them about it—they’re in charge of them. But my brain simply locks up and refuses to cooperate. I’ll concentrate and I’ll get it right two or three times in a row and then wsshhht out comes the wrong pronoun. Sometimes I get so embarrassed that I quit conversing altogether, a condition that doesn’t seem to upset other people nearly as much as I think it should.

I don’t know if it’s the pluralness of the pronouns that’s tripping me up. I do know younger people have no trouble at all with this and I also know that my brain is not sabotaging my efforts out of disrespect. It is true that I do not understand the non-binary identity, as much as I’ve read about it, mainly because I’m similarly confused about any identity: I don’t have all that much allegiance to my own. Female is way down the list of descriptors I’d use for myself. What does it mean to feel female? When I was a girl I didn’t feel like a boy but I also hated anything girly. To this day I don’t even care about shoes. I think other women feel more strongly about their sexual identity than I do, so it stands to reason that I also don’t know what it would feel like to feel All The Things. I can’t imagine caring. Perhaps this self-obliviousness is a hallmark of being Cis.

All I can do is try, and apologize from time to time. “Sorry—Old Brain,” I say, and they’re forgiving. And if they’re not, secretly I will be thinking: Get a grip, Peanut, this is the best I can do. Whether it is or not.

Anyway, now we have both sticks and cubes of butter in the fridge. I don’t know which one looks right anymore. I guess I could go either way.