Overheard.

Second grade. We sat four to a table, and the girl beside me was left-handed, same as me.

We were doing cursive. I'd been taught to turn my paper to the right, which is what a left-hander has to do if she wants to see what she's writing. She'd been taught to turn hers to the left, like everyone else in the room, regardless of which hand was holding the pencil. So she wrote with her wrist curled up over the top of the page, pushing the pencil instead of pulling it, dragging her hand through everything she'd just written.

I leaned over and told her to turn the paper the other way.

The teacher's aide told me to be quiet.

Fair enough. I was talking. I was always talking, and everywhere else in my life that was the correction. Motor Mouth. Said with a sigh. It meant: less of you, please.

Then Mrs. Hutzell said it.

She looked like every other teacher I ever had. Nothing memorable about her. But when she was in a room, you knew exactly where she was. And she said it out loud... in front of the table, in front of the aide... and she meant it as a compliment.

At seven, I understood something I couldn't have explained. The thing I got corrected for everywhere else was the thing she liked best about me.

She was the first person to tell me not to fall in line. I've been failing to fall in line ever since. It's most of my personality, and all of my career.

The part I only worked out much later is what I was actually doing that day. I was telling another left-handed girl that the instruction everybody had been handed didn't fit her, and that she was allowed to do it differently. Seven years old, and I'd already found the only subject I've ever really had.

Everything I write now is that. Women who don't fit the arrangement they were given. Women who turn the paper the other way and take what comes.

So when I say I'm a rare breed -- the black sheep standing outside the flock, the one who won't fall in -- understand that it isn't a tagline I picked. It wasn't a decision made in a meeting.

A second-grade teacher named it. Out loud, in front of everyone, while I was in the middle of getting in trouble for it.

She's gone, so I'm saying it here. Thank you, Mrs. Hutzell.

Rare breed. It's not a brand. It's a diagnosis.

And it was never mine. It was hers.

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Last week, I overheard this at a bar...

A waiter asked the man whether his wife would like her mimosa virgin. The man said, "My wife would probably like her mimosa virgin, but my girlfriend here prefers hers dirty as shit." He didn't lower his voice. He didn't hesitate.

Here's the version where he did...

As soon as the words jumped out of his mouth, he'd regretted it. All for a joke, he'd toasted a brand-new relationship that actually had a chance. For the first time, he was dating someone his age.

Okay, close to his age.

At least in the same decade.

Jennifer glanced from him to the waiter, then back at him. And the waiter just wanted an answer.

"She'll have a dirty mimosa."

The waiter retreated, and he took Jennifer's hand in his.

"My wife?" Jennifer eyed him with the face women use when they already know they won't like the answer.

He hadn't mentioned he was married.

Was he? Sort of. Technically, he was. Legally, he was. Emotionally? Not so much.

He and Samir had only gotten married because she needed a green card, and he needed the money to pay off his senior-year tuition.

He gave her the smile he kept for investors who wanted too much. Maybe he could walk it back. Say it was a joke. After all, he never wore a wedding band.

Okay... once... but only to the green-card interview.

He held up his left hand. "See, no tan line."

Jennifer said nothing. She reached into her bag, came out with a diamond the size of a molar, and slid it onto her left hand.

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