A small girl with bright, wide eyes and wild hair once looked up at the sky and decided she wanted to fly. To be free as the birds are. Wouldn’t it be grand, she thought, to soar above everyone else? She declared that one day she would fly around the world. On wings if she could manage. She had a inkling about Evolution: if you needed something badly enough you could grow it. The grown-ups patted her hair and said, “The little ones have such cute notions,” for small girls are made of flesh and bones and not feathers and air. As small girls do she paid them no heed, so she practiced jumping off of tall things, for if the drop was high enough surely her wings would be scared into existence. She was smaller back then, and wore trousers with wide pockets for collecting odds and ends, and she ran about barefoot with her hair loose.

The grown-ups became concerned, for these are the first signs of Dreams: a dash more than usual of childhood imagination. You must know that these times are farther back from when we are now. Small girls were not supposed to have many Dreams, and if left untreated, Dreams can lead to Free Thinking and Radical Ideas. The only way to cure a girl of her Dreams was to dress her in pretty skirts and teach her manners and which fork to use when and how to lift a teacup properly and how to make a buttonhole and which doilies are for family and which are for company.

“Wouldn’t you prefer to stay indoors and play with your dolls?” a grown-up asked. It was either the nanny, the nurse, or the girl’s mother.

The small girl refused. She only jumped from higher places and more often than not came home with bloody knees and a grimy face. A dash more than usual of childhood stubbornness is a more advanced symptom of Dreams. And, as grown-ups do, they took charge.

She was dressed in pretty skirts and taught her manners and within two months she had learned which fork to use when and how to lift a teacup properly and how to make a buttonhole and which doilies are for family and which are for company. When they were done they wiped their hands and congratulated themselves on a Job Well Done. They had cured the girl’s Dreams, which might have spread to the rest of the town and started an epidemic of free-thinking women.

Of course, this is not the end of our story. It would not be a very good story if I were to end it here.

For the girl, she was crafty, and she learned to keep her Dreams hidden in a dusty box under her bed and only take them out late at night when she could put them on like a hat and keep herself warm.