My student Melissa stopped by yesterday to give me a New Year’s gift… she brought over two gorgeous red rat-shaped papercuts so Stick and I could decorate for the year of the Rat!

When she came in, I noticed she’d gotten her new glasses. At our last lesson, Melissa had just found out she needed glasses, and told me how much she wasn’t looking forward to wearing them. Of course, I made my usual speech about how men do make passes at girls who wear glasses. When Hollywood wants to show that a girl is intelligent, they put glasses on her. (I stopped just short of telling her there are fetish sites for glasses-wearing girls.) I don’t know how much of it sank in, because I was doing karmic penance for every time my mother tried to talk to me and I looked at my fingernails.

Anyway, when Melissa stopped by yesterday, she was wearing her new glasses, and she’d picked out boxy silver metallic frames! They looked cute with her short punk hair, and I was so proud!