The other day my youngest came to me and asked what a “fairy” was. Unsure of which way he had heard this term, I asked, “Do you mean the kind that flies? The one that delivers teeth? The happy one from the movies?” To which he replied, “no, the other fairy.”

Not sure how to reply, I said, “Some people use it to describe gay people; it is a mean word and we don’t use it.”

“I don’t get it,” he said.

“Well, its a bad word about people who like the same sex. They call them fairies because they think they are girlie and fly around when they walk. We don’t ever say the word ‘fairy.’ And then he said the most dreaded thing ever….

“I didn’t say ‘fairy,’ I said, “THEORY! …But why do they think they fly around?”