Wow! I received my first-ever microaggression!

As it says in my Medium bio, I am White Anglo-Saxon Protestant Male Heterosexual Cisgendered highly educated able-bodied affluent and thin. After having read a few interviews with Peter Dinklage, I realize I should probably add “tall” to that list. When you have as much privilege as I do, you only know about microaggressions through the testimony of marginalized people. However, I am now getting pushed towards the margins by the forces of time, and by the irreversible biological processes that will eventually erase me off the page altogether. Although I will never experience the ravages of genuine racism or sexism, I have started to receive microaggressions motivated by ageism. And guess what? They suck!

My wife and I have been dancing together for decades. We make up our own steps, which don’t follow any rules but our own. We can’t do a lot of the steps we used to do, but we once won a dance contest, and often get compliments. The last compliment we received, however, was actually an insult, although the complimenter was too clueless to see this. I always like to get compliments, especially from cute young girls. (Well, she may have been 40 or so. At this point in my life, almost anybody under fifty of either sex seems cute, and inspires the urge to pinch their cheeks and go “woogie, woogie, woogie.”) But I wasn’t happy to hear this “compliment”. “Wow” she said “you two sure are spry! It’s nice to see you’ve still got it.”

Do I really need to unpack this one? What reason did she have for assuming that I…