I am so late to this party but fuck it.

When I was about 6, in the early 90s, I lived in the outer suburbs of Sydney. My dad was in the navy so was away a lot, and my mum worked at a waitress in a fairly upmarket, trendy restaurant. She had a fairly big group of friends, who, to me, had some of the most glamorous women I'd ever seen.

One day some of her friends, who lived not far away had a high tea party. She put me in my best, most frilly poofy party dress and told me to behave myself and that I'd be the only kid. We go to this house and it was amazing to me. 2 stories, fancy tablewear, amazing cakes and finger food and two little maltese dogs who were extremely pampered with little bows in their hair.

This party had about 6 of these glamorous fancy women, and they thought I was just the best little thing ever! I had really long hair and when mum dressed me up I looked like a porcelain doll. I was loving the attention and the dogs. That is, right up until one of the dogs bit me. It was the first time id been bitten by a dog and it wasn't nice. The ladies at the party freaked the fuck out, i remember it being like a bunch of hens clucking over something. It was all good in the end. I got a bandaid and a kiss from mum, had tea and cake, got fussed over more and never did I forget the party, or the dog bite.

About a year or two ago, mum and I were talking about it. I mentioned how fussy those ladies were and how great it was to me at the time. What with how glamorous they were and how much attention I got. Mum just started giggling at me. I was like what?! She then informed me that at that party, with all those glamourous ladies and tiny dogs, we were actually the only real 'ladies'. She took me to a high tea party, full of transgender women/drag queens. A couple were even quite big names in the drag scene at the time. For 20 odd years, I had NO idea that was the case. She thought I must have known, but nope. At the time I just saw beautiful women and that was it.

So thatthat's story. I grew up in a really positive household thanks to mum. Considering the time this happened, she was going against the norm. She's a good woman.