People’s United Donut Liberation Front

A couple of weeks ago, Ione informed me that she had changed her name to Donut. I thought this was a little strange, but fitting nonetheless. Apparently it feels like a good fit for Donut – she continues to use it as her moniker of choice and has even named several children in her preschool class “donut”, too. Do you call them Donut 1, Donut 2, Donut 3? Ya know, so you can keep them straight? No, it’s just donut.

Usually when I pick her up from school, one of the other children calls out, “Ione, your daddy is here.” Today it was, “Donut! Your daddy’s here!” Followed by a moan of “awww, DOnut!” Apparently, she didn’t want to leave. One of her “classmates” ran up to me and shoved his hand in my face – “I got the mark of the donut!” Sure enough, he had an orange, donut shaped mark scrawled across the back of his hand. A second later, two other kids were showing me their donut marks. I started feeling a little dizzy as more began crowding around me. I looked over to the craft table and all the kids there held up pink pieces of construction paper, cut into an “O” shape – “look at our donuts!!!!”

Suddenly, Donut (that’s my daughter, Donut, not the other Donuts) called out, “Who here is named Donut?!?!” One at a time, every single child raised their hand and began jumping in place, “I’m Donut! I’m Donut! Me! Me!” There was a quick flash when I swore I saw Brad Pitt standing in the hallway for a millisecond, reminding me I am not a unique and beautiful snowflake.

The next thing I knew – and this is neither a lie nor an exaggeration – 15 preschoolers were surrounding me, hands in the air, jumping in place, chanting “donut! donut! donut!” And, I thought, “she’s gonna make one hell of a revolutionary someday.”