Just wanted to post one of my favorite videos of Charlie. Usually he isn’t willing to have videos taken. He doesn’t like to hear his voice on recordings. But this one – he just didn’t care because he was so happy.

The background is this: It was Christmas of Charlie’s 4th grade year. He had recently come out as “gender creative.” He had just lost his only real friend at school who moved away. He was growing more and more depressed. The rule for our other two kids has been, you get an iPhone when you start middle school. (I know, lots of people have issues with kids having iPhones. But it’s not like back in the day when all of us ’70s and ’80s kids had landlines. Nobody our age has a landline anymore. And I don’t give my number out to my kids’ friends. But that’s another story.)

Anyway, he was growing more and more depressed by the day. We thought maybe Santa could bring his iPhone a year and a half early, to 1.) bring a little joy to his life, and 2.) encourage him to still communicate with his best bud who had moved away.

Santa delivered. And Charlie cried.