Little Orphant Annie's come to our house to stay,
An' wash the cups an' saucers up, an' brush the crumbs away,
An' shoo the chickens off the porch, an' dust the hearth, an' sweep,
An' make the fire, an' bake the bread, an' earn her board-an'-keep;
An' all us other childern, when the supper things is done,
We set around the kitchen fire an' has the mostest fun
A-list'nin' to the witch-tales 'at Annie tells about,
An' the Gobble-uns 'at gits you
Ef you…Don't… Watch…Out!

"Little Orphant Annie"
James Whitcomb Riley
1885

Chapter 1 - Coincidences

Coincidence.

Coincidences happen, right?

Sure they do, and my life is example number one. Let me introduce myself: I was born Daniel Patrick Warbucks. Name sounds familiar, doesn't it? Along about 1924, Harold Gray was inspired to start a comic strip called Little Orphan Ollie. After a few strips he did some research and found that there were damn few strips featuring a female protagonist, so Ollie became Annie and Annie became famous.

You can see where this is going, can't you?

As far as I can see there's bupkis connecting the poem to the comic strip other than being an orphan. Riley never said a word about Annie's hair in the poem and, for that matter, since the daily strips were in black-and-white, the red hair is kind of tenuous, too.

Fast forward to the last century - February 29, 1990 to be exact. In the comic strip Annie never seemed to age; supposedly Harold Gray attributed this to Annie being born on February 29, so she only had a birthday every four years. We now find Oliver and Mary Alice Warbucks in the delivery room on that auspicious date with Mary Alice about to produce Yours Truly.

In case you didn't know, "Daddy" Warbucks' first name was Oliver and Mary Alice Smith was the orphan who inspired Riley to write about Annie. Like I said - coincidence.

I'm told my parents were very aware of this background and I'm told my mother was sure I was going to be a girl, so I was Annie up until the doctor slapped my bottom. With a sigh a "D" was quickly tacked on to the initial "A" and there I was, not that I remember any of this, mind you.

Looking back in the baby books I have to say I was a cute kid. Lots of curly red hair and green eyes (courtesy of the O'Hara genes on my mother's side) and an impish smile. Lest we stretch coincidence too far, my father had a great mop of hair - no baldness like the cartoon character - and my eyes are bright green - not blank circles. I think I get my abundant hair from both sides of the family, but the red curls certainly come from my mother.

I was still quite young when my mother informed my father I would no longer be an only child. Friends recall this was cause for great celebration and my parents decided to take a week-long skiing vacation before my impending sister or brother made skiing an impossible task for my mother. They were accompanied by my maternal grandparents and I was left in the care of close friends while they were out on the slopes.

Four days into the vacation disaster struck and both my parents and grandparents were buried in an avalanche. Thus I became Little Orphan Danny, my paternal grandfather having become a hero in one of the series of foolish wars we always seem to be fighting and my remaining grandmother having simply given up living after her husband's death.

Of course, I have no memory of this, what I do know came from some of their friends and an elderly great aunt who was over ninety when my birth parents died. Obviously she couldn't raise me, so the people who were watching me decided to keep me.

Their names are Chip and Joanna Loesser. I know, I know! Coincidence again, but this was long before Fixer Upper was on HGTV. My mother certainly would never consider using ship-lath for decorating or screwing an old rusty bicycle on the wall as found art. And no, they didn't pick me as the most in need of repair among three orphans.

At least that's what he told me.

With the great aunt's help Chip and Joanna were able to find baby books and pictures that they kept to show me when I was old enough to appreciate them.

I've known that my big sister and I were adopted from before I can remember. It never made much difference to me, I had a set of parents who raised me with love and compassion, the only parents I have ever known.

Oh yeah. As sometimes happens, once Chip and Joanna had adopted two children because they couldn't have their own, my brother Sam came along and surprised the heck out of everyone.

While the only parents I know weren't geniuses at home restoration and decorating, that's not to say they were lacking in artistic qualities. My siblings and I grew up treading the boards of the Periactus Players, in which Chip and Joanna were active participants. This needs some explanation, as you're probably asking 'what the heck is a periactus?' Don't worry, most people haven't got any idea what a periactus is - you're not alone.

The original home of the theatre group was a very small hall with a very small stage. In order to have more than one set available for a play, they built a kind of merry-go-round with two sets back-to-back, so all they had to do was revolve the thing and there was a new set. The merry-go-round is technically called a periactus. See - you learn something new every day.

Whenever a script called for a small person, we kids were drafted and swotted lines right along with our parents. I was jealous when sister Kate got to be Peter Pan and fly around hanging off a wire. Sam and I had to be content as Lost Boys. Kate was jealous when I got to be Tiny Tim - albeit with a wig to cover my out-of-character red curls. We were all on stage in Suessical. You might say that acting was in our blood, even if we weren't blood relatives. I may not have grown up in the family I was born to, but I have a wonderful family that I wouldn't trade for the world.

By the age of eleven I was a seasoned actor, so when the group decided to put on Annie the choice for the lead role was a done deal. Now about this point in these stories the boy who gets selected for the girl's part is supposed to get all upset and refuse to be a girl. Trouble was, I hadn't read any of those stories at the age of eleven. I figured if Kate could be the star playing a boy (Peter Pan) then I could be a star as a boy playing a girl. No problem!

Well, one problem. I had let my hair get a bit long; I had to have it cut so I had Annie's traditional red mop of hair. Not a big deal, but I took a lot of kidding from the salon ladies when they did my hair.

You didn't think I could go to a barber to get Annie's do, did you? It was interesting being in the chair instead of waiting for Mom. I did like getting my hair washed, even if they had to put a pillow on the chair so I could be high enough for my head to be over the sink.

I didn't even have to wear a bra, Annie was a little girl, she didn't even need a training bra! I had spent much of my life wearing weird costumes and singing my little heart out before an audience. Even at age eleven I jumped at the chance to be the star of the show.

Sorry to disappoint you, but the first time I wore a dress nothing magical happened. I wasn't overcome with the wonder of it all. I had worn lots of costumes on stage, this was one more and no big deal. Sure, I got some kidding at school, but by then everyone knew me and my siblings were those crazy actor kids.

I never did get the whole boys-do-this and girls-do-that attitude. Mom and Dad were big on equality of the sexes, and I guess I soaked that in as I grew up. Besides, there are a lot of LGBT people involved in theatre, I never considered them any different than anyone else. I certainly wouldn't be the first male to wear a dress on stage.

Don't get me wrong, I was equally at home whacking a ball around a field or helping Dad bake a loaf of bread. Then there's the whole "cooties" nonsense - no thank you! I was going to be Annie on stage and Annie wore that iconic red dress with the big white lapels - big deal.

But then a strange thing happened. I started to enjoy being Annie when I wasn't on stage. If you've ever been involved with producing a play, you know there is a lot of time spent waiting while the director and another actor discuss one thing or another. If it's a long rehearsal you might scarf pizza together during a break or just hang out while some problem gets ironed out. In other words, I spent a lot of time just being me while wearing Annie's clothes.

Unlike most of the actors who don't get into costume until the later rehearsals, I was dressed as Annie in order to get used to the whole girl thing. At first I only put on the costume when we arrived at the theatre and took it off before going home, but after a while it seemed to be a pain to keep changing clothes so I just got dressed before we left and went home the same way. I didn't have the words for it back then, but I was starting to enjoy wearing a dress.

Once we actually put on the play, I got a kick out of fooling people during the intermission or after the show, letting them think I was a real girl. For an eleven-year-old, putting one over on adults was a real blast.

Mom did spend some time with me helping me to become Annie, but after watching the movie a few times it wasn't all that hard to get into the character. The hardest thing was having my legs bare while wearing that cute little red dress. The hem tickled at first and I kept thinking I had forgot to put on my pants when I got distracted. Those shoes with the straps took some getting used to, too.

No, it wasn't the girl's clothes that gave me trouble with the role, it was the dancing. It wasn't all that hard to look like a pre-pubescent girl standing or sitting still, but dancing like a girl is something else.

That meant dance lessons, and somehow wearing a leotard was far more off-putting than wearing a dress. I mean, I'd worn a tunic in Peter Pan and a dress is not that much different, but skin-tight stretchy stuff over my whole body was downright embarrassing. I kept repeating the show must go on!

That's where I learned about dance belts. I don't have to explain what a gaff is, but think of a dance belt as a gaff lite. A male dancer has to be careful, the last thing he needs is to have his balls dangling down while he leaps through the air with his legs spread apart. Consider what might happen to those poor, sensitive dangly bits when he puts his legs together on landing. A dance belt sort of holds things stable and reduces the unsightly bulge a bit.

Not that I had to worry about that at eleven years of age, there wasn't all that much there to dangle. The dance belt did help keep me from being obvious while wearing a leotard in a class of girls, though.

Which brings me to a subject mostly unknown to boys in my age group: the VPL. Of course, there are always a couple of budding Lotharios who are ahead of their peers, but I didn't count any of them among my friends. The Visible Panty Line - nothing to worry a eleven-year-old boy but something of concern to a girl wearing a skin tight leotard. Women solve this dilemma with a thong, but men? The dance belt borrows from the thong by having a string snuggle down into the crack in your ass so it isn't visible.

That damn string drove me crazy until I got used to it. I was the only boy there, but since I was supposed to be learning to dance like a girl I came to class as a girl, with a string in my butt crack. It wasn't like this was the first time I had been mistaken for a girl, what with my pixie face and curly red hair. Not only was I the only boy in the class, but I hadn't done much dancing so I was the least skilled member of the group. I felt like a lumbering elephant when I looked at the girls who actually knew what they were doing.

Of course, having gone through the early rehearsals of a play, I knew just how awful things could seem at the start of any project. I listened and watched and tried my best to do what everyone else was doing. We started with stretches, no problem there. Slowly the stretches became more sinuous movements until without quite realizing it we were dancing. Miss Rochelle, our teacher, seemed to be of the throw them in the pool and see if they can swim school of instruction, so I started paddling for all I was worth.

Actually, I found it fun. I was too young to appreciate the girls as anything sexual, but there was a grace with the more accomplished dancers that fascinated me. By the time the first session ended I was feeling good about myself, at least it looked like I was emulating the others in the big mirrors that surrounded the room.

When I had been taking the dance class for a while and was feeling like I was really starting to get it, Miss Rochelle took me aside one evening after the other girls had left. She complimented me on how well I had picked up on the dancing and offered a few suggestions and encouraged me to practice at home. She felt my goal of learning to dance as Annie was well within my reach and I was pleased.

While we were talking a new group of girls began to fill the place. One by one they disappeared into the dressing area and returned in leotards just like what I was wearing, milling about and practicing some rather energetic steps. It appeared my mother was running late, so I sat on a bench and watched. Presently a tall, bouncy girl who I thought must be a few years older than me came over.

"Hi, I'm Moira. Welcome to the class, you're new here, aren't you?"

"I…" but I didn't get time to say anything else.

"You're going to love step dancing. With that red hair you must be Irish so we're going to get along perfectly! Have you ever done any step dancing?"

"I…" but once again I had no time to reply.

"OK girls, "spoke an older woman, "Welcome to the beginner's Irish Step dancing class. I'm Miss Clancy and this is my assistant Moira. Tonight we'll learn some of the basic moves and get a little bit of history of the art. Would you please line up and we'll begin?"

Moira took my hand and pulled me up, so I found myself unwittingly learning to step dance.

"Now, who of you thinks you're going to be the next star of Riverdance?" asked Miss Clancy, but nobody answered.

"That's good, because I teach traditional Irish step dance. Riverdance comes from the Irish step dance tradition, but mixes in a whole lot of other styles and ideas. That's not bad by itself, that's how we get new and interesting art forms, but you might think of Riverdance as like plunking a rock band in the middle of a symphony orchestra. It can be done, and it can be done well, but I don't think Beethoven would approve.

"So the most obvious thing is in traditional step dance you hold your arms straight at your sides, hands in a loose fist and the goal is to have your upper body staying still while your feet are going crazy. Moira will give you a sample."

Yup, Moira's feet went crazy while her upper body was almost motionless. Here I had just mastered the basics of the kind of dancing I needed to be Annie and now I wanted to be Moira. Moira seemed to float across the floor as she danced, making it look easy.

So I gladly tried to learn the basic Seven Steps of Irish dance, and was completely into it. Not as easy as Moira made it look, but I was determined. Some time later Miss Clancy called a break and I realized that my mother was watching with a big grin on her face. I gave her an embarrassed wave but she just kept smiling and told me to enjoy myself, so that's exactly what I did.

I was hooked by the end of the class. I enjoyed the regular dance class, but after watching some videos of what the really good Irish dancers could do I wanted to be able to do that myself.

"I see you found a way to keep busy when I was late, Danny," my Mom said.

"Yeah! I kinda got dragged into the class when I was sitting on the bench waiting for you, but I really enjoyed it. Did you see the videos of the real dancers?"

"I certainly did. It takes a lot of time and practice to reach that level."

"I know, but I really would like to learn how to do Irish dance."

"Really?"

"Really! I've already got the hair. All I need is the costume and a whole lot of practice."

"Would you really be willing to wear those fancy dresses just so you could dance like that?"

"Sure. Heck, I'm wearing that retro dress to play Annie. At least those dresses are really cool."

"You didn't happen to get a sex change while I was stuck in traffic, did you?"

"Mom!"

"This seems to be a bit more than just learning how to play a girl's character for the musical."

"I guess… They all think I'm a girl anyway, so what's the problem?"

"Honey, in a couple of years your body is going to start changing and you won't look like a girl any longer. To become a really competent dancer you'll need more than a year or two."

"So maybe I could get a sex change."

Remember - I was eleven years old and the boy-girl thing really didn't mean all that much to me. Things were rather black-and-white for me back then.

"Danny, it's not quite that easy. There are doctors and social workers and psychiatrists and endocrinologists and who knows what all before a boy can make such changes in his body to look like a girl."

"Oh…"

"But there's no reason you couldn't take the classes for the next little while if you really want to. I suppose you would need to go once a week if you're serious, but remember you have rehearsals and schoolwork you can't blow off."

"I guess it isn't as easy as I thought."

"Nothing worthwhile is that easy. You have to put some effort into it to do it right."

"I think I've heard that before."

"And you'll hear it again until you're sick of it."

"Can I get an excuse to get off school when I do?"

"Nice try, kid."

"But I can try to learn the Irish dance, right?"

"You bet, Danny."