Persephone to me, just now: "I think that you and black women get along well because you're both irritable."

Me: "Really?"

Persephone: "Yeah.  Plus you both have creative hair."

(I'd been describing an interaction I had with a surly DMV woman whom I'd drawn out of her DMV shell this afternoon at the "express" DMV office on 34th Street: drawn her out, or maybe she was an uncharacteristically un-surly DMV person.  She looked the DMV part, but then again she sort of didn't: she had a small teddy-bear sticking out of the little pocket in her polyester blue blazer where either a handkerchief or nothing usually sticks out.  She wasn't jolly or anything, but, I mean, she'd taken the time this morning to stuff a small bear into her clothes.  So perhaps she was just a good-natured retail bureaucrat -- some of these must pass the civil-service exam and slip unnoticed into government employ -- in which case I don't have some sort of special connection with black women after all.)

(As for the hair comment, I'm not sure what that was about.)