I get asked to work in haunted houses a lot.

My sister gets asked all the time to do professional modeling.

We’re both tall, but I get seen as Frankenstein’s monster and my sister gets seen as Naomi Campbell.

There’s a common type of person, known to all people, who is regularly referred to in a pejorative sense. He or she is the lowest form of human and is looked down on even by people who are also this combination of human being and refuse, even though they may not recognize the terrible qualities in themselves.

Much to the chagrin of the faux white mustache set at the American Dairy Association, the US Food and Drug Administration recently ruled that plant-based milk alternatives now may be labeled as milk, ending once and for all the “almond doesn’t lactate” era at America’s nutritional policing agency.

People have accused me of publishing essays that are too intimate. How dare I, they say, write about my orgasms, massive therapy failures, or unsuccessful attempt to break up with myself?

What they fail to appreciate are all the experiences I have refrained from writing about. My restraint, ladylike deportment, and diplomacy deserve to be universally celebrated, as noted in the following inventory of true (and shocking!) events I have never breathed a word of to anyone.

Ever since I can remember, I wanted to be North American.

Goodfellas references aside, the reason behind this rebellion against my Brazilian nationality was very specific, and I will get to it in a second, but the impulse to feel that way came from my fellow citizens often pointing out that I didn’t look quite as Brazilian as some of them. Which let me tell you, doesn’t make any sense.