By pure, titillating coincidence, my strategy for work that day was cleavage. The big guns. Or, in my case, the medium, B-verging-on-C ones. Because yesterday, having dressed like a Mennonite librarian for our meeting with the textbook lobbyists from Texas, I’d sat there mute and limp while imagination was besieged by the powers of ignorance. Forbes and Delilah Webber loved my blouse with the Peter Pan collar. Delilah called me “the sweetest little thing” and “precious.” They promised to recommend our middle school Teen Health textbook for statewide adoption if we agreed to: a) Remove all information regarding condoms. and b) Change the word imagine to suppose. Imagine being “too like the word magic—it might upset some people.” They also asked us to get them orchestra seats to The Lion King. After the meeting, I begged my boss to refuse the Webbers. My traitorous coeditor Edward, who happens to be from Texas, capitulated and offered to do the edits, reminding me that we “don’t mess with Texas”
