After dropping out of high school, I ended up at my local community college — and what a contrast it was: In place of students performing challenging busywork under duress, I was surrounded by people studying in pursuit of their own goals. Even though I was significantly younger than my new classmates, I didn't stand out because everyone was unique in their backgrounds and the paths that they had taken so far: parents returning to school, adults who had made a detour out of high school, people from across the country and the world who moved to the Bay Area for its higher-ed opportunities and its jobs... It was like transitioning from black-and-white at the start of Wizard of Oz into Technicolor.

I'm thinking back to this experience from ~25 years ago because it was at Foothill College that I first came to realized that I knew someone who identified as trans.

One night while going into the college newspaper's office [where I learned to write], I ran into Keith, one of the student-reporters — but instead of just a quick hello, Keith, who perhaps wasn't expecting anyone else to also be working late that evening, began hurriedly explaining to me that they identify as Kaitlin... and I belated realized that the male-looking student in journalism classes during the day was instead dressed in bold female clothing and makeup.

I was surprised and didn't know what to say. From my vague memory I wasn't judgemental, but I also probably wasn't supportive. I've forgotten many other details, yet the feeling of fumbling that conversation has stuck with me.

In the following decades, I've tried to make use of that memory. Hopefully it's helped me to become a bit better equipped to be actively welcoming as a handful of classmates, acquaintances, and coworkers have decided to share their identities over subsequent years.

It sure must be a challenge for people who know that their inner selves don't match their externally and societally accepted identities. More power to those who make their own choices of what they want to show to the world. And those of us who fit the conventions (like straight-white-male me) can do our part by getting over any bits of surprises and just supporting the people we already know and hopefully continue to know in their chosen forms.

With Trump issuing executive orders loudly claiming to target this vulnerable minority of American adults and children, the motto of both the Alameda Unified School District and of the City of Alameda is all the more important to realize in our everyday practices and in our policies: Everyone belongs here.