Have the conversation that isn’t worth having.

Be difficult about the comment at dinner.

Be the woman who says, in front of people, “Please don’t call her that,” and then sit through the forty minutes of atmosphere that follows.

Because that forty minutes is the whole price.

That is the entire cost, and I did not pay it, twelve or thirteen times over two years, and the bill was presented to a three-year-old on a Thursday afternoon in February.

Last September we were in a park near the house and Daisy — six, then, with hair past her shoulders — stopped in front of a girl of about nine who had two long braids down her back, and stared at her with the total absence of self-consciousness that children have.