Bobby the Aardvark

This is a transgender allegorical tale of a child who is magically transported to the world of aardvarks and must learn how to cope being in an such an alien land. This story tries to give a feeling of how trans people feel living cis-gendered world. The story idea came from the author's workshop called "Trans 101 - Trans Information for the Non-trans Community".
In the workshop she asks how they would feel if they woke up one day and they were an aardvark. They looked like an aardvark, they smelled like an aardvark and all the other aardvarks said they should just aardvark-up and get over it. This light hearted reference, devoid of any sexual connotation, was meant to get past the knee-jerk reaction most people had to words that had S-E-X or G-E-N-D-E-R in them.
Transgender people more often than not have their lives sensationalized or are treated as sexual deviants. They are at a much higher risk for violence, suicide and substance abuse than the national average.
This story is an attempt to try to bring understanding to the cis-gendered without using gender as a descriptive term.
While there are no sexual situations whatsoever in this story, this is not a childrens story. There are images of brutality, aggression, and manipulation which younger readers would not understand.

Sandra Wagner, who is not now, nor ever has been an aardvark, hails from Chicago, Illinois. While some claim that Chicago is a hotbed of aardvark activity, she has seen none of it.
Having spent her entire career in the software industry, she finds creative outlet in writing fiction, art, theatre, and music.
In 2007, in her mid 50's, she successfully made the transition from male to female on the job at a large financial institution and helped them write guidelines for transition for transsexuals and gender variant individuals.
She is married to her husband, June, and lives with her extended family. She helps raise her two granddaughters who do not find it odd at all that grandma Sandy used to be a boy, and actually think it's kind of special.
She has created and presented a workshop called "Transgender 101 - Trans Information for the Non-Trans Community" where she originally came up with the aardvark metaphor.