This isn’t about my sister Selma.

It isn’t even really about eavesdropping on Selma and her friend Ellen.

It’s about girls and giggling and what a cultural barbarian I am and how inexcusably irreverent I can be.

I haven’t thought about opera in years and years and years, even though I would never turn down a good listen-to if someone offered me an earful of Puccini with a cup of tea. Madam Butterfly could never die too dramatically or Mimi cough herself to death too tragically for me. Hell, I can even spare a groan of compassion when everybody seduces, betrays, and jams daggers into everybody else in Pagliacci.

I am not very good at following the storylines, and unless the music is particularly melodious, my attention does have a tendency to wander. But I have, had, should, shall, will, would, did, and do have something in the nature of a vague acquaintance with the art form, per se.

I heard my first aria when I was reclining inconspicuously on the window seat behind the sofa in the living room of the house where I grew up. Selma and Ellen, good students, best friends, and in the cultural avant-garde of our family, were sitting on the floor in front of the fireplace, listening to ... I’m not sure which opera it was, but let’s say that it was La bohème.