SAVANNAH, GA—In an announcement on social media, Hugo Grown, who is two cisgender kids in a trench coat, came out as using gender neutral ‘they’ pronouns. When asked to comment, the child posing as Hugo’s upper half stated, “this is us–I mean, me–being proud of who I am: a non-binary adult who is old enough to buy lighters.”
The social media post came Wednesday, after Grown’s trench coat slipped open at the 24-hour CVS. One cashier, Lydia Tomas, caught a glimpse of one child sitting on the shoulders of another inside the trench coat.
Tomas, a hardened veteran employee of the CVS, described her job as mostly a cat-and-mouse game with two local youths who attempted to make illegal purchases. Tomas assumed that the Hugo Grown was another scheme devised by these youths and attempted to alert her co-workers.
Tomas shouted out, “hey, they can’t buy those lighters!” Though this prompted Mx. Grown to run out of the store, their social media post explained that in that moment, “they” just “felt right… because I am one non-binary adult who is older than eighteen, thus entitled to purchase as many lighters as I want. Even the mini blowtorch ones.”
In a statement from the store, Tomas offered an apology for assuming that Grown was the two wily middle schoolers she had been at war with for the last two years. Tomas said, “I’ve seen kids come up with all sorts of schemes to buy lighters and beer, but clearly this time I was wrong. I hope that they can forgive me.”
Grown went on to say that these revelations about their gender were raising other questions about their identity, including their sexuality. Grown wrote, “luckily, I can legally purchase the adult magazines behind the register to help me figure these things out.”
