The first time I ever heard the word “gay”, it was met with laughter and ridicule by my classmates. We were in third grade, listening to our teacher read a book about a swan who couldn’t sing like the rest of his flock. I didn’t know what the word meant yet, but I was still old enough to know that staying silent when a “good” joke was told made you stand out. So I laughed with them. Of course, “gay” had been written with its older meaning in mind: happy, carefree, cheerful.  Three years later, when I realized I was that thing my classmates had laughed about, I was lucky…