Chapter 2: Growing Up, How The LG Manifested Then

I always had a little girl personality. It wasn’t always recognized, probably because people didn’t really want to. Even I didn’t want to for a long time. When I was very little, people always mistook me for a little girl, because I had fair skin and was “pretty”. That actually lasted for a long time, because I was always shorter and lighter than all the other kids in my school grades – even the girls. When I started going to school, I very naturally played with the girls because I didn’t really like whatever games the boys were playing. My friends were all girls. I had a teacher try to break me of it I suppose by shaming me in First Grade, placing my desk in a row of desks that were all girls – both vertically and horizontally. I of course noticed, but at least I had friends on all sides. I suppose that all came to an end around third or fourth grade, when the girls didn’t want to play with a boy. I became a loner. I sometimes wonder if I would have become a social butterfly had I been convinced to wear skirts and grow my hair long. I think it’s a real possibility. I used to dress my stuffed animals. And my Mom would help by finding doll clothes for them. Well, at one point I remember she had these velvet and lace baby dresses and I about went bananas wanting to dress my teddy bears in them. She said I couldn’t because my bears were boys, and boys don’t wear dresses. That may have been my first real pang of jealousy for girl life. My sister had doll houses and I used to love to play with those as well. My dad eventually banned me from doing that – it embarrassed him because I did it outside and an elderly neighbor saw and I suppose he said something. I had a good relationship with my Dad, but I will say that this was a definite mistake on his part. I cried. My Mom then taught me how to design rooms in shoe boxes, which I think I liked even better than dollhouses. I could carpet them, wallpaper, make furniture from cardboard and books from candy wrappers, use postage stamps as wall art. My sister gave me some dollhouse people and I used those in my creations. And when I finished playing I could close them up, and stack them, and it just looked like shoe boxes. Sometimes my sister would play with me and let me dress up in her old dresses. She was 4.5 years older than me, so her old dresses and tights and shoes fit my frame perfect. Occasionally she even let me wear a diaper with the clothes. We would play make-believe “House” type games. Purple was my favorite color (see the little girl yet??) I always had a flair in my dressing. I did not like jeans. I liked things that had fringe! Shoes, and then one year I found a bright blue shirt with white fringe across the chest and down both sleeves. This was in Seventh Grade … I suppose it should have been a warning sign to me when several of the girls wanted to borrow it – and they were serious about that – but it didn’t click. I also at another time had red bellbottom pants (or at least flared legs). Something that REALLY embarrassed me was when I was about 8 or 9. Mom searched and searched and could not find jeans in my size. They were either too small or too big. Unfortunately she figured out (maybe my sister told her….lol She would have known because of our games!) that I was a perfect size 6x. She marched me over to the girls section. Of course I whined and complained about this (methinks he doth protest too much!), until Mom threatened to buy me a dress if I didn’t stop. Funny thing was – I actually liked those embellished jeans better than anything in the boys section. And there’s no doubt I looked cute in them.

With nine girl cousins and only two boys who were both way older than me, I was doomed really. When playing with them I played girl games. I wanted so bad to be part of the sleepovers, but of course it’s not proper for boys – which led to a LOT more jealousy. Did I play with any traditional boy toys? Oh yes – I had matchbox cars I played a lot with. And there was a Mommy car, and a Daddy car…...I think you can see where this is going. And I read – I really liked Little House on the Prairie books and Anne of Green Gables – and when we were older and my sister wasn’t looking, I’d steal her babysitters club books and read them. Lol SO, there were signs of it showing all the way back then. But it was all a puzzle that didn’t really fall into place until I was in my mid-20s.