ONE OF THE BOYS

Dar Williams, WHEN I WAS A BOY

"When I was a boy, I scared the pants off of my mom,
Climbed what I could climb upon
And I don't know how I survived,
I guess I knew the tricks that all boys knew."

Do you remember being little and running around climbing trees in the backyard? I do. I also remember going to (and loving) car shows with my dad as a tot. I remember bike races and video game marathons with boys (where I often beat them at both). I remember playing in the dirt while scheming a plan to win a long game of capture the flag or dodge ball. Always in the same uniform--sneakers, one of my dad's old t-shirts with my frizzy hair in pigtails--I was a ringleader in the ragtag gang of the neighborhood. Proudly, I accepted my reign as king of the castle.  That is, until one day when they all looked up and noticed that I was a "girl." Suddenly, I became more foreign to the boys of my neighborhood than aliens in the latest sci-fi movie, and in turn, they became as weird to me.

"And now I'm in this clothing store, 
and the signs say less is more
More that's tight means more to see, 
more for them, not more for me
That can't help me climb a tree in ten seconds flat."

I went from being one of them to liking one of them (or, lots of them, over the years). My t-shirts turned into dresses. Tree climbing time was replaced by talking on the phone to friends. The carefree pigtails were left behind in a sea of hair ribbons and brushes. I lost a part of myself moving into being a girl headed towards womanhood, and knew there was no going back.

Sometimes, I look at guys in my life and secretly long to rewind the years and challenge them to a bike race or video game marathon--just to have a few hours to be one of the boys again with no pretenses, where we could just be two kids playing without the complications of social constructs or hormones. Even the thought of climbing a tree while no longer being a kid sounds delightfully ridiculous. I know that this eclipse of childhood where I was one of the boys helped me become the girl I am today. With a sigh, I also know that I'll never again get to be a kid who can spend all weekend getting in the dirt and playing neighborhood capture the flag. I may indeed love getting dressed up, liking boys, and curling my hair now, but when I walk by the playground and see a girl pulverizing a guy at tetherball or kids racing each other on the sidewalk, make no mistake...

"I am not forgetting...that I was a boy too."