Caught In Slips - Part 1
By Christine Myr

If I’d set the following story about cricket in England and how a girl could change things there, then to tell you the truth this story “really would” be a fictitious. That’s because cricket over here seems so dull and boring now we appear to have lost almost all the colourful characters (the press use to label them as eccentric) that once use to grace our game. I don’t know for sure why that happened. Perhaps it was the money they pay test match players today, or possibly because of the new political correctness that seems to be sweeping through sports in general that caused all the eccentric individuals to disappear from our cricket fields here. I just know that I miss watching them or reading about their antics in the national newspapers while having breakfast on Sunday mornings.

So let’s tell political correctness to go get lost for a while and let’s allow reality to take a holiday too as you read this story.....I’m not getting any money for writing it, so if you’re like me and you’re just simple, old and decrepit, but you wish you could still play the game, then why don’t you go look for your old faded yellowed whites along with your cricket kit tucked away in a trunk somewhere in the garage or up in the loft, try them on to see if the clothes still fit, then buckle on the batting pads make sure your hectors in place, grab your batting gloves and bat and come striding out with me to the middle (of your imagination) with me.....and just hope you don’t get out “first ball!”

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Oddly enough most people don’t tend to recall the exact moment in their life when it changed, I didn’t either (at the time).

Not that it matters now, but up until I was almost 15 my family always called me Michael. I was the youngest of three children, the others being Greg who was almost 4 years older than me and my sister who was a year ypounger than Greg. My parents must have had dominant Nordic/Saxon genes in their make up as all three of their children still have blonde hair (practically snow white in fact) along with pale skin. As for mum and Sue, to look at them any one would generally acknowledge their appearance as being your typical “peaches and cream” flowers of English womanhood. Today both are about 5’8” tall, blondish white hair, slim, long legged, have big busts and blue eyes. Dad on the other hand is a tad over 6’3” in height with a solid masculine build, strong as an ox, similar coloured hair to mum although slightly darker, while my older brother Greg wasn’t far behind dad being almost the same height as dad at 18 and according to all my school friends as solid as a stone wall.

So who had mum actually slept with to produce someone like me? When I was 14, 4’10”, skinny as a stick, blue eyed snowy white hair. I tipped the scales at nothing more than 38 or so kilograms back then and actually did get blown about on windy days if the wind gusts were sudden!

No, mum wasn’t to blame for me, or dad for that matter. I’d been afflicted with scarlet fever when I was five and at the time it was touch and go as to whether I’d survive. I spent almost a month in hospital and several months more recuperating at home afterwards. At the time it only mattered that I lived although a few years later the doctors agreed that the fever had to have affected my body’s natural growth.

Aside from the fact that I was generally smaller than everyone my own age, I also developed one symptom somewhat unusual to the “average” young boy in that I grew small but very definite breasts where only my chest was supposed to be. The medical people termed my affliction as “Gynecomastia” and said that my “chest” might grow slightly bigger but would eventually stop expanding and once it did, a simply surgery would allow them to take the swelling out and leave little scarring and I’d appear normal around the chest region.

Since the age of ten, I’d been forced to wear a tight compression bandage over my “chest” to avoid any embarrassing questions. It seemed to work at school or in public although at home both my brother and sister weren’t above teasing me if they saw me walking around with no shirt on even back then. Sue was probably the worst of the pair because she wasn’t above actually firmly clasping one tiny breast and gently tugging on it while asking aloud if I needed one of her bras! Her actions never failed to cause a fight between the two of us that always ended up needing mum to intervene if only to prevent my sister from hurting me as even then at thirteen years old, she towered over me besides being much stronger. Mum never teased me because she'd yell out to go put something on usually followed by for pity's sake if she saw me with no shirt on. Dad never said a word but his loud nasal breaths quickly had me hurrying into my bedroom to cover up.

As I wrote earlier, most people never know the moment their life is about to change, but I now know that my life changing moment began to happen when dad came home and announced that his company was seconding him (and us) to Australia to take over one of the agricultural operations there and that we would be moving there perhaps as early as sometime in late November. Wow, moving overseas to live would be MOST people’s idea of a life changing moment. Yes I suppose it was but my REAL life changing moment was what eventually resulted from dad’s announcement.

One of the conditions of the transfer overseas was the family obtaining medical clearances for immigration. The family was booked in for medicals one Saturday and as bad luck would have it (in my case) the regular doctor who saw me was away on leave so I actually had to see a locum female doctor. Unlike my normal doctor Dr. Bryant, Dr. Case wouldn’t accept my parent’s assurances about my condition and did a full medical which involved me being completely naked. I can still recall the look of surprised shock on her face, quickly changing to professional curiosity when she saw me after directing me to take off the gown I had covering me.

I was then subjected to a battery of tests for over an hour or more that at one point had my mum and dad joining me to answer Dr. Case’s questions. At least Dr. Case had allowed me to put the gown back on when she questioned my parents. As for Sue and Greg they were left to sit out in the waiting area as Dr. Case did “way” more tests on me that even had my parents asking if it was all necessary.

Dr Case questioned my parents thoroughly about the swelling in my chest region that both I and my parents already knew about so weren’t unduly worried after my regular specialist had said it wasn’t anything dangerous. Mum quickly told her that my regular doctor had diagnosed my “Gynecomastia” the previous year and that it would be removed by surgery when I was older. Dr. Case said that she thought differently and using a gentle touch of her fingers quickly had my two nipples, which I’d always thought of as pimples quickly hardening and prominently display themselves, (come on don’t laugh, I was only 13 back then and never been told about the birds and bees yet, so to me they were pimples)

Both mum and dad looked on horrified as Dr. Case slowly caressed my slightly swelling chest while she explained that what I was going through was more symptomatic of increased female hormone increments that she witnessed in transgender patients commencing transitioning then the swelling caused by Gynecomastia. She continued to fondle my “pimples” and something internally inside me was telling my brain “this feels nice” as with eyes dreamily closed I blissfully enjoyed her hand caressing my chest, which it took about twenty seconds after she had stopped for me to realize how oddly I must be appearing to behave.

As I tried to calm myself, the look of shock on my dad’s face was only matched by a dawning look of understanding on my mother’s face as she then came over and placed her own hand on my chest and started caressing one of my pimples (nipples). I involuntarily sighed loudly as my brain’s pleasure centers reacted again to the soft stimulation of my mother’s fingers and hand, before she stopped………….

Dr Case suggested to my parents that it might be prudent to do some more tests and I found myself finally leaving to go home three hours later with a lot less blood and urine in me than when I’d first entered the building. Of course my sister and brother were bored out of their minds having had to sit around for so long, so dad had to make sure that Pizza was bought on the way home as compensation for them. Nothing was said to them on the drive home about the fact I’d had to stay for so long and neither of them asked too much about it.

But for me things were turning decidedly pear shaped beginning later on the following week where on a return trip to the hospital Dr Case told me and my parents about the pathology results from the previous Saturday. She certainly sounded confident about my situation, supported by the pathology results, X-Rays and other tests. She explained to my parents that she wanted to wait for my own doctor to get back and discuss my case with him before she wanted to order even more tests for me then sent me out to wait in the public area while she spoke to mum and dad privately for about an hour.

Two weeks were to pass after that before I and my parents fronted my own doctor along with Dr Case I his surgery room. It seemed that Dr Bryant also now agreed with Dr Case’s diagnosis and the proverbial poop hit the fan as dad angrily asked how my symptoms had not been picked up previously until another doctor had examined me. Typical NHS (National Health Service – for the non-Anglos among you) services and doctrine then took over as blame was studiously avoided by the medical profession to the consternation and frustration of dad (and mum).

The result of everything which was carefully explained to me in simple terms a 13 year old boy could understand, was that the scarlet fever I’d contracted when I was 5, had somehow or other caused my male reproductive area to be affected. This unforeseen problem (which neither of my parents seemed to accept as they heard the doctor explain it me to, having already spoken to them privately) saw my testes apparently being affected and unbeknownst to anyone at the time, they began atrophying and were now destroyed and permanently useless. Dr Bryant then informed me that the damage done to my testes had over time caused my body to start thinking of me as a girl instead of a boy and also affected how my body growth had developed, which was only becoming more apparent "as puberty should have been only just around the corner for me". My body frame, height and physique had been affected since I didn’t have male testosterone coursing through me, instead having an unusual amount of oestrogen beginning to store up inside me. This was the reason for my breasts and not because I had Gynecomastia as had been diagnosed initially.

I have to admit that I had no idea what Dr Bryant was telling me until Dr Case who had been sitting back quietly not saying much saw my look of non-comprehension and told me that my body thought I was a girl and not a boy and because it thought I was a girl had started developing me as a girl, mentioning my breasts (this was a word I could understand because of my own sister’s growing up) as an example although she quickly explained to me that I had a penis and not a vagina so I’d never have to worry about babies and things like that. Her explanation as simple as it was, needed a further 30 minutes discussion (where I was told about the birds and the bees, I think to my dad’s gratitude judging from his expression) before I began to realise that I wasn’t like most young boys and in fact never would be.

It was then explained to me that I’d have to be castrated in the near future so as to remove any possibilities of my destroyed testes further harming my body in some way before dad suggested I go wait out in the car so that he and mum could talk with the doctors. The stop off for Pizza on the way home afterwards actually had me thinking that long trips to the doctors mightn’t be so bad if it entailed Pizza afterwards!

*** I’d especially like to thank Emily 63 who lives in Australia for her knowledge about various places and institutions there mentioned throughout this story. (I promised you I’d write it one day Em) Without her advice, my tale about living in and growing up there (as well as playing cricket there), would be just this English person’s fantasy idea of Australia. ***

*** None of the persons mentioned in this chapter are real or to the best of my knowledge ever lived. ***

*** Any pictures or photos in any of this story's chapters will have been taken from "clipart" out of Word, which I'm led to believe will not breach any copy write laws