Protective Coloring

Humans are a weird species.

Yeah, I know, that’s probably not a shock, but let me give you an example.

You may have noticed that if you hang around people with a particular accent or way of speaking, you start to pick it up, and sound more like them the more time you spend with them.

I guess its like protective coloring. We want to belong, to not stand out.

Like I knew a fellow who moved from Canada to Nashville, and within a year, he was you’alling like a native, and there are other examples I could give you.

Like myself.

See things changed for me when I went to high school. I got involved with the Drama group, and for some reason, the girls there decided to kind of adopt me.

They seemed to see me as kind of like a dog who had been rescued, afraid of people but desperately wanting to be able to trust them at the same time.

And the more time I spent hanging around the girls, the more I sounded like them. My voice, which was never very deep softened, and I found myself ending each sentence with a slight inflection like i was asking a question even when I was making a statement.

And it wasnt just my voice. My walk, the way I moved my hands, everything became more and more feminine.

And even my mind started to be affected. I started thinking of girls as “us” and boys as “them”.

And honestly I wasnt even aware of the changes, even when the girls started referring to me as an honorary girl, at least not at first.

That changed the summer before I started grade twelve, and I spent some time at one of the girls’ homes. She and another girl decided it was too hot, and took off their pants and tops, and soon had persuaded me to do the same.

Any regular hetro boy finding himself with two beautiful girls, all three of them only in their underwear, would probably be in heaven, but I realized what I felt was less an attraction and more envy.

That I wanted to be a pretty girl just like them.

Eventually, I’d tell someone, and then more someones and began a transition, and honestly I got very very lucky. If people noticed my more feminine wardrobe, they didnt say anything, and I got the impression that as far as most people were concerned I was a tomboy who finally grew up and wanted to explore her womanhood.

The fact I had an extra appendage between my legs was regarded as a minor birth defect, an inconvenience at best.

And eventually, I came around to feeling the same.

I was Dorothy Colleen, and I was a woman.

And I couldnt be happier with that.

End.