Chapter 5 - Choices And Changes

Take a minute to think back to when you were eleven years old. That's sixth grade if you're in the US. If you're from someplace else you'll have to figure it out for yourself where you were in school. Some things seem to be burned indelibly into the synapses of my brain, but even the things you think you remember perfectly aren't quite the same as the things other people who were there remember.

Since nobody but me was in my bed as I tossed and turned that night, I can say that I remember that night perfectly and no one can dispute me.

Grandpa tells me that he remembers sixth grade very clearly, which impressed the heck out of me because back then I thought he was old!

The thing he remembers most was the class having to do a group project about the culture of a foreign country. His group got Spain. His group also got the class jerk, who didn't even try to do his part, but they were graded as a group.

Each group was supposed to come up with a four minute skit about their country, so they did a bullfight. Grandpa tells me that back then bullfighting was considered a sport and not heartless animal abuse. Grandpa got to be the bull, Sally was the picador, Charlie was the toreador, Jenny the beautiful maiden with a rose in her teeth for the bullfighter. Sue was the announcer who explained what was going on. All Jimmy the Jerk had to do was hand the toreador a pair of paper bull's ears once he won the fight.

Everything went wrong. The picador had a drumstick tied with ribbons for his lance and practically skewered Grandpa by stabbing him too hard. The toreador tripped on his cape and floored the picador, who landed on the bull. The beautiful maiden stabbed her lip because nobody thought to remove the thorns from the rose. Sue lost her place in the script when Jenny screamed and Jimmy the Jerk forgot to bring the ears so the play was a complete bust.

Yeah, Grandpa remembers being eleven years old, all right.

By the way, Grandpa's group won first place because everybody thought it was supposed to be slapstick and the class laughed themselves silly.

Now Dad, he remembers being eleven years old for a different reason. That's when he met Mom. Her family moved into the school district part way through the year and Mom ended up with the desk next to Dad. Does that count as another coincidence like I started this story with? Who cares, both Mom and Dad remember being eleven years old very clearly.

The problem is, Dad swears Mom was wearing a red dress while Mom says she was wearing a black sweater and a red pair of culottes. They've honed that argument into a funny story after telling it over and over for years on end, but neither one will give an inch as to what they remember.

Which brings us to me. Obviously I remember being eleven years old very clearly or you wouldn't be reading this. In particular, I remember the night where I was offered a chance to attend an all-girl's school as a girl.

It took a long time to get to sleep that night because I was thoroughly confused. Not only had I just recently started to notice the difference between boys and girls, but I really liked doing the things girls were supposed to do. Now a really high-powered rich guy thought I was such a promising girl that he thought I belonged in a fancy girl's school.

Did I?

Was I transgendered?

I worked hard to commit that word to memory. A bit of a tongue-breaker, but it sounded cool. 'Hi, I'm Annie and I'm transgendered. Aren't you impressed?'

Sort of scientific sounding. To a kid who still considered sex to be pretty much irrelevant, this was a heavy thought. Then I laughed because I was starting to sound like Grandpa when I thought that.

Like I said, it took a long time to get to sleep.

After all the excitement of the musical, things kind of returned to normal. Not that it got boring, because I still had the dance classes. I really enjoyed the step dancing so I kept on after the musical was over. A couple of weeks later, Aileen invited me to her eleventh birthday party, which was a bit of a surprise as we had only known each other in the dance class, but we had started learning some of the two dancer routines and we were usually partners.

I found out where she lived and checked with Dad, who was picking me up that evening, and he said OK after meeting Aileen and her mother. As we were leaving, Aileen turned to me and said "Wear something really pretty, won't you Annie?" and she was gone.

Dad just looked at me and said "She thinks you're a girl, doesn't she, Dan?"

"Yeah, they all do."

"Have you been thinking about the Pennington's offer for the Ursuline Academy?"

"Sort of, Dad."

"Sort of?"

"They're times when I feel like I'm a girl and times when I feel like a boy. It's confusing."

"I bet it is. Maybe it's time to talk to a counsellor about the whole thing."

"You mean a shrink?"

"Some of them are psychiatrists, but not all. Is it all right if your Mom and I try to find someone who you can talk to about the whole Danny and Annie thing?"

That's one of the many reasons I loved my Dad - he didn't just say 'you're going to do this,' he asked.

"I guess…"

"So it looks like you get to wear that other dress your Mom bought for you after all. Moms have a way of seeing the future more clearly than us mere men."

"Does that mean I get to know the future if I decide I want to be Annie?"

"Don't ask me - I'm stuck as a male and can't tell the future."

 

One part of the future was predictable - if I was going to a birthday party then I needed a birthday present. Since I didn't know Aileen all that well, I really didn't know what she would like, so I asked Mom.

"A birthday present, huh? If you were Kate I'd just say 'think of what you would like and get it for her' but that wouldn't work too well for you, would it Danny."

"Mooommm!"

OK, I was into dramatics. Why else would I be playing a girl on stage? I thought I had read the line with great emotion.

"Have you asked her the kind of things she likes?"

"Uh, no…"

"Then maybe you should call her up and ask her."

"Oh."

I think Mom was trying to tell me it was time I solved my own problems and not relying on her to fix things.

"Do you have her phone number?"

"Yes. She gave me her number and their address."

"So, there's the phone. Pick it up and start dialing."

So I took our new cordless phone (a big deal at the time!) into the dining room for privacy and called Aileen. I whined a bit about my parents, asked her what she liked, then listened as she told me everything that had happened that day, which had me telling her what my day was like and she told me…

Well, you get the idea. I wasn't even a teenager yet, but I hogged the phone for close to an hour, when Dad came by and gave me the look. Before I could go much further the phone started beeping to warn me about the battery, so I finally hung up and brought the phone back to the kitchen to charge.

"I think that about settles it," Mom told me.

"Settles what?" I asked.

"You are definitely becoming a girl. Only girls talk for hours on the phone."

"Mooommm!"

"We really do have to call that counselor before you start reading teen heartthrob magazines or something."

"I can just borrow Kate's if it gets that bad."

"Just a warning - you can't wear makeup until you're fourteen unless you're on stage."

"Mooommm!"

I love you Danny - or Annie - or whatever. Do you have any ideas for Aileen's birthday present?"

"She likes stuffed animals and Cabbage Patch dolls."

"Then it shouldn't be too hard to find something for her."

"I suppose. Can you take me shopping again?"

"I suppose."

"Mooommm!"

"So is Danny brave enough to buy a stuffed doll or a Cabbage Patch baby or am I taking Annie?"

"I never thought of that."

"Get's complicated, doesn't it?

"You got that right!"

"Think about it and let me know."

 

Mom? What do you think I should wear?"

"Clothes."

"Mooommm!"

"It's not like Annie has a huge selection of clothes, is it?"

"Yeah, right…"

"Your dresses are a bit fancy for a trip to Target, so…"

"The purple jeans?"

"Not a bad choice. You could wear one of Danny's T-shirts with the jeans."

"No unicorn?"

"If you insist!"

"I think I can find something less - uh - less…"

"Girly? Saccharine?"

"Disgusting?"

"Works for me."

"OK by me. I should have something that will go with purple pants."

"Color matching, yet! Your femininity is showing."

"What's the use of trying to look like a girl if my femininity isn't showing?"

"Good question, that. I suppose you could pick out a few casual clothes if you are serious about being Annie."

"Could I?"

"I just said so, didn't I?"

"Oh…"

"Go get dressed, squirt," Mom said as she gave me a hug. So I got. I hesitated a bit, but decided that I should wear my bra if I was going to be Annie. I decided that my Lovely Complex T-shirt was a good choice, I really liked Risa from the story.

"Do we get to eat dinner out tonight?" I asked Mom.

"You OK with a salad?"

"Mooommm!"

"Whine, whine, whine. Some girl you are if you don't eat salads."

"I don't see you eating salad for dinner all too often."

"Do as I say and not as I do?"

"I thought Dad had banned that from our vocabularies."

"So he did. I guess that means we'll have to go out for dinner."

"McDonalds?"

Hey - I was eleven years old, McDonald's was gourmet food at that age..

"You really want a kid's meal?"

"Mooommm!"

"It's Friday, what say we find a fish fry?"

"Sounds good to me."

"With a salad, of course."

"Does coleslaw count as a salad?"

 

We went to Mom & Dad's favorite seafood restaurant - Captain Jack's. In the warm weather you can sit at picnic tables outside and consume their steamed feast - a big bucket of shrimp, lobster, crab, scallops and who knows what else that is steamed in this cool machine that spits and sputters while it cooks your dinner. In the summer, potato salad and coleslaw are the preferred sides, but since it was fall we ate inside and had the fish fry.

Despite Mom's teasing about salads, she had her fish slathered in tartar sauce and pigged out on the fries. Me, I liked lots of malt vinegar and onion rings. Not that some snitching didn't happen, but it was fun having dinner with just Mom. When the waitress brought the check she informed Mom that she had a perfectly lovely daughter who was so neat and polite.

I was starting to think that being a girl wouldn't take much effort if everyone just looked at me and saw a girl. I mean, I was wearing my regular old T-shirt and I suppose some boys might wear purple jeans - but not with sequins. Was I broadcasting 'girl' or something?

Once we were in the car after eating, I asked Mom "What's it like being a girl?"

"Oh boy! I don't know how to answer that. What's it like being a boy?"

"Do I get a free pass next time I answer your question with a question?" I asked.

"Not a chance. Adults get the free pass, kids are stuck having to answer questions."

"That's not…"

"... fair!" she finished for me.

"Sorry kid, fair is a place where you ride rides until you puke and eat hotdogs with mustard."

"Huh?"

"That's right - we haven't taken you guys to a fair yet, have we?"

"I don't think so."

"You'd remember. We'll have to fix that next summer and go to the State Fair. We get so busy in the summer I guess that's one of the things we forgot to do."

"You didn't answer the question."

"You're right. I don't know if there's an answer, every girl is different just like every boy is different. I think it's wonderful you're exploring what being a girl is like - most boys wouldn't be willing to try to understand.

"There are the simple things like biology - boys have a penis and girls have a vagina. There are cultural things like men do heavy work because they're usually bigger and stronger and girls raise families and do the dishes at home. It used to be that boys wore pants and girls wore skirts, but that isn't so true any more. Those kind of cultural things made sense when people were living in tribes and just trying to survive, but the way things are now means that the 'men are strong and women have babies' stuff doesn't make so much sense any more.

"Grandpa says the world is going to heck in a handbasket because of women's liberation."

"He does that just to get a good argument going. Grandpa changed my diapers when I was a baby and did a lot of things that many men back then thought made him a sissy. Your grandpa was my biggest supporter when I was going for my PhD. He's a liberated man if there ever was one."

(Mom is a Doctor of Historic Preservation, which didn't mean much to me back then.)

"So he's a man who does things people think girls should do?"

"That's a fair statement, but only part of who Grandpa is. Have you noticed how people change depending on who they're with?"

"I… I'm not sure."

"Think of it like this. How does one of your friends act when he's with you, then how does he act with a teacher or with a girl?"

"I get it. I never really thought about it like that."

"Most people don't. Most boys wouldn't be interested in how it feels to be a girl. Certainly most boys wouldn't put on a dress and sing on stage as a girl. They wouldn't even wear a leotard and take dance lessons."

"Does that make me weird?"

"That makes you you. That makes you a caring person if you're willing to be a girl for your friend at her birthday. It makes you unusual, but our whole family is unusual. Being adopted makes you unusual. Being an actor makes you unusual. Being an A student makes you unusual. Having red hair makes you unusual. None of that says anything about how good a person you are, and that's what counts."

"It just seems all of a sudden I make a better girl than I do a boy."

"It's a little soon to be sure of that, honey. If you're comfortable with presenting as a girl then there's nothing wrong with learning how it feels to be a girl. You have a long time to explore and see what makes sense for you. Don't do anything because you think someone else wants you to be a girl or a boy or whatever."

"What else is there?"

"I think that's one of those things you need to be a little older before we discuss it. That gets very complicated, indeed."

"I hate it when you say that."

"And I hated it when my parents told me the same thing. Guess what - parents win and kids get to wait. Now go ahead and say it and get it over."

"Huh?"

"It's not fair!"

"Mooommm!"

 

"I don't know, Mom."

"That's why you go to school, so you will know."

"Mooommm!"

"What don't you know, Annie?"

"What should I wear to a girl party?"

"Did your friend say anything about what to wear?"

"She said 'wear something nice'."

"Which leaves us lots of choice,eh?"

"But what am I choosing. I don't know what a girl would think is nice."

"So think a minute. You've got a sister, what does she wear to a nice party?"

"I really didn't notice."

"Well, what did she wear when we went out to dinner?"

"A white blouse and a lilac skirt that you and Dad thought was too short."

"See - you can remember what she wore and what the occasion was. What were you wearing?"

"My green dress."

"And what was I wearing?"

"A gold dress with a black belt and a sort of U-shaped neckline. Your skirt wasn't as short as Kate's."

"I should hope not. You certainly have an eye for what girls are wearing. Have you been looking at Kate's fashion magazines?"

"A little bit, but I don't think a lot of those things look very good."

"We can agree on that. Maybe when you're old enough to date I won't have to argue about the length of your skirt."

"Mooommm!"

"Sorry, honey. I can't help it, you make such a cute girl."

"I know. Sometimes I wonder why."

"I don't know if there's an answer to that question. There is an answer to the question as to what you should wear to the party. 'Pretty' is usually a code word for a skirt or dress if you're a girl."

"I guess you don't tell boys to be pretty."

"Unless they're like you."

"Mooommm!"

"You're going to wear that word out."

"They're going to close the store if you don't stop making bad jokes."

"Now she criticizes my humor."

"What humor?"

"You're bad!"

"I'm a good girl."

"So you are. So what do you like?"

"There don't seem to be many skirts here, though."

"Think a moment - how often do you see girls wearing skirts as opposed to wearing pants?"

"Uh, not that often?"

"Another girl lesson - girls don't wear skirts all that much these days. Skirts are more for dressing up. Pants are more comfortable, especially when it gets cold."

"That makes sense."

"So finding a skirt for you might be a challenge."

"Where do we look? You're a lot taller than me, you can see farther."

"So I shall be your faithful scout, let's trek onward!"

"Mooommm!"

"I see some dresses, let's check over there."

"OK."

"Oh goodie! There's a sale rack - see if there's anything you like. You know your size."

At last! Sure, trading barbs with my mother was fun, but I was still a little nervous about buying girl's clothes right out in public. What if someone I knew came along? Sure, everyone at school knew I played Annie, but shopping for clothes in the girl's department would be something else.

Then again, I did like looking at the clothes and wondering how they'd look on me. Actually, I found several skirts and a couple of dresses that looked nice, some of them 70% off! Mom just held them and took me to the changing booth so I could try them on.

I knew the drill now, so I tried each one and came out so Mom could see, then changed into the next one. By the time I was done we had three skirts, two dresses and a pair of embroidered jeans that we both liked. Silly me - I was still mostly boy and figured that if we were shopping for a skirt for a party, then I had to choose which one I wanted and put the rest back. I had a lot to learn. I also had an understanding and generous mother.

Being on sale, she put them all in the cart and then we started looking at blouses to go with the skirts, which resulted in another fashion show. Nothing like this happened when Danny went shopping!

But we weren't finished. I cringe to think of it as an adult, but I was ecstatic to get several pairs of socks with girly cartoon characters on them. Danny wore mostly plain black socks because it didn't really matter if they matched anything. I was starting to get the idea of matching clothes and colors and having cute socks to pick from was neat. Mom just laughed and told me to wait until I was old enough to have to wear pantyhose, then she had to explain what they were. Hey - I was a bright eleven-year-old, but pantyhose were well outside my orbit.

Good thing it was a Friday night, otherwise I would have gotten home way past my bedtime. By the time we got out of there, Annie had the start of a very nice wardrobe. I was wondering just when and where I was going to be able to be Annie enough to make all those clothes worthwhile.

I think Mom was having more fun than I was buying me clothes. I wore the cream colored skirt and a green blouse home from the store, along with a butterfly in my hair and a gold locket around my neck. Yeah, Mom was really into the whole thing. When I saw myself in the mirror I really liked the person that looked back at me. Maybe this whole girl's school thing would be good after all."

Sam was in bed by the time we got home and Kate was still over at her friend's house. Dad just shook his head and moaned theatrically about having to put up with another teenage drama queen. I told him I wasn't a teenager yet, but he just kept whining. I told you he had done improv - he was really into his character.

So we hung out watching TV until Kate got home, I really wanted to see what she had to say. I can admit that now, but I really wanted my big sister to approve of me as Annie. As Danny I didn't really care, but as Annie I wanted to be a girl that Kate liked. Strange stuff.

Kate finally got home with seconds to spare for her 10:00 curfew and she squealed and gave me a big hug. She approved and I was very happy. I could get to like being Annie if this kept up!