Chapter 3 - Sonya Henie's Tutu!

Up in my bedroom I sat at my desk in a daze. Until a half hour ago I wouldn't have thought anything could have made me think of anything but not being able to try on my new clothes. I wasn't happy with my mother for trying to distract me from my funk, but - Sonya Henie's Tutu! - she had managed it.

Now any thirteen year old today would reflexively go to their phone and call up their playlist to fill the silence of the bedroom, but in the early sixties that wasn't an option. I had two choices - put a 45 RPM record on my record player and change it every few minutes or turn on my transistor radio. At the time a transistor radio was a big deal, you could stick the new Japanese ones in your pocket and listen to the local stations anywhere, at least until the 9 volt battery gave out.

My parents had gotten me one last Christmas, so I was the envy of my buddies. The thing cost about fifteen bucks, and if you remember I paid a buck and a half for that bra I couldn't try on, you get the idea that they were not in everybody's price range. The last I bra I bought on line cost me almost sixty bucks, so you can see just what fifteen dollars meant back then. Like I told you, my family was moderately well off.

With the tinny sounds of the top forty coming from the little inch-and-a-half speaker I contemplated what had just happened. I learned my mother had big dreams when she was my age - something that had never occurred to me before then - and she had actually told me I might look cute in a tutu.

Something like that had never happened before, either.

Ice skating - a subject I had never really considered before that momentous day. What would happen if I asked my mother to take me ice skating with her sometime? Would she be willing to teach me how to skate? Could I work up the nerve to talk about a tutu? Big dreams for a thirteen year old boy.

I needed to know more about this whole ice skating thing. Once again, I have to remind you this was the early sixties, if you wanted to get information about something you basically had one choice - the Library. Kids these days don't know what it was like… Forget it - I'm maundering again. I'll try to stick to the subject.

After dinner I quickly finished my homework and then hopped on my bike to ride to the library. There I consulted the card catalog and found a whole lot more about ice skating than I had found about boys who want to wear girls clothes. Since I found absolutely nothing on that subject, it wasn't hard to find more than I did on my last search. I even found a book on Sonja Henie and got a look at her tutu. The boy side of me thought she looked pretty good and the emerging girl side of me wanted to be wearing one of those! When I left I had checked out my limit of books on ice skating and filled the basket on my bike.

I tried to simply go up to my room when I got home but, while the sight of me with an armful of books wasn't exactly rare, it wasn't exactly common either.

"What'cha got there, sport?" asked my dad.

"A bunch of books."

"I kind of figured that out. Books about what?"

"Ice skating."

"Ice skating? You know your mom was an ice skater when she was your age. She was pretty good, too."

"I know. She told me about it this afternoon. It sounded interesting."

"Well, I really enjoyed watching her skate in that little, short skirt. The ice rink was the only place in town she could wear something like that without every old biddy in town phoning her mother to complain about moral laxness in the younger generation."

"Lawrence! Am I hearing you discuss moral laxity with our son?"

Mom had arrived.

"Just telling him how good you looked in a tutu, dear."

"So you said, even back then."

"Haven't changed my mind, either."

"Flatterer!"

"Uh, Mom?" I asked.

"I was thinking… Could you maybe teach me how to ice skate? It looks like it might be fun."

"Well, I certainly enjoyed it. So did your father but for rather different reasons."

"Hey! I can't help it if you were the prettiest girl on the rink."

"I think you were more interested in those quiet places behind the rink where you could…"

"Mom! Maybe I should just go up to my room now."

"Not a bad idea for us, either, eh Bev?"

"Lawrence! I think it's time for you to have that talk with Conrad. Past time, maybe."

"You could be right. We aren't trying to hide anything from you, Con. It's just that the whole subject of sex is rather… rather…"

"Difficult, Dad? I've noticed. Adults tend to clam up and get red in the face about it."

"From the mouths of babes… I guess that applies to us, doesn't it Bev?"

"I guess so. Tomorrow night we'll try to give you the straight story, son," said Mom.

"That would be good. Some of the stuff I've heard in the locker room seems pretty weird."

"About as weird and almost certainly as wrong as what I heard at your age," Dad replied.

So we left it there and I went up to my room to read my books. Problem was, now I had something else to be confused about. I fell asleep and had some very odd dreams. Fortunately, I couldn't remember them when I woke up.