The Pageant Trap
A Short Story
By Maryanne Peters

You can probably guess how it began. It’s in the title. It was a beauty pageant, more than one in fact, but the first one had to be a “Womanless” Beauty Pageant.

My mother had been a beauty queen. She married my father who was an athlete and a pro ballplayer when they met. To his great satisfaction he had three sons. I was the youngest. We were all brought up to play sport as our father had. None of us had the slightest interest in domestic things. We wanted nothing more than to be like our dad.