One of the Guys

Jordan was my neighbor since I could remember. He was in fourth grade when I was in kindergarten but that’s my only reference for how old he might have been. We had played together forever and I loved him. He taught me that you could get gum by peeling away the stems of this plant and chewing on the insides. He put worms down the back of my swimsuit and then showed me how if you cut them in half then the top half grows a new body. He tried to skateboard off of his roof and also tried to jump from his garage roof onto a slip’n’slide waiting below in the yard. He told the worst jokes ever like “Why was the watermelon different from the cantaloupe? Because the cantaloupe was orange.” He was my best friend.

He was older than me and bigger than me and I was always struggling to keep up. He had friends his age and I was just a little girl who his parents probably made him humor. But I think I held my own alright. When he was the only one who could climb our tree, I taught myself how to. When he wanted to play football in the yard, I tackled right back. Over my dead body was I going to let anyone beat me. No matter how much bigger or stronger or taller. And certainly not a boy.

His family moved away when I was in first grade and then I was left alone to play with kids my own age. My new best friend was a girl and we were the biggest, strongest, and tallest in our class. We were faster than all the boys at recess and our chain was unbreakable when we played red rover. But still the boys didn't share the balls with us. Of course some days were jungle gym days and other days we all played tag or red rover as a class, but every other day the boys played with balls and the girls played make-believe games. Don't get me wrong I loved make-believe games but sometimes you're just more in the mood for kickball.

Throughout early elementary school I watched my female friends' soccer skills get ignored only for the boys' to be praised. I watched as I (objectively the most athletic girl in my class at the time) was never good enough to play with the boys at recess. I watched as other girls got teased for wearing pink and painting our nails and having sleepovers and being "girly girls". If my handwriting was neat then I was "too girly." Even playing board games at indoor recess, no one took us seriously. If a girl won then it was a fluke or we were cheating. If a boy won it was because he was good. Because if you're a girl, you're automatically bad at Risk.

I was already what one might call a tomboy but all of this pushed me to be as traditionally boyish as I could. I did everything to be "not like other girls." I was going to be smarter and stronger and better than every boy and they would have to acknowledge me then. I was going to prove that I was just as good. I was going to make the boys treat me like one of them.

By fourth and fifth grade I was mean. I did my best to intimidate every boy in my class because I thought it would earn me some respect. We got teased for playing "girly" games, making dolls out of erasers, talking during recess. We got kicked out of foursquare games and we weren't allowed to play this stupid building game in indoor recess. So I kicked shins, talked back to people, to show that I wasn't buying their superiority crap. I was smarter I earned a place at the top that gifted class but I still wasn't good enough.

In middle school, with all girls, it was like a breath of fresh air. I got the respect that I earned. If I was smart then people acknowledged that, if I was athletic, if I was fun. For once in my life I didn't have anything to prove. I was as successful as I pushed myself to be and there were no boys to tell me I wasn't worth as much.

Then I got to Uni. After 9 years of playing softball, the boys still didn't trust me to catch and throw in Ultimate Ball. For the record, I'm good at Ultimate Ball. In PE I got ignored. In class I got talked over. And I watched this happen to all of my friends as well. In any math or science class you can bet the person that people ask for help is gonna be a boy. Because you can't trust a girl to know anything. The "good" team in sports, plenty of boys and shockingly, there are less girls. Because girls can't play sports. The kids who are laughing and rolling their eyes as girls talk in class discussions are the boys. Because god forbid a girl have something valuable to say. Even in my friendships with boys I was defensive and scared. Because what if people thought I was just some boy-crazy slut? How I dress, how I act, what I do all seem to be check boxes on a scorecard for if I'm as good as the boys or not.

I'm sick of playing this game. I'm tired of running this never-ending race that I can never win to prove that I'm something I'm not. I don't care anymore if I make it to "one of the guys." My success is because of me and because I pushed myself and it's valid with or without the boys' stamp of approval. My intelligence, my athleticism, my character is not measured on the boys' scale. And I don't have to be as good as the boys. I'm better.