First year: How terrible the aspect of the big brick academy! How awe-inspiring the smell of the newly varnished floor on the first day of my school life! How my heart jumped to my throat whenever I caught the cold, stern eye of the school-marm piercing through my own little self! How bold and bad and rough all the boys were! Why must I sit with them and enter by their door when I so longed to be with the gentle and soft-voiced girls?
And could I ever bring myself to see what was on the other side of the sign: “For boys only”? What right had I there? For I already recognized I was really not a boy! At that age I gloated over being a girl-boy.
There was thus provision for the comfort of the boys. There was provision for the comfort of the girls. But architects have never thought to make provision for the girl-boys!
The first week I suffered terribly rather than invade the retreat barred to all but boys. Then an unprintable experience right at my desk afforded the room a good laugh and sent me home for dry clothing. I now preferred the horror of the retreat to being laughed at and sent home. But I made a virtue of haste and watched for a moment when no other boy was out.
Second year: I sat on a rear seat with a boy whom I stared at and touched because of the softness and radiance of his hair, the rich red of his cheeks, |Sexual Precocity.| and his sturdy build. Now and then we kissed when no one was looking. But once a loud smack reverberated just after the near-sighted school-marm had requested such stillness that one could hear a pin drop. As she had never been kissed by a person of the opposite sex, she considered a smack the unpardonable sin. My hero-boy took his whipping with a cynical smile. But I wept for a half-hour.
Third year: I was caught in an immeasurably worse impropriety[[16]] under a desk. The teacher thought my parents ought to know. Violently angry, my father hammered my body with the heel of a boot. In a dozen years, not one of my numerous brothers and sisters (although I was the only goody-goody one) suffered such a thrashing. All the rest of my home life, father treated me the worst of all, notwithstanding I far excelled in school-work. What a trial to have a girl-boy son? Why had I ever been born? Subsequently there existed a lifelong coolness between father and me.
Fourth year: [A typical spring afternoon.] After school, the west playground was thronged with boys. I alone hastened directly to the street, embarrassed as a little girl alone with two hundred boys. One calls out: “Ralph, hurry to the girls’ yard where you belong!” Another: “Ralph, your legs are as shapely as a girl’s. You would make a good-looking girl!” A third throws his arms around me and exclaims: “Kissing you is as good as kissing a girl!”
My embarrassment prevented my relishing these attentions at the moment. But I always gloated over them after I got to bed.
Nature Indicated Rearing as a Girl.
I had not quite reached the gate when a ball rolled to my feet and the players shouted for it. With beet-red face on account of what I knew would be said, I gave the ball an awkward toss. “Hah hah hah! You throw just like a girl! Miss Nancy!”