Could I...Would I?
Around here, it's the time of the year when Girl Scouts jump up everywhere it seems to peddle their ubiquitous cookies. Including my granddaughter.
As I see them do it, I wonder how it must have been to have been able to join the Girl Scouts. Instead of my exceedingly short miserable stay in the Boy Scouts. Of course I will never know, just like not being able to take Home Economics in high school and learning to cook and sew, etc. Way before transgender, and LGBT were even words for the most part.
I believe now, the most important lesson I would have learned is how girls/young women interacted among themselves when boys were not present. Back in those days where I went to school, the genders were pretty much segregated. Girls to Home Ec, boys to Auto Mechanics. So of course I wanted to be in with the girls as a girl, not as a boy cross dressed as one.
Closets being what they were (and are still) I evaded much of the derision and bullying I would have had to put up with. I played sports, followed the college prep studies and went to proms. Or, I played the game enough to get by, get home and steal away some precious time to cross dress alone.
As time has a way of doing, it went so slow back then and seems like a blur now. Time though does not heal all, as I still wonder "what if." What if I had done more to express myself and had the courage to at least try to step out of the closet. I do know then, the life I had would have been seriously impacted under the harsh lights of an ignorant world.
So on and on I went and here I am finally where I wanted to be...almost. Yesterday was a good example of being called a "he" at one stop and treated like a star by a millennial at another.
Overall the "could" came true and the "would" provided me all I could ask for so far!
As I see them do it, I wonder how it must have been to have been able to join the Girl Scouts. Instead of my exceedingly short miserable stay in the Boy Scouts. Of course I will never know, just like not being able to take Home Economics in high school and learning to cook and sew, etc. Way before transgender, and LGBT were even words for the most part.
I believe now, the most important lesson I would have learned is how girls/young women interacted among themselves when boys were not present. Back in those days where I went to school, the genders were pretty much segregated. Girls to Home Ec, boys to Auto Mechanics. So of course I wanted to be in with the girls as a girl, not as a boy cross dressed as one.
Closets being what they were (and are still) I evaded much of the derision and bullying I would have had to put up with. I played sports, followed the college prep studies and went to proms. Or, I played the game enough to get by, get home and steal away some precious time to cross dress alone.
As time has a way of doing, it went so slow back then and seems like a blur now. Time though does not heal all, as I still wonder "what if." What if I had done more to express myself and had the courage to at least try to step out of the closet. I do know then, the life I had would have been seriously impacted under the harsh lights of an ignorant world.
So on and on I went and here I am finally where I wanted to be...almost. Yesterday was a good example of being called a "he" at one stop and treated like a star by a millennial at another.
Overall the "could" came true and the "would" provided me all I could ask for so far!
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