I feel relaxed and happy. I am taking a break from my workday. It is late to still be working. I like what I do. I have Anne with an E playing on my iPad while I work. It is the episode where she dyes her hair, and her hair turns green. The end result is a pixie cut before pixie cuts were a thing. She is devastated as even her teacher suggests that she is a boy. It is a cruel world even in the late 1800’s.
Anne is now on a trip into town to run the family errands, and she decided to dress as a boy and just play the part instead of being a spectacle of a girl with short hair. She is enjoying her day as a boy, earning small coins for random chores and playing marbles with the boys. I love this episode.
The timing is perfect, my former friend texted me tonight with further cruel messages insinuating that people mistaken me for a man. He wants to clarify that he was not trying to be mean in his previous text of, “Speaking of transitioning, how self-conscious are you, as a woman taller than 5-8, that men wonder if youre a dude I think that would suck“. Also, he was not trying to be funny. His text says that he was being genuinely sympathetic. Sad for him that he thinks this way. Sad for him that he must pull others down to lift himself up.
So, Anne with an E and I have both been bullied by someone that attacks our gender. Good for us. Now, Anne has been asked to take over a lead role in her town’s play after a more beautiful, popular child fell ill. This reminds me of one of my worst, turned best childhood memories.
In second grade, we put on two school plays. I went to a small elementary school with two classes in each grade, so our two classes combined to put on the class plays. One play was about a small town’s fishing contest. The fisherman loses his real, and the beautiful girl hangs her beautiful braids over the side of the boat, and she catches the prize-winning fish. Of course, every girl in the second grade wanted to be this part in the play.
The second play was completely different, fresh and fun. The second play was a rendition of the Three Little Pigs, but in Noises Off Fashion. The three pigs are actors in a play, and the director is the Big Bad Wolf. Each pig has a persona. One is William Shakespig, one is Albert Einswine, and the third is Hogny Dangerfield. To my absolute horror, I was cast the part of Hogny Dangerfield.
Many children would be excited about the lead role in a school play, but I was given a male part as part hog and part fat comedian. I was mortified. I vividly remember going home and shutting myself away in my room to cry my eyes out. I remember the laughter and finger pointing from the pretty girls at school. Just as Anne knows she is not a pretty girl; I knew.
For a bit, this was a horrible era in my life, but I had a job to do. I often think back to this moment when I am given something to do that I do not want to do. I memorized all of my lines, and my fellow cast members did the same. Most of the kids had bit parts in the fishing contest play. Just a handful of us were a part of the second play. I still remember some of my lines, “No respect, I get no respect, I get run over by the welcome wagon. Not even the Avon lady rings my bell.“
Our teacher knew how to put on a play, and she coached us well. I was convincing in my pig nosed fat man costume. I am sure that my short, horrible haircut helped.
The fishing play was first. I wound up playing a fairly major part in this play at the last moment because a child was absent. Of course, not the lead role of the beautiful girl, but an important part as the judge of the fishing contest. I would have been thrilled to be originally cast in this role.
As I stood up on stage, playing a part in the first play that I never rehearsed, I looked out upon a bored audience of parents. Some put on encouraging smiles, but most struggled not to yawn. I realized the play was so boring. Perhaps, the teachers chose the play because of its large cast, so every kid not cast in the Three Little Pigs play would have a part.
The uneventful play ended, and it was time for our Three Little Pigs play. It was time for me to play the part that all of the girls had made fun of me about for weeks. It was time to be the only girl playing the role of a male pig. Like I said, our teacher had us well prepared. We delivered our lines in the character of our pigs. We knew to pause for laughter, we pranced about. We had the time of our lives on stage. To this day, I remember how confident I suddenly felt. I remember how much fun it was to be someone else just for a moment.
We performed for the same audience that the previous play bored, yet it was an entirely different audience. It was an audience in fits of laughter and clear enjoyment of our performance.
I deeply regretted then, and I regret it to this day that I told my mom that she could not go to the play because I was embarrassed about my part. She respected my wishes. When I got home, she was in tears of pride, and tears over having missed the play. She had numerous parents call her to tell her how exceptional I was. This is back in the day before social media, where it takes effort to go to a phone, find a person’s number, and connect with them.
To this day, that second grade teacher is someone I thank God for putting into my life. She encouraged me to write and encouraged me to excel in a man’s world. It wasn’t easy to leave a small town without the educational opportunities offered in wealthier communities. I left with a desire to succeed, and I left with writing skills. Many times, in my life in the big city, I have felt lost, completely inadequate, or out of place. I think back to my days as Hogny Dangerfield, and some part of me knows that I will triumph again.
I love the life that I live. I also love my body just as it is. There were times in my childhood that I feared that I looked like a boy or that I was too tall. Those days are long ago and never again.
Thank you, Becky Meckel, for being the best second grade teacher in the entire world. Thank you for being my second-grade teacher.