I would follow my brother and his friends around, like a
puppy. I didn’t know how to make friends. I was like a magpie in
that way, trying to acquire something I hadn’t earned. If friends
are real and have integrity and honesty, they are a lot more
precious than what the magpie sees shining out the corner of his
eye, and thinks, can I have a share in that?
I had followed my brother when he had gone to meet one
of his friends. I must have been about seven or eight. My brother
was a year older than me.
We sat cross-legged in a circle, triangle really, on a
grass verge. The friend said, as if I wasn’t there, ‘Why is she here?
Why can’t she stop following us? Why can’t she get her own
friends?’ That kind of thing.
I was a very quiet, shy sort of follower and I just clung to
them like a limpet, yet my brothers friend must have thought, and
rightly so, that I was cramping their style. I shouldn’t be there!
It didn’t start off that way, but it got tiring for them after a while,
quite understandably, ending up in a general
dissatisfaction with the status quo. I theorise, even at that early
age, my brother allowed it, dare I say, encouraged my trailing
along because he enjoyed the idolisation. Some older brothers
may gladly forgo all the intimacies of boyhood friendship, if the
baby sister becomes a public and ardent admirer.
I completely bought into that tomboy thing, whether it was
through sheer desperation to be accepted and belong to a group or
maybe I genuinely enjoyed playing football. Perhaps I’ll never
know but I loved getting covered in mud and grass and didn’t
mind cuts and bruises.
I do remember being a dirty tackler. My methods were
questionable. I must have been aware that I was female on some
level and could get away with some things, tackling wise, that the
others couldn’t, thus making any game I was in, unfair, but it was
generally just kicking around. During one kick around, I
remember I was at some friends/neighbours house and they had a
sprawling overgrown garden, with what seemed like dense
vegetation and a wild wood at the end, probably grossly over
exaggerated by an overactive and childish imagination.
At one point during the game, the ball went into the
overgrowth. I went in immediately to retrieve it and was pulled
back by one of the boys in the game. He looked at me in horror.
‘You can’t go in there.’ he said. ‘You’re a girl.’
This was a defining moment for me. I felt a myriad of
emotions all at once. I was afraid. I couldn’t work it out. Next
moment, I was arrogantly amused. I knew something he didn’t.
He was misinformed. Next moment, I was indignant, singed by
his prepubescent sexism, shocked and confused by his youthful
chauvinism.
Next moment, I felt disappointment, then bitter dismay
and lastly an inexplicable sadness. My life flashed before my eyes
in that instant. Limitation and femaleness seemed to suddenly be
inexorably linked. I knew I could have got that ball without any
harm or injury and I can’t remember whether I rebelled and went
in, or hung back, temporarily weakened by the fact that I was
someone who couldn’t go into a few bits of weeds and bushes to
retrieve a football.
Many years later, the event crossed my mind, but now all I
saw was concern in sincere and honest eyes.
He was looking out for me…maybe, maybe not. After all, he didn’t know me enough to genuinely care about me. It was probably all about social mores, either a natural protective instinct on his part or something he’d digested culturally in his young and tender years. He was genuinely alarmed at the idea that I should go and get that ball from the dense and thorny
undergrowth. I hadn’t met him before that day and I haven’t met
him since. He was just a kid and so was I.
Things In My Head 