My childhood was interesting, to say the least. My father was Polish and my mother Puerto Rican. There was a cultural and language gap at times, since my mother's English was imperfect. I was called Puerto-Pole by a dear friend in middle school and I loved it, probably because it had no gender attached to it.
My married sister had a son when I was eight years old. I loved that kid and still do. I could be the boy through him. I used to play ships with him, climb in boats and play a lot of traditionally boy-role games. It felt so normal to play that way, compared to how girls wanted to play. I had no interest in their tea parties and dolls.
People who now know me through spiritual circles will not be surprised to hear that I played priest when I was five. I wore my dad's black trench coat backwards, cut up pieces of Wonder Bread with a shot glass to be the host, used grape juice for wine and the piano bench for my altar. My sisters and brother were regular congregants.
My dad had very little patience, but he understood me and seemed to know I wasn't a regular girl. I used to hang out with him wearing a t-shirt and eat raw clams, or play football. He played professional jazz sax and I played drums with him occasionally, starting when I was 11 and up through adulthood.
I started playing drums in elementary school. Since I was a tomboy that always felt like a real boy, my drums were my savior -- I could escape in the music. I noticed that gender played a large role in the percussion section. I personally never thought drums preferred certain genders to play them, until I saw the girls in band always getting assigned the bell and triangle parts, and the boys getting the bass drum and snare. I thought that it was unfair that everything seemed to have gender written all over it. As I grew older and went into middle that prejudice faded, and everyone got a chance to rotate amongst all the percussion instruments. It's a shame we were taught so young that girls were only able to play the lesser-valued instruments (like the triangle) and the boys got the powerful ones. (Note: "The Pink Panther" has a great triangle part, which I played. But I digress.) High school brought on the gender disparity even more strongly than it had been in elementary school, which was a great source of frustration. I wasn't allowed to play the drum set until 11th grade simply because I was a girl. It was never stated out loud, but everyone knew that girls didn't get to play the cool drum parts.
In elementary school every girl had to wear a dress playing in the band. When I got to middle school that rule was in place there too. I was in stage jazz band in 8th grade. Mr O., my conductor, must have known me well because he said "Now Nancy, you do not have to wear a dress playing the drums. A nice leisure suit or dark slacks are fine." My mother did not believe me. So I was forced to wear a skirt playing drum set, which means that the audience all saw my underwear. Mr O. was very polite and told my mom in person that I did not have to wear a skirt any more. I was so embarrassed, and experienced what I now know as dysphoria: the opposite of "euphoria," it's a profound depression that for me was a disconnection from my body as a protection so that I could not feel. I would get to know that feeling very intimately as I reached puberty.
It's very interesting to be male-female and see both sides looking back at my childhood, because I got to understand the difficulties and emotions a female goes through and how it formed me as a male.
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