Pride Cometh Before the Fall

    When I was younger, I was what you would call a Tomboy. Being the first born of two girls, and with no sign of any sons on the way, I was roped into the role of a Daddy's Girl. I adopted all of the hobbies and leisure activities that my father enjoyed: rebuilding hot rods and street rods, surfing, cutting the grass, reading the daily newspaper, repairing the roof. I might have been more feminine if he was my only male influence, but that wasn't the case. I grew up in a neighborhood full of children my age, all boys, with the sole exception of my littler sister. I was a product of my environment. Snakes and spiders, mud and grass stains, tree forts and skateboards, I loved it all. I was one of the boys, and that was exactly how I preferred it.
    "The Boys" happened to be the crew I grew up with in our neighborhood of Holiday Harbor. TJ Carven, who lived in a blue cape cod style house next to mine, was the eldest of the group, being two years my senior; his little brother, Timmy, was in my grade school class. Both of the Carven boys were mischievous little imps, but with one flash of their stunning smiles, any adult would be hard pressed to scold them.
    On the next street over was the Twining's house with two boys as well, Delaney and Dawson. Delaney was a few months younger than I, and Dawson was a year younger than my sister. They were the geeks of the group, but we put up with them because their eagerness to please made them ideal for the "sidekick" roles in our make believe games. Every Batman needed a Robin. Every Sergeant needed a Private. It helped that their parents owned Nantucket's Restaurant and never failed to have a mini-smorgasbord laid out on the table for us kids. Elementary school kids aren't difficult to win over.
    Peter Mueller and Gordy Wetzel lived on the last street on the block. Both were TJ's age, but both were much less permanent fixtures in our group. Peter split his time between two houses after his parents divorced, so we only saw him every other week, and Gordy was grounded practically as much as Peter was out of town. Regardless, they were both considered part of our crew, especially since Peter had open access to his father's tools, and Gordy had the only full sized trampoline in the area.
    Every one of the neighborhood boys regarded me as an equal, recognizing that I was a "girl" only in my genetics. I had never shied away from a game of tackle football, run home when I had gotten busted up and was bleeding, or backed down from a confrontation, challenge, or competition. Growing up with boys, it just never occurred to me that backing down was an option. I never gave them a single reason to question me in my status as a member of the group of boys - that is, until Picture Day in the third grade.

    Picture Day was a day that I dreaded more than any other day in the school year. Don't get me wrong, I loved having my picture taken. In fact, there are at least two full VHS tapes of home movies containing only my face, my voice repeating, "CHEESE!" But I loathed Picture Day because it was the only day that my mother dictated exactly what my sister and I would wear to school.
    On the majority of days my attire consisted of the same basic items. Stonewashed Levi's stovepipe jeans that were so broken in my knees practically showed through the thin denim. Classic black and white Adidas Sambas with Hanes crew cut ankle socks. Oversized tee shirts, often one of the tees that my father screen printed in the mid 1970's when he owned the Sundance Brotherhood Screen Printing Company. All topped off with a high ponytail, or any variety of braids that my mother would attempt in order to keep my hair out of my face.
    Picture Day was a far cry from routine. My mother was well aware that she had the only two girls out of 14 nephews, and that all of her sisters and sister-in-laws were somewhat jealous of her "two beauties." Every year, the members of our extended family exchanged school photos of their children, and my mother was adamant that ours were to be flawless. More importantly, that we actually LOOKED like the perfect little girls she portrayed us to be.
    Jeans were replaced with ruffled skirts and colored stockings. Tees swapped for lace-edged camisoles and pearl-buttoned cardigans. Tennis shoes were tossed aside for shiny, patent leather Mary Janes. Pony tails were combed out and complimented with padded headbands and plastic barrettes.

    It was horrendous.

    As much as I hated the girlishness of the ensemble, I never once struggled with her on the issue. Both she and I could be stubborn, but her dynamic of stubbornness was different than mine. When put up against each other, hers was a righteous steamroller to my passive-aggressive stalled truck. I learned at an early age that when it came to moments like those, to pick my battles. Besides, Picture Day was only one day of the year, and I knew from past years that it wouldn't kill me...it couldn't. Right?

    In the third grade at Showell Elementary School, the wretched day of forced feminine dress was fairly identical to the previous years. Near the end of the day, amid the mass of children, my class joined the others in the cafeteria and waited until we were called. We then filed onto the stage - lined up, single file, alphabetically - to have our individual pictures taken. Backgrounds were set, backs were straight, heads were tilted at just the right angle, smiles were widened, and FLASH. That was that. The rest of the day I spent watching the clock tick by, waiting for the bell to sound at 3pm, so I could board the bus, get home, and get out of those frilly, silly clothes.

    The bus ride home was a short one, fifteen minutes, max. That particular day, Timmy had been pushing my buttons by boasting that he had successfully climbed to the top of the Bunting's tree. The Bunting's tree was on the property line between the Carven's house and the Bunting's house. My father told me once that it was 230 years old, the tallest Maple in the area. It was, by far, the most favored climbing tree around. Growing up, the neighborhood kids spent just as much time in that tree as on the ground.
    Timmy taunted and teased that I would never be able to climb as high as he had, because I was just a girl and everyone knew that girls weren't as good at climbing trees as boys. That was one of the few things that anyone could say to get me fired up. I had to challenge him, which is exactly what he wanted. Delaney was in league with Timmy and both of the boys really got under my skin with their goading. They rarely used the “you’re only a girl” ploy, but seeing as how I was dressed like a Sears Catalogue model child, I had it coming; the boys used my pink, frilly ensemble against me. I had no choice. I had to protect my identity as one of their equals. I had to climb.

    When Bus 55 pulled up to the stop at the entrance to Holiday Harbor, the lot of us poured off and hit the ground at full speed towards our destination: the tree. No one wanted to miss what was about to go down. One of two things could happen. I would match Timmy by climbing to the top of the tree, tease him for a few days over being upstaged by a girl, and life would go on as it had. Or I would fail, lose the challenge, and my status in the group would be knocked down a notch.
    Knocked down to that of a girl.

    When we got to the tree, I ignored the fact that my dress clothes weren't exactly appropriate for climbing attire. There was no time to go home and change. Even thinking about doing so seemed absurd. I dropped my book bag in the grass and embraced the enormous trunk. Over my shoulder I saw Sarah wince as I pulled myself onto the first branch, my white stockings with their pink rosebud pattern running in at least three places. The boys watched from below, their sing-song voices teasing me with the childish, but expected refrain,
    "I see London, I see France, I see Katie's underpants!!"
    I gritted my teeth and ignored them. No less than two minutes later I pushed my knee into the last split of the highest branches and pulled myself up. The view was incredible. My comrades looked like tiny Lego people below me. Over two miles away I could see the entrance street of the neighborhood, Dixie Drive, where it met St. Martin's Neck Road, leading to Route 90. I had done it! I had accepted (and won) Timmy's challenge. On the ground, the boys were hooting and hollering at my accomplishment. Even Timmy was cheering, despite losing to a girl. My smile began to hurt my cheeks with its intensity, and after catching my breath I maneuvered myself around to begin the descent.

    That's when it all went wrong. The slick soles of the now badly scuffed Mary Janes couldn't grip the bark of the branch below. As I lowered myself down, my legs shot out from beneath me. My world stopped right then and there...I was going to fall.

    The drop probably lasted only milliseconds, but it felt like I was crashing through the branches in slow motion. My body was so tense that I couldn't even scream. I think I balled my fingers into white-knuckled fists that I held covering my eyes and face as best I could. Chunks of my hair were snagged by passing twigs and torn out with what seems now to have been audible rips. Luckily, I was too far out from the trunk to hit any of the thicker, base branches. Even so, the thinner ones I plummeted through did plenty of damage on their own. There was a sudden, sharp yank on my stomach before I felt blood rush to my head. Then everything went silent.

    The boys’ voices began to fill my head, concerned shouts mixed with jarring laughter. Opening my eyes I saw the yard around me, only flipped. "Oh my God," I thought, "I've fallen so far and hard that my eyes have flipped upside down in their sockets."
   
    TJ, the most responsible and mature of the group, had rushed forward and grabbed my head, his two hands on each of my hot and flushed cheeks. He rotated me to face him and tried to read my expression.
   
    "Katie...hey, you okay?"
   
    I started to cough and gasp, unaware that I had been holding my breath.
   
    "Katie, look at me," TJ said again. "Are you okay? You hurt anywhere?"
   
    "She's not hurt man," Timmy said, appearing in my line of vision next to his brother. "She's just freaked out. Let's get her down."

    That's when I realized I hadn't actually hit the ground yet. I was hanging upside down, suspended from the lowest branch by the hem of my skirt. My shredded stockings were flashing my Day-of-the-Week panties to the world. My arms, neck, and face were lacerated and beginning to sting. I could feel the multitude of splinters in my camisole scratching at my flesh. So I did what any self-respecting girl would have done. I began to cry.
    The boys, totally unprepared for that type of reaction from me, froze. They looked back and forth at each other for answers, but none of them knew how to handle the situation. I had never cried in front of them before. Ever. I had sliced my knee open on broken glass and walked it off. Sprained both ankles and a wrist without a sniffle. Almost lost a finger sawing plywood for our quarter pipe and didn't bat an eye. But there I was, dangling upside down from a tree in my Sunday best, fat tears rolling uncontrollably from my bright red face, wailing in a pitch that could have drowned out a fire alarm.

    After a minute or two had passed and I was still in hysterics, the boys started to panic. Looking around, TJ eventually noticed Sarah standing several feet in back of the rest of the group. She had watched the whole thing with her hands held over her mouth, and by then was then crying as well. She often cried sympathetically for others as a child. Especially if there was a chance that she would get into trouble even for merely being a part of a stunt such as this one. Since there was no sign of my tears stopping, and the boys still hadn't figured out exactly what to do about me, TJ grabbed Sarah by the arm and rushed off towards my house to get help.
Moments later my mother was there, pulling me out of the clutches of the tree and consoling me. I waited for her to scold me over ruining my nicest clothes, but it never came. Instead she wiped my nose with her shirtsleeve and cooed, "There, there," as I was swept off in her arms to the safety of our house.

    I spent the remainder of that evening explaining the sequence of events to my parents, while my father properly cleansed and bandaged my wounds. He had to use his Swiss Army knife to remove several well embedded splinters, but they were nothing compared to the icy sting of the Betadine that was swabbed onto the raw lashes etched into my upper body. My father was as gentle as he could be in dressing my injuries, which was a feat in itself considering how calloused and rough his carpenter's hands were. He refrained from scolding me, just as my mother had, which was out of character for them both. I suppose they thought that my cuts and gashes were enough punishment for being so prideful. My pride had given me plenty of time-outs in the past, as well as a good deal of scars to remember how it had gotten me into trouble. The fall wouldn’t change how prideful I was, but I certainly rethought the circumstances I accepted challenges under.

    The chunks of hair that had been torn out in my fall took me to the Perfect Face Day Spa and Salon a day or so later. I was intent on getting as short and boyish of a haircut as my mother would allow, convinced that looking less like a girl would make up for crying and flashing my panties to the boys. Surprisingly, she didn't object. I think that she'd had it with combing out my knotted, tangled hair after so many years of my reckless playing. My fall was just another reason why a shorter style would suit me. I left twenty-five inches of dirty blonde hair on the floor of that salon, a Pixie style cut perched in its place. My mother must have felt a little guilty for my accident, because on the way home she promised that, from then on, I would be able to wear whatever I pleased, even on Picture Day. She accepted that changing my image for even that one day was futile...it never changed me at all. That year she stopped pretending that I was an ideal little girl, and let me be who I was. Her ideal little tomboy.

    Although all of us kids had taken plenty of spills in the past, the boys were a little unsure as to how to act around me after that particular incident. I worried that things would be awkward forever; I even convinced Sarah to loudly comment on how much my new haircut made me look like a boy. It took a few days, but eventually things went back to normal. They still acted like I was one of them, especially after I chased Dawson down, tackling him for teasing me about seeing my panties. Whether out of fear for being jumped themselves, or out of decency, the rest of them never mentioned the fall or my hysterical reaction for years. I even forgot about that Picture Day until senior year in high school, when Timmy signed my yearbook. My picture sharply contrasted my once tomboyish self. My hair hung shiny and styled, falling to the middle of my back. Mascara lined my eyes and lip gloss tinted my smile. I believe I was even wearing pink. Underneath that confidently feminine photo, in royal blue ink he scrawled,

    Katie, hey 'Sis'...hope you're happy at McDaniel, I'll be at Lynchburg so you'll have to write! Always remember the good times and that I'll always be there for  you. But next time you fall out of a tree, make sure that you wear nicer underwear!!!  HAHAHA! Never forget who you were, and who you are. I never will...see you at Christmas. Peace and Love- Timmy Carven