Mission of a Life Time

The bright sunny day had been replaced by an eerie fog that slowly crept over us as we huddled by the corner of my house. We could barely see each other let alone the house across the street we needed to get to. We needed to slip past the girls playing in the street first, in order to reach our fort in the backyard unnoticed, after all it was a boys only fort. Why we needed a boy only fort , I had no clue, but I didn't care. I was hanging out with the older kids and I would do whatever it took to hang out with them.

I was six and the youngest by three years. I didn't know why we did half the stuff we did, but it was always fun. The girls were a constant annoyance to us, or so I was told, and therefore we needed a secret place to hang out. This is how our secret fort in the backyard was created. It was no secret that the fort existed but there were no girls allowed so we considered it a secret fort. It was located across the street, not more than 200 feet away, yet it seemed like a mile whenever we tried to get there unnoticed.

The plan was simple we would use the fog as cover and slowly make our way around the girls, just like American spies in those old World War 2 movies when they had to sneak past Nazi guards. It was every boys dream back then to be a spy and sneak around never being seen. The girls were just like Nazi guards preventing us from getting to our fort. If we got caught it would have the same consequences…Death!, or at least that's how it felt for us. They would infect us with cooties and who knows what else. The last time my friends had tried to pull this same maneuver they lost a guy, he became one of them, or so they told me at the time.

"He's playing in the street. Take a look." One of my friends whispered.

I looked around the corner into the street and sure enough there was a boy playing with the girls. "Traitor. He should be captured and shot for playing with them," I thought to myself. I took my war movies to heart back then and I remembered the traitors being shot. I always wanted to relive one of those war movies, with all the action and glory that came with it. This was my chance.

The time had come. It was all or nothing now. We slowly slipped past the corner of my house and crawled through my yard. When we reached the edge of the road we stopped and watched. The fog was still heavy but you could still make out the rough outline of the girls and the traitor, playing some girly game in the street. This was the tricky part. This was where we were most likely to be spotted. The time was now. We slowly stood up and bolted across the street. We ran like our lives were on the line because in our eyes our life as we knew it was on the line.

Unfortunately, I was not only the youngest, which meant I was the last one in line to start running, but I was also the shortest. My legs were shorter and I wasn't even close to being fast enough to keep pace with them. The first two made it across but made so much noise that the girls looked over in time to see me running for my life, all by myself. I felt them look over and tried to push my self to run even faster. The sweat began running down my face, my legs started to hurt from the extra speed I required of them. I was only half way across the street but it seemed like I had been running for miles. I wasn't going to make it, I could feel it deep down inside. I could hear the sound of feet closing in on me. My eyes began to water as I gave it everything I had. The sound of feet grew louder and louder. By now the tears were streaming down my face. I stopped in my tracks and waited for the unknown. It was over. I had lost.

After what seemed like an eternity, but couldn't have been more than 10 seconds, the girls caught up to me. This was it, the moment of truth. The final surrender, the end of life as I had always known it. No more ninja turtle action figures and old war movies. No more cops and robbers or cowboys and Indians. No more sports and certainly no more secret fort. I expected them to ridicule me without end but to my amazement they didn't say a single mean thing. They asked me why we never wanted to play with them and why I listened to the older boys when they talked about all the evil things girls do. Being only 6 I had to answers for them, I just stood there trying to cover up the tears from my surrender. They invited me to play a game with them in the street. I accepted, reluctantly surrendering my old life, a mans' life forever, or so I thought.

That day has shaped my life more than any other day of my life. It is on that day and the days that followed, I would realize that while girls and guys are different they have qualities that make life fun in different ways. I continued to hang out with my guy friends and watch old war movies, play cowboys and Indians, and I was even allowed in the fort. But I also became friends with the girls, which I believe has drastically shaped who I am today. Ever since that day I have had more girl friends then I have guy friends.

I used to base my manliness on how well I fit in with the guys. If I still believed in this I would be in trouble because while I fit in with the guys just fine, I would rather hang out with my group of girls any day. Now I realize it has nothing to do with fitting in or hanging out with the guys, it has to do with the attitude I carry. My attitude is that I will get dirtier, play rougher, work harder, and fight for the people that I love. This is why I am a masculine man.