By high school, I figured out...

... that I did not get along very well with most females.

The first time that I saw that poster, my eyes filled with tears, and I just thought, "Yes, yes, yes!" My entire childhood, I loved shoving my hair up in baseball caps. I envied the fact that boys got away with boxer shorts as an excuse for "underwear" (let's be real, they add a layer, but other than that, seriously... what is the point?) while I had to wear tight, uncomfortable "panties." Even the word "panties" still makes me cringe. What a terrible word. I never use that word. The generic underwear is enough for me. But I digress.

As a kid, I was gifted so many Barbie dolls that I didn't want. I never really did manage to playing nice for play dates with the girls in my class, with whom I was supposed to be building friendships to last a life time. Occasionally, I'd find another tomboy who'd want to climb trees with me instead of playing "makeover party," but those friendships were few and far between, and for some reason, they just always got cutoff by moving to a different school and growing apart.


  But by high school, I was really just over the notion that, because I was a girl, my close friend group was supposed to be girls. The skater guys were fun. They listened to the music I liked. Instead of catty gossip, the conversations around the lunch table were about random fodder like who ever came up with the leap year concept (I am glad to have existed pre-Google, where we mused about this stuff instead of just Googling it). I pretty quickly got accepted as "one of the guys" and got invited to punk rock concerts and midnight meteor shower parties. These were some of the happiest memories I had in high school. And then there was this one guy who loved fishing and cooking, neither of which he was initially very good at. He also loved talking philosophy for hours, and didn't care if I showed up in my pajamas. And although I was straight as straight could be, these were pure friendships. I'd listen to them pine over girls who were way out of their league. And they'd listen to me cry about how whiny and emotional my boyfriend of the moment was being lately. (Why do I pick these kinds of guys? I don't know).

 I'd spent most of my childhood thinking I was just she who "doesn't play well with others," but eventually, by high school, I realized that I just didn't play well with other girls. But society pushes kids so forcibly into these gender segregated groups on the playground, it is no wonder that it took me 9 years of public school to figure it out. In neighborhoods all over America there are neighbor kids of opposite genders who rush off to play with each other every afternoon, but then ignore each other on the playground at school the next morning.

 My son is falling into the same trap. He misses the female friend who lived on our block but moved away a few months ago. At school, he plays with a group of boys who are younger than him, and I sense he is unhappy with it, as he says, "Well, I mostly played with no one," a lot. Yesterday, we went to watch football with some friends of ours, and they have two little girls. My son and daughter are almost the same age as their girls, and all four of them had a blast playing together. When it was time to leave, we could barely tear them apart. They'd rode bikes, they made up creatives games, they joined each other's Minecraft worlds and.... well... to be honest, I don't really know what goes on in Minecraft world, but they Minecrafted, I guess.

 On the way home, my son mentioned that the girl his age reminded him of his cousin (who is his best friend). "Well, kiddo," I ventured, "You know what they have in common? They are girls. Maybe you should try to find some girls at school to be friends with."
 "No."
 "Why not?"
 "Because... the girls play with each other."
 "So why can't you ask to play with them."

 Silence.

 "Well... what do they usually play?"

 "Sometimes they sit in a line in the field and do each other's hair."
 "That puts you in a great position. You could just be the back of the line. You like doing hair."
 "Well, lately they've been doing other stuff anyway."
 "So, just go ask."

      After much convincing, my son realized that I am right (of course) and vowed that he would bravely attempt to play with the girls at school the next day. It's a very small school, so there aren't many options. I hoped the handful of girls his age would accept him. I even prayed about it.

 He even admitted that he'd like a change. Right now, he plays with a group of kids a grade or two younger than him. Apparently there is a boy a couple of years younger than my son who seems to kind of have a crush on my son. He follows him around and says, "You're handsome!" all the time. I laughed when he told me that, but my son did not think it was very funny. "It's kind of cute, kiddo."

 "Mom, no. I don't want anyone at school to know I'm gay."

 "Okay, I get that, but it is just a compliment; this kid doesn't know you are gay."

 "Yes, he does. I didn't tell him. No one told him. But somehow he just knows."

 It's funny that this happens. It happens in teenagers and reluctant young adults (and apparently my son's tiny elementary school too). I know that many experts deny that "gaydar" is real, but it never seems to fail that the more "out there" kid will find the one who doesn't want anyone to know yet. It is the plot of far too many gay ya lit books, and as of now... my son's elementary school playground drama.

 These are not the mommy troubles I'd imagined having with a nine-year-old boy.

 I asked him today if he played with the girls. He didn't. He chickened out. One of them said something bossy to him before science class and he got irritated and lost his nerve.

 See - every man in my life is sensitive and moody. Even my own son.

Explaining the "F" word

"Mommy, what's a faggot?" he asked as he walked alongside me, wearing his backpack, holding my hand, crossing the street towards home. My heart sunk as I asked a question I feared I already knew the answer to, "Why?" "Because someone called me one." I am finding that the biggest struggle of being a mom to gay kid is the reality that I so frequently am faced with questions that I don't know how to answer. Questions that I haven't anticipated, sometimes, or more often questions that I wasn't entirely ready for at that moment. And so often it feels like I am put between a rock and a hard place in being true to my parenting style of honesty and openness, of not hiding my kids from the real world, while still protecting this little child who I know faces an uphill battle, and may not be developmentally ready to process truths that I cannot fully comprehend myself. Statistically, I know gay kids are at greater risk for depression and suicide. Mental illness runs in my family. My son already struggles with legit obsessive compulsive disorder (and no, I don't mean he is tidy, I mean OCD, for real, like occasionally requiring a therapist to navigate the anxiety associated with it). I worry about his mental state. I watch him change his behaviors, his friendships, his clothing choices, etc., all the time to try to attract less attention from his male peers. I just want my kid to grow up to be himself. Is that so much to ask? "It's a cruel, derogatory term used for gay people," I responded honestly. "Oh. Yeah, I thought so," he said. "It is never, ever okay for someone to call you that," I continued, "What did you do? Did you tell someone? Where did this happen?" "On the playground during PE, and yes, I told the teacher." "What did she do?" "She talked to him about it. He said sorry." "What did she say?" "I don't know, I couldn't hear her. But I think she just told him he couldn't say that and that he had to say sorry." I really didn't know what to do with this in my head. In all truth, I don't remember entirely what I said to my son in the moment, other than that it was absolutely not okay, and that it was a serious word that deserved serious discipline, and that I wouldn't stand for anyone calling him that and getting away with a "go say sorry." My forgiving and accepting little man told me that he thought the kid really meant it when he said he was sorry, and that he didn't think the kid even knew what it meant. I half agree. I am a highly educated person, and I know enough about child development and youth culture to know that for some reason, friendly male athleticism, particularly in youth, involves an element of "psyching out" one's opponents, and that it has become popular among teenagers to do so with trash talk and name calling. I sort of understand the trash talk, but I don't understand the trend of name calling, especially using terms that can relate deeply and negatively to a person's identity. I also know that the term "faggot", among young men anyhow, has little to do with same sex relationships and more to do with belittling a boy's masculinity. But really, that isn't okay either. My son does not have gender dysmorphia. He feels comfortable in the boy skin he is in, but he doesn't define "male" in the way our society has come to socially define men. I need that to be okay for him. I need him to know that he doesn't have to live someone else's view of life. I need him to be okay with living his own. Of course, when I told friends, there was an outpouring of support, even from unlikely sources. No one, not even the Christian conservatives, like to hear about little kids using hate speech to make other little kids feel bad. And you have to wonder where the kid who spoke it heard it. My children, especially my daughter, have unfortunately picked up a handful of curse words, and I know exactly where they got them from: Me. Because I curse when I am angry. But not words like that. Not words meant to belittle a person based on any portion of their identity. No, not those. I thought, I hoped, that we had moved past that as a society. But apparently we have not. Because I'm guessing that seven-year-old kids don't pick up words like "fag" from television. In the end, I think what matters most is that the adults in the scene do everything they can to be allies. And my son's teacher forced a private apology. But what about the other 30 kids who just heard the word used on the playground? How will they learn that this is not okay? Ultimately, I made the ironic decision to pull my son out of this public school to put him where we felt he'd be safe, which was ironically, in a Christian school. The local Lutheran school proved to be a strong safe place for my son. A few months later, during a class activity, a kid pointed out to my son that he was drawing his self-portrait too "girly" for a boy, and my son took issue with this. After we discussed the issue with the teacher, she took the issue on and spoke to all of the kids about being accepting of everyone's choices in their art work and how they see themselves. She handled it with the dignity, grace, and attention that it desrved. It didn't become a huge issue, but it set the tone, and that is too be appreciated.