Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tails...

I was something of a tomboy when I was a kid. I’d say that by late elementary school, I had grown out of it. But from about age four through eight or nine I spent a lot of time keeping up with the neighborhood boys.

There were several boys in the neighborhood who were my age. When I was very little, we played together in our yards. I remember at age four, when one of my little friends, Stevie, went off to Kindergarten that I was quite sad. I had to play with his dorky little brother. I was friends with Stevie and his brother for several more years. These were the kids with whom I built forts, climbed trees, played games, and got into trouble.

As I think of it now, a part of my tomboyish-ness was my own personality and a big portion was the result of parental neglect. I just wasn’t supervised. The boys in the neighborhood tended to be more free to roam, as I was. I remember the usual childhood mischief – hiding in the bushes and spying on passersby; ringing doorbells and running away; playing “doctor.” I recall friends of my parents' skinny dipping in our backyard pool and leading the gang around to the neighbor's backyard for a peek.

But I also remember when our mischief turned to destruction and petty thievery. The petty thievery gave me mild pangs of guilt, but nothing serious…nothing that wouldn’t soon be forgotten.

First, we discovered that we could put cardboard “pennies” in the gumball machine at the local candy store. If you put the cardboard piece in there and turned the handle, you could keep turning, around and around. One day we emptied it. We filled a bowl. We went back to one neighbor’s playhouse and chewed gum until we got caught. My mom made me empty my piggybank, marched me up to the candy store (the “Variety” Store) and stood there and waited while I confessed. The man at the store was very serious, but not mean. I was somewhat intimidated…but not intimidated enough.

Later, when we got a little older, we stole packs of cigarettes from my dad and smoked them in the playhouse. When our smoking habit became a big pastime, we went to the local grocery and stole a whole carton of cigarettes by stuffing it under one of our shirts. This was a more serious crime by neighborhood (or I suppose any) standards. My mom again marched me to the store with my life savings. The man at the store was more menacing this time. I was genuinely scared and quit even entering that store. But for Stevie and his brother, who were Mormon, the consequences were even more severe. They were grounded and got the belt (or the back of a hairbrush) for this. I remember feeling guilty because my punishment lasted one afternoon and an evening - theirs lasted for weeks and they were forbidden to play with me.

I hung out at the girls’ houses while the punishment lasted. But eventually, we sort of lapsed back into our regular old habits when the boys parents’ attention turned to other things.

There was also a boy in the neighborhood named Paul. Paul was a tough kid who went to Catholic school. We often heard his parents fighting in the back room of his house when we played over there. I had a crush on Paul from about first grade. He was a couple of years older than I. But my parents should have separated us sooner. If he had any affection for me, it took a strange form.

One evening while playing, for no apparent reason, Paul threw a brick at me and hit me in the head. I ran home bleeding. My mother fashioned a special band-aid and taped the skin back together. Another time, we were playing baseball with a ball and a metal pipe in Paul’s backyard and Paul accidentally swung around and hit me square on the forehead. Still, I gave him the benefit of the doubt. His mother was a nurse. She cleaned the wound and put a butterfly bandage on my forehead. I still have the lump from that one. But the last straw for me and my mother was when he came after me with a crowbar. This time it was just plain old anger at something I said or did. He hit me over the head. My mom cleaned that one up. Another butterfly. It left a gash. It also reduced the size of our gang. Paul was out.

I think that must have been the turning of the tide. I began to have less interest in boyish things. The boys were just becoming gross, in my opinion. Every year in the spring, we would ride our bikes a few blocks to where the drainage canals went through town. We’d hide our bikes in the bushes and climb the fence. Down the cement banks we’d carefully crawl, to the bottom where the mucky water flowed – drainage from the streets above. This muck and mud didn’t bother any of us in the least. The algae that grew there was the perfect breeding ground for tadpoles, which we loved to watch grow. For a few weeks we would watch the development, then one day we’d show up with our buckets and little hoppy toads would be moving everywhere. We’d fill our buckets and take them home. They’d be re-introduced to nature in our backyards - and many of them would live there for a long time. Our parents didn’t mind because they helped to keep down the number of aphids.

But the year after the cigarette fiasco, was also the end of the road for our gang. This year I remember going down to the canal on a hot and sunny day. One of the boys took to showing off by throwing little toads against the cement. Another boy did the same thing in turn, calling it, “giving the toad a sunburn.” I tried throwing one, but I couldn’t hack it. I shouted at them to “Stop it!” but that just inspired them to greater violence. We left the canal with our buckets and walked our bikes home in sullen silence. After supper, when it came time to play with the toads, the boys decided to do dissections with sticks. That was it for me. The end of an era. I decided, from then on, to be a girl.

Yes, I left behind childish things that day. But I had guilty nightmares for years after about my real friends, the toads. I think my affinity for Buddhists and their non-violent ways was probably born the same day our little gang died.