Girls Don't Play in the Mud

(This is a random story i was assigned to write for my world lit class, i like it, i hope you like it!)

A girl named Elizabeth, sits on her back porch while playing with her doll that her grandmother gave her. She sits there in a pink dress with pink shoes to match, her sparkly tights are hot on this 95 degree day. Her hair is pulled into a pony tail to keep it off of her neck. A football lands a few feet away from her. Her brothers are tossing it with their friends. Looking at the football, she wants to pick it up and play with them but she doesn't. She remembers her mom telling her that girls aren't supposed to play football because it isn't lady like.

One of her brothers ran to pick it up then tosses it to his friend. Elizabeth watches as her older brothers run around in their dirty clothes. Her eldest brother, Joshua, is 14 and she watches as he screams random numbers before tossing the ball to Billy. Billy then throws the ball to their neighbor, Tommy. Tommy sprints until Isaac tackles him. Elizabeth laughs to herself as her brothers join in and jump on top of Tommy and Isaac.

Elizabeth soon gets bored watching her brothers having fun tossing a ball around, so she gets up and walks around the house making sure that she doesn't get dirt on her new pink shoes. When she reaches the front, she sees her mother talking to Tommy's mother. Elizabeth grabs her chalk and starts drawing on the sidewalk, she really wishes her best friend was with here with her today, everything is boring her. To finish her flower, she needs green for the grass, when she reaches into the box, it falls over making all of her chalk go everywhere. Looking for the green, she finds it in a muddy puddle. She goes to pick it up, getting mud all over her hand causing her to drop it back into the mud. She finds a stick and puts it in the mud to scoop the chalk out.

Next thing she knows, she is ripping out brown and green grass and putting it into the puddle. She stirs it with her stick, making a muddy soup, but it's missing something. She looks around getting leaves and tiny pebbles and adding it to her soup. Soon the mud is a mix of brown and a pastel green from the chalk she left inside. Perfect she thought.

"Elizabeth, what are you doing? Your too old to be playing in the dirt," Elizabeth gets up as her mother goes on and on about how she got dirt all over her outfit and how girls don't play in the mud. Elizabeth is ordered to go inside and to clean up. I'm only 10, she says to herself as she washes her hands. With a pout, she pulls out two cookies from the cookie jar. Just as she opens the fridge door for milk, she hears the boys come inside from the back door. Chatter fills the once quiet house. Elizabeth pours herself milk and puts it away before sitting down at the kitchen table.

She watches her brothers and friends toss the ball around in the house while pouring themselves lemonade.  They are sweaty and they smell. There was a moment of silence as they chugged their drinks before they started talking again. "What is a touchdown?" Elizabeth asks, she has noticed them saying it a lot and she can't seem to figure out what it is. She remembers catching a few minutes of the super bowl while helping her mother cook in the kitchen but she doesn't know what it means.

Everybody stops talking and looks over to Elizabeth as she dips her cookie into her milk."Well, it's," Joshua starts but Billy interrupts.

"Why don't we just show her?" Billy asks the other guys and they all agree. Elizabeth looks to the front entrance to where her mother is on the other side before running out of the house to catch up with the others. Her mother said she couldn't play but she didn't say she couldn't learn how to play.

Elizabeth smiles widely once she actually understands what a touchdown is. "Here, catch!" Billy says before tossing Elizabeth the ball. She catches it and he tells her to run. She runs as fast as she could until they all say touchdown. She turns around and starts jumping up and down saying touchdown like her brothers do.

Elizabeth strips of her shoes and plays football on the grass in her tights with her brothers. Elizabeth's brothers are surprised at how fast she learned how to play and found it very entertaining to watch her ripping her tights and getting grass marks on her pretty pink dress.

5 p.m. and Elizabeth's father just got home from work, dinner is done, so they go out to the back yard together to tell the children it's dinner time. They both walk out to see Elizabeth throwing the football to Isaac. Her mother gasps but her father just laughs and says, "It runs in the family." Elizabeth's mother understands then starts laughing also. She met him at high school when he was the star football player. "Hey kids, time for dinner!"

Elizabeth stops in her tracks and looks over to her mother. She picks up her dirty shoes and runs over to her mother and starts apologizing but her mom stops her with laughs and says, "Don't apologize, we need to go shopping for sneakers and more comfortable clothes, okay?" Elizabeth is happy that her mother isn't mad at her, she's just happy that she doesn't have to worry about messing up her clothes anymore.

The next day Elizabeth and her mother get her sneakers. Elizabeth is so excited to just play outside freely and to get as dirty as she likes. Elizabeth feels a weight lifted from her shoulders, like she can finally be herself. Elizabeth’s mother loves how happy she looks and she feels guilty for not giving Elizabeth the freedom she wanted.