Standing Up to Life

Chapter 3:

THE MORNING CAME too soon. Mom pretty much had to drag me out of bed and to the sink to brush my teeth. I ate breakfast quickly and then got dressed to go to the soccer game. We got down to the field early and I warmed up with my teammates. Before I knew it we had started the game. I was playing sweeper on our side of the field.

The game went fast and furious, with me getting the ball off our side of the field more often than not. At one point a player ran down the field with the ball and I kicked it hard. The player went one direction (towards the ground,) and the ball went flying to my friend, Brittany, and she went the rest of the way for a goal. The coach gave me a huge pat on the back for that one. Brittany was one of the two girls that were on the team. The other girl's name was Sarah. I had grown up as friends with Brittany since she went to the same church as we did at the time.

I thought to myself, 'I could be the third girl on the team!' That thought only distracted me for a few moments though, as the ball was soon heading back and forth across the field some more. The game ended with us up over the other team seven to one. Following the game we all went out for ice cream to celebrate.

Mom had come to the game, but dad hadn't... big surprise. He did some work for a friend's company on the side occasionally, and they had called him wanting help again that night. He had been there since midnight, and hadn't gotten home by the time we left at nine. I was beginning to really resent that other job. But I wasn't going to let that get me down today. The next game we were going to play would be for the city tournament. That was going to take place over the next two to three Saturdays, depending on how we played.

The coach told us to make sure we made it to the practices that week, it was important that we all work really hard together. When we left the Dairy Queen where we had gotten ice cream I sat back in the car thinking about all of the things that had happened that week.

At home I decided to play a computer game since dad wasn't there to monopolize it! I had a Star Wars game that I was playing. I loved games based on space or flight in general. I played that for a few hours until dinner, when I decided to go read a book of some sort.

I thought about it for a bit and decided to read one of the Laura Ingalls Wilder books. I found myself thinking not just of growing up then, but growing up as a girl. I found myself thinking more and more that night about being a girl. Truth be told, as I thought about it there had always been a nagging part of my brain that had wanted to be a girl.

There were several opportunities that I had turned down to wear girls clothing... not because I didn't want to, but because I was scared of what people would think. Another night passed of this, and then I went to bed.

SUNDAY I WOKE up after my parents did. I found I was sleeping later and later these days, something my parents were frequently making comments about. They told me that they didn't know how I could possibly sleep that long! Mom made me some French Toast that I ate while looking at the comics. She left the room to go do something and dad was gone to Wal-Mart.

It was then that I caught sight of the ad from JC Penney. It had girls' clothes on the front of it. I looked at the ad with the girls in their clothes and thought about how great it would be to wear those form fitting shirts. They looked neat. They looked a lot cooler than what I was wearing. I flipped the pages and for the first time looked at the pages with bras and panties. I thought that would be strange to wear, but kind of wanted to try it.

I turned to the Wal-Mart ad and looked at some of the toys that were for girls to play. The dolls seemed kind of foreign to me, but at the same time I could still see playing with them. They even had some Legos in there for girls. More and more I was getting curious, but I knew there was no way I could talk about this with anyone. I would get yelled at... and who knows what else. Dad had always talked about homosexuals with utter hate. What would he think about his son wanting to be a girl?