I was four years old and everything that came with it: young, innocent, and horribly naïve. My friend Justin McClinton had come to play as children often do. I really don’t remember much about him except that he was the only kid my age in walking distance and that he had curly brown hair. He may have been black. I was too young to even notice the difference then. We’d spent the afternoon basking in the sun playing Snakes in the Grass, a game we created in which we, being much shorter than the grass in the field behind my house, would run blindly through the tall stalks of gold and tackle the other the instant they were spotted. I had no idea what any of it had to do with snakes, but I did know there was grass involved and that “snake in the grass” was a real phrase my mom used to describe salesmen and some of my brother’s friends. Following an itchy round of getting tackled in the weeds, we would throw spiky bits from the bomb trees and hurt our little four year old bodies some more. Eventually, it was time for He-Man and Go-Bots, the K-Mart Transformers, and other afternoon cartoons. This was our daily ritual, which always ended with Justin having to go home shortly after dark. It was an inevitable parting, always bewailed with all the begging and pleading our four-year-old vocabularies could muster, but never to any luck. Soon even the begging became routine. Even though we knew we’d never win, we would still try, in the hope that maybe some day our moms and dads would come to their senses. They would clearly see the inherent logic of our four-year-old argument: there is still fun to be had and thus, there is no reason for either of us to leave. Our reasoning was so obvious, so direct, our parents must have been idiots not to understand why parting us was folly.
One particular afternoon, Justin and I were watching Bugs Bunny and dreading the coming separation. Bugs was trying to get away from Elmer Fudd, and after being caught in the old “Duck Season-Wabbit Season” line, Bugs ran and assumed a disguise, throwing his would-be assassin off the scent. At that instant, lightning struck my brain. Like Elmer Fudd, my parents weren’t clever enough to be reasoned with, but that meant they must be easily fooled. While my mom was in the other room preparing peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, I laid out my plan Justin. Being as brilliant as I was, he instantly recognized foolproof nature of the plan. We finished our cartoons and scurried off to mom’s room. Digging through the pile of laundry to be washed, I found a couple of floral printed sheets.
“Put this on,” I said to Justin. “We’ll wear these sheets like dresses and my mom will think we’re pretty ladies.”
Realization flashed across Justin’s face. “Yeah! The sheets have flowers and girls like flowers and boys don’t!”
Excitedly, we wrapped ourselves up and paraded around the room in our best sashay. We considered the need for make-up, but before we could reach a consensus, my mom entered with two sandwiches and a surprised look on her face. Clearly she was shocked to see two strange women in her room.
“What are you two doing?” she cried.
“Us?” I replied, “Oh we girls are just looking for some pretty make-up.”
“What?” my mom cried, confused.
Not wanting to worry my mother too much, I explained that everything was all right. “Those dumb boys are out in the yard playing with bugs.”
“Alright, enough is enough. You boys get out of those dirty sheets right now. Justin, I’m calling your mother to take you home.”
Curses! She was more clever than we had taken her for. How could she be smart enough to see right through our disguise and still not see the error of her ways in sending Justin home? Justin and I tried to convince her to let him stay, but the moment his parents arrived and saw him wearing a makeshift dress, it was all over. I guess there’s something about a small boy in drag that makes parents uneasy, especially on a military base. Justin was stripped of his sheet and taken home. But then that’s how things are. Sometimes people have to leave and there’s nothing you can do about it. So I said goodnight to Justin and spent the rest of the evening reveling in the fun that we did get, rather than crying over the time we missed out on.
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