When I was a little older than Calvin, I ALWAYS wore overalls. In the summer, usually nothing else. (See my avatar) One summer morning, Mom had all my overalls in the wash.
“You’ll just have to wear something else.”
I found a pair of blue pants and went out to play. My main friends, the neighbor boys were out of town, but next door was Sunny and his mom. Sunny was always fun. He had straight black hair, brown eyes and pretty dark skin that just made his bright smile more sunny. He was wearing a pair of white shorts and flip flops. He was pretty little, but bigger than me because everyone was bigger than me, even little kids.
As I walked up, his mom confronted me. "Tomacina! What are you doing outside half naked?:
Situational mutism set in, so I could only think, “Why is she calling me that? Carol sometimes calls me that when she’s being mean. What? I’m more dressed than Sunny. I have long pants, he has shorts.”
“You can’t go about topless like the boys!” Sunny’s mom continued.
“What? She thinks I’m a girl?” I had no idea what to do about that.
And Sunny was peeing. He was old enough not to wet his pants, but he was not at all discrete about it. There he was, naked from the ankles up, peeing in the yard. Realizing that she would see me as younger, though I was older, I followed his example."
“Oh! You are a boy! Your sister said…”
Now that it was settled that I was dressed properly, I spent most of the day with them. At lunch time, she asked “Tentoes, do you know your phone number?” I told her my number and she went in. Then she came back out “you can stay for lunch.”
I was a little suspicious of such strange-looking sandwiches, but they were quite tasty.
My sister, who told everybody I was her little sister spent the day in her room.
On a hot summer day, my two sisters were with the neighbor girls in their pool and I was feeling a little left out. Inside, I found a toy baby bottle. You know, the itty bitty plastic ones. An evil plan came to mind. I took it down to the pantry and packed the bottle about half full of baking soda and got some vinegar in a little cup. I carefully snuck up behind their back hedge, paused for a while to listen if they’d seen me. Then I sucked up some of the vinegar into the bottle and threw it over the hedge into the pool.
“What’s that?”
“Hey! It’s zooming all over the place!”
“Cool!”
“Hey, Tentoes, do it again!”
I had to go back and get some more soda and reloaded it several times.
I can’t write with a computer. Have to have pen and paper. Then I type it in and edit.