When I was reading Throwing like a Girl I couldn’t help but think about my childhood growing up and how I played. I am the youngest of 3, I have an older sister and brother. My parents always used to say that they treated us all the same just like every parent is supposed to but I guess if you are a person with siblings you can recognize some of those differences. For me it was always my mom telling me to be “more lady-like” I always hated when she said that she would either say that or tell me to be more like my sister. My sister is like the “perfect traditional” girl because she likes dresses, her favorite color is pink, she loves talking about whatever boy she’s talking to at the time. She played with dolls and loved getting her nails done but me on the other hand I’m completely different and my mother hates it. My brother on the other hand he’s more of the indoor type, he plays video-games, keeps to himself not really the one to be outside. So ever since I was born I just kind of fell into the roll of being the outdoor kid my dad loves it he once told me when I was little that I was like his real son but just girl version. I didn’t know how to respond to that, thinking about it now I still don’t.

My dad was always the one to encourage me to do more rough activities like the boys around me but my mom would put me back in the house every chance she got. I was the first girl to play on the all boys football team in middle-school (now the team is coed). I was the one to climb trees, ride dirt bikes, jump off the top of the rock wall just like all my male friends. There was a time when I was in elementary school that I actively told people that I was a boy because it just felt like everything I was doing wasn’t “lady-like” and I was always told that everything I did was for boys, but I genuinely like doing them so in order for me to do that I had to be a boy. This was the cause of a lot of arguments with my mom because as I got it older and I started to grow into my features she started making me wear dresses and skirts. She once told me that I was dressing like a lesbian, little does she know lol (she doesn’t, anyways…) I always had to stay indoors and do something relatively easy. I thought my dad would have my back but somewhere along the lines he started to agree with my mom and told me that girls wear dresses etc. I had to get my nails done, wear my hair “proper”, and just do womanly things according to my parents. But the more they told me to do that the more I did the opposite. I always wore pants or shorts, I let my hair be wild, I used to bite my nails down to the nub, I just did everything under the sun that I could think of as un-ladylike. But doing all this really caused me to be really confused about who I am, middle-school to high school me really went through it. lol

Now things are a lot calmer, I learned that I don’t have to go to the extreme opposite trying to prove to my parents who I am. I no longer bite my nails down to the nub but I do keep them short for multiple reasons. I dress how ever I feel like dressing that day my clothes and or actions don’t have a gender and I’m okay with that but I do prefer to dress more masculine. My parents are allowed to have whatever opinion they want about how they think I’m supposed to dress or act, it’s up to me if I want to listen or even follow what they say.