Early Memories

“What would you like to do?” asked Mrs. Probett, my first teacher.  It was my first day of class and other children were involved in all sorts of activities.  Some were in the corner, building something with blocks, while others were playing outside the classroom door.  What caught my eye was a boy painting at an easel.  I would learn his name was David and by the end of the day we were both kneeling outside the Head Master’s office for playing cowboys and Indians in one of the corridors of the school.  I was scared and crying because I thought that I was going to miss my bus and not be able to get home.  The painting looked like fun.  I told Mrs. Probett and she proceeded to grab an off white smock, covered in dried paint.  It was the type that you put your arms through and tied it in the back.  Mrs. Probett held it open, inviting me to place my arms in the sleeves, and I realized that the bottom reached my knees.  To my four year old brain it looked like a dress, and although I knew that it wasn’t, I became instantly afraid of what the other students would think.  I was scared that once I put it on, everyone would know that I wanted to be a girl.  I told Mrs. Probett that I had changed my mind and didn’t want to paint any more.  Although the painting looked like fun, the fear of someone finding out was terrifying.

That memory, along with others from my early childhood, seems very clear.  But there is no way of knowing what parts actually happened and what my brain added to make the memory clear.  Maybe it is a culmination of different memories of that time period, all lumped together so that it makes sense.  I now remember it as my first day of school, the same day David Gaffney and I ended up in front of the head Master’s office.  But apart from it being my first year at school, who knows when it really happened.  What I do remember clearly was the fear I felt that someone was going to find out.  Why would I equate wearing the smock to people knowing my secret?  Probably the same fear that prevented me from buying Angie pantyhose on the way home from work one night, while she was getting ready for us to go out. She didn’t understand why I was being such a jerk but in my mind, the store clerk would think that I was buying them for me.  Irrational?  Not to someone who was always afraid that they were one step away from being found out.

The school incident provides me with an idea of how old I was when I first knew something was wrong.  My other early memories are of incidents that occurred while I was still young, but I have no way of knowing how old I actually was.  Another event that is very clear happened around the same time, or so I thought.  I was in my sister’s room and she put one of her dresses on me.  It was brown with white lace and was very pretty.  She told me that she wouldn’t tell my parents but as soon as I was dressed, she went into their bedroom and informed them of what I had done.  The door was standing open at approximately ninety degrees from the doorway, going into the room, so I quickly stood up against the wall so that the door was blocking them from seeing me.  They reached the doorway and laughed, and at that point I noticed that they could see me through my sister’s dresser mirror.  My mother commented that I looked like a girl who lived down the street from my cousin because we had similar haircuts.  It was around 1970.  I pretended to be mad and embarrassed but I really liked wearing the dress.  I secretly didn’t want to take it off but I acted as though my sister had forced me to wear it. 

I had no frame of reference to figure out how old I was during that incident but I assumed that it probably occurred around the same time as the school incident.  That was until recently when I finally told my sister that I was transgendered.  Upon hearing that story she told me that she remembered the dress.  She would often wear it when we went to the local clinic and the nurse there loved the dress, always commenting on how pretty it was.  But my sister told me that she had the dress when she was four, and she is eighteen months older than me.  Did she still have it when I was four?  She doesn’t think so but who knows for sure.  

Another early memory was when I was at my aunts, playing with my sister and two girl cousins in the paddling pool.  We didn’t bring our swim suits so I had to wear one of my cousin’s one piece suits.  My Mum and Aunt told me that I was like Tarzan which I agreed, but I didn’t care.  I was very happy that I got to wear it.

I didn’t understand why I felt this way but knew that it was wrong.  In England, the worst thing to be was a poofter, the derogatory name used for a male who is effeminate, or gay.  I didn’t know what gay was when I was that age but I knew that acting like, or wanting to be a girl was being a poofter.  That was unacceptable so I did what I thought I needed to do to survive. I learned to be a boy.