“I wish they’d stop calling us ‘girls’.” Peter said as we made our way to Mr Walker’s class.
“Well we are wearing knickers,” I replied, just as quietly as he’d asked. Their firm silky hold on me was ever-present.
“That doesn’t make us girls though.” he whispered
“I know.” I replied. “But they make me feel like one.” I thought.
We remained on our best behaviour all day long. Even at play time and throughout lunch, we didn’t play football or bulldog or tig with the other kids for fear of falling over and getting dirty. I couldn’t help but pay particular attention to the girls and their uniforms. If we did wear ours for school, would we have knee socks or ankle socks? Would we wear our own shoes or girl’s shoes? Some of the girl’s wore a cardigan instead of a sweatshirt… which would we have?
“Do you reckon we’ll have to dress like girls when we get home?” Peter asked.
“I hope not,” I replied. “I want to play out.”
“Me too.”
When we got home, mum asked us if we’d had a nice day, and whether we’d been good or not. We moaned a ‘yes’ to both questions. “Well, let’s get you out of those boring boy clothes,” she said.
She took us up to her bedroom, where our boy clothes were taken from us and locked in her Ottoman. Stood in only our knickers, mum said we could go and choose a dress to wear.
“But I wanted to play out,” I said. “Johnny and Mackie are down the swings.”
“Well in that case you might prefer a playsuit to instead of a dress.”
“What’s a playsuit?”
“I’ll show you.” mum smiled. We followed her to our wardrobe, wearing only our frilly pink knickers, but hiding them as best we could with our hands. Mum routed through the frocks and skirts before she found what she was looking for. “This is a playsuit,” she said as she removed an item and showed it to us.
“I’m not playing out in that!” I insisted.