The Tomboy

I grew up in Virginia, Springfield County to be more exact. So while we lived in the suburbs and our parents worked in Washington D.C., summertime would come and school would end, weekdays meant we had minimal adult supervision. As the days grew longer and we were allowed to play more time, sometimes past our bedtime. We would take our bikes out to the streets, riding them for greater distances and going to parts of the suburbs we rarely frequented, seeing other group of kids riding their bikes as well. With the easiness that comes to children at that age, and having nothing more in common than the fact that we were kids riding bikes, we'd talk to each other and become friends. Afterwards, we'd plan to meet up, to show each other the wilder parts of the of the suburbs each other kid knew better, the undeveloped parts, filled with trees, streams and creeks. With no adults around, we claimed these spaces as ours, clearing out some parts and building makeshift hideouts and forts

In this manner, my brother and I met up two other brothers our same age. They told us they had this cool fort which their father had helped them build, and so this place became our clubhouse for the summer, we'd hide our treasures from the the other group of kids, poptarts, snacks, comic books, pictures of women in their underwear ripped from he sear's or JC Penny catalogs or the prized nudie pic some intrepid kid stole from what was probably their father's naked magazine stash. Whatever interesting thing we could lay our hands on, we would take to our fort for safekeeping. What made this place special, besides the door and the padlock installed on it of which only a select number of kids knew the combination, was that the only way to get to the fort was to climb up a hill, where we'd have to push our bikes to the top because it was too steep to ride.

One day when only him and me met up, we were walking with our bikes and talking about stuff while we were on our way to the fort. I  commented on the natural advantages our clubhouse's location, and told him of my admiration for the ingenuity of building the fort in an almost inaccesible area.

In that very instant, the boy just smiled at me, got up on his bike and climbed to the top of the hill with what seemed to be little to no effort. I recall that before this feat, I already looked up to him because of laid back attitude and all around coolness. So after pushing my bike up the hill and catching up to him, taking from our fort what we had planned on using that day I just blurted out.

"You're the strongest guy I know!"

"What are you talking about? I'm not a guy,"

"What?" I asked

"I'm a Tomboy." She replied

As she saw the confused look in my face, she then asked

"Don't you know what a Tomboy is?"

After staring at my expressionless face for a while she spoke up 

"You don't know nothing, do you kid?"

i laughed an awkward laugh, she just sighed and said to me while looking at the ground.

"I'm just a girl who likes playing outdoors and doing stuff"

"You're a girl?" I asked with a mixture of awe and disbelief.

She looked at me with all the seriousness a fourth grader could muster

"I don't wear dresses...Ever!" 

I felt an instant kinship with her, but I couldn't muster the words to express the marvel I felt of seeing someone like her, at her age, having the audacity to live like she wanted.

"This doesn't change who I am" she said to me

She then grinned and got on her bike and said to me while she rode away.

"Try to keep up with me, kid"

After that summer vacation ended, we moved back to Guatemala, and I never saw her again.

After all these years, I think I've almost caught up with you.