flower boy

‘Many people fear nothing more terribly than to take a position which stands out sharply and clearly from the prevailing opinion. The tendency of most is to adopt a view that is so ambiguous that it will include everything and so popular that it will include everybody. Not a few men who cherish lofty and noble ideas hide them under a bushel for fear of being called different.’

— Martin Luther King

i was in the shower and i suddenly had this memory. i was in either kindergarten or the 1st grade and lived next door to a girl named gigi jaggard. we had a flower garden in the back yard of the house i lived in, full of zinnias, peonies, daisies, roses, etc... it was summertime. gigi and i used to play together a lot. she made me laugh and she was my closest friend that summer. i had been to a wedding earlier that month and was smitten with the concept of flower girl. walking down the aisle at the beginning of the ceremony with a basket full of petals tossing them aside leaving a trail to mark her way.

gigi and i decided to play flower girl, so i got an empty fruit loops box ( i probably emptied it for the occasion) and began to pick the petals off the flowers in the garden. we filled the box with the potpourri and began to skip thru both of our back yards spraying the lawns with flower dust and drawing out a faeries path behind us.

gigi's mom came outside and starting yelling at us, and told her to come into their house. i got scared and decided to climb over the picket fence that separated our yards. halfway over the fence, i slipped, and fell smack dab onto one of the spiky pickets. i was instantly transformed to flowerboy on a stick. the picket punctured my groin. i was scared more than hurt, and embarrassed because of where i was hurting. i sat on the spike for a few minutes, then gathered up the strength and the where-with-all to pull myself over.

i went directly into the house and went to bed. i hurt. i was in pain, i was afraid i was going to get into trouble for picking the flowers. i was afraid i was going to get into trouble for hurting myself. i was embarrassed because i was playing a girlie game. i was going to hear about it. i would feel "wrong" again. i just wanted to sleep.

i woke up and my mother was standing over me in bed. she asked why i was sleeping so early in the day. i can't remember what i said. i was in and out of reality then. i don't even remember getting the 20 stitches i had. i know i had big black thread running all along between my left leg and my crotch. it was ugly and it hurt and it itched.

all i knew then was that i didn't look like a flower girl/boy at all. i felt ugly and like i was being punished. this seemed a sign that something wasn't right. i kept being told that i shouldn't want to be like a flower girl, but that's not how i felt inside. i was still the same boy inside. still just doing what seems natural. i never felt that what i was doing was not right, but that i wasn't right somehow.