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Somebody Should Teach You Some Manners
I’m tired of always being the one who backs down.
Only children are not inclined to share. I basically had to have politeness beat into me, particularly after the “toy horse incident”, as I like to call it.
My (boy) cousin and I were in the back seat of the car while the adults sat up front, going who knows where. It was around Christmastime, and my cousin was holding his gift from our “Aunt” Markey (actual familial relationship unknown), who was sitting up front, and I was holding, you guessed it, a doll.
I assume I festered silently for a goodly period of time, weighing the pros and cons, before I bellowed, “I DON’T WANT A STUPID DOLL!”
I remember it like it was yesterday because it was my first taste of gender discrimination. Also because I could feel my mother’s mortification sweep over me like a rocket blast. I had crossed the border of in trouble and was well into whoopin’ land.
I didn’t care. I wanted that horse. I think my cousin’s was probably a buckskin and the one I eventually got was a pinto. It fit in well with my other farm toys — real metal tractors and horse trailers that would probably make an appraiser at the Antiques Roadshow pass out if…
