“Boyfriend”

“Do you want to walk me home?” I stand baffled. However, I will agree to this. I am in kindergarten, but I am not stupid. My kindergarten class is not terribly large, but she is unfamiliar to me. The escortation may have involved handholding. This was multiple decades ago, so I’m no longer certain. The twilight of the 60’s. I am sure that if that’s what she wanted, then that’s what happened. Even then I understood that all of this will transpire entirely at her discretion and she is fully in control. I am swept along powerless like a leaf on the surface of a fast flowing stream. She didn’t live very far from the school. A couple of blocks to the south, a few houses off my habitual route home. A little one-story place on the north side of the street with a picket fence in front of it. Logic and subsequent experience with myself would suggest that my cheeks are glowing red. They would without a doubt be accompanied by a goofy smile, appropriate for my surprise at being granted this unexpected award. Perhaps this is why she picked me in the first place. In reality, I don’t have the foggiest idea why I was singled out from the class. She has dark hair, and I recall, a southern accent, and she’s very pretty to my five-year-old eyes, so I’m quite smitten. I don’t recall the contents of our smalltalk. I do remember vividly that upon arriving at her gate, she says, “If you were my boyfriend you could kiss me now.” I’m very intrigued at this prospect. I inquire about the procedure for attaining the aforementioned, “boyfriend“ status. She says, “you just have to ask! “I don’t recall if this included, addressing me as, “silly“ at the end. Although it was, at minimum, implied. She may have questioned her choice at this point or, just as likely, everything was proceeding to plan. I submit to the small ritual and was granted the promised kiss. I would be still following her around like a puppy to this day, so she must have somehow found a way to gently send me on my way. She takes the walkway up to her house, leaving me at the gate, her goal for the day accomplished. I finished my walking commute home, either dancing the whole way, or perhaps, with a raised fist pump like the end titles for, “Breakfast Club”. A red-letter day, to be sure.

The next day I looked for her in our kindergarten class. Armed with my new boyfriend status I was anxious to get to school. The burdensome weight of the tedium of tempera paint landscapes and forced nap time lifted. My forbidden nap time shadow puppets dramatize my recollections of the previous day and snapping tyrannosaurus heads. Now, as I write this, decades later, I don’t recall her name. However, knowing how I am, I may have easily fully neglected to learn it in the first place. She may have been there fuming in the corner of a classroom with a friend glaring about how I was unable to recognize her less than 24 hours later. Although, that seems unlikely. Even though it is true, she would be correct, that we boys truly are all the same. Today, her face is a blank, her hair a guess, although her voice I think I can still hear. I have not yet recovered from the disappointment of her vanishing.

I’ve since formed what I thought was the only plausible explanation for her failure to reappear. I think there may have been someone peering out from behind the curtains in that house, who witnessed us at the gate. This was likely the final straw. They had to accept that her power was too great, and she would be a menace to herself and those around her. Terrifying. Like learning that your child can make people explode with their thoughts. They realized they had no choice but to whisk her off to the convent.

Decades later, as her womanhood could no longer be hidden, the nun’s habit (specifically designed to conceal femininity) fails in its intended purpose. And, much to the distress of the mother superior, and ends up only enhancing it. Eventually another nun confesses strong irrepressible feelings to her. But she gestures to the faded framed photo of the very young me on her nightstand and says, “Sorry, I have a boyfriend.“ I don’t know where or how she got a copy of that photo. However, as we’ve established, she could get what she wanted, effortlessly, just by wanting it. This sounds like a superpower, but was clearly a curse.