chapter 2: before there was the bad tom, there was the good tom

i’ve blocked out most of the memories of my childhood. either that or a have a bad memory. either way, i don’t remember much of it.
as a small girl, i lived in the richest county in virginia. you’ll remember what i said about being underprivileged and i will say again how hard it was. instead of having our own pool, we had to go to the community pool. but we grinned and bore it, and i think i’m a better person because of it.
you see, when i was 2 years old, i thought (rightly so, i might add) that i was invincible. i still think this today, which is why i have no insurance, jump out of planes, and have black friends. as it turns out, invincibility is skill that is only perfected by practice and isn’t simply acquired at birth or caused from being a super hot alien with x-ray vision (that’s right alf, i’m looking at YOU).
at any rate, when i was 2 years old, i almost drowned in the underprivileged community pool. luckily for me, it was at the precise moment of my almost drowning that i mastered the art of being invincible. in fact, for a brief stint, i was the black knight in monty python but i ultimately had to leave for contractual reasons. (john cleese was ripping me off)
once i became invincible, i decided that the only course of action was to pursue a life of daring physical feats or as american housewives so unglamourously call it ‘tom boyism’. being a tom boy meant doing all the fun, cool stuff that the boys were doing like sports and collecting nails and bolts found in home depot.
i also climbed trees when i had the chance. i once saw a cat in a tree that couldn’t get down, so i climbed up, sat on the limb next to it and laughed. i then climbed down the tree, leaving the cat to a horrible fate of a diet of only oak leaves and sap lite. he’s still there today, and he’s grown a beard and holds council sessions for all female birds who don’t understand why their husbands are so much more attractive than them.
another part of the tom boyism was shunning all things girly. all the tom boys in my neighborhood would hold weekly meetings (of which i was the overseer and treasurer, of course) to talk about how we hated tea parties and the colour pink. these meetings often evolved into riots and we once took out an entire chain link fence in our frenzy. only 3 people were severely injured.