Boys playing with dolls.

I recently started reading The Republic Of T. Another fellow blogger who happens to be gay. Most of what he writes is well researched and in tune with my opinions. Recently though he talked about how he used to play with dolls as he was growing up.

Now that got me wondering. Did I ever play with dolls? I don't think so! I had a stuffed monkey growing up, but only until the age of 3 or 4. I remember playing in the sand box, the woods, building treehouse like things and even playing with GI-Joe.

Although I was not much for violent sports, we did pretend we were American soldiers for a few weeks after watching the movie Red Dawn. We also had a very bad habit of carving wooden ninja weapons and pretending we were ninjas or Bruce Lee. We even nick named my little brother Joel "Ninja of the Lunch Can" because he used to swing that thing around like a ninja! It was very dangerous.

So do all fags play with dolls? I have heard so many of my gay friends talk about how they would steal their mother's or sister's clothing and dress up when they were kids. I did no such thing. The only time I put on a dress, I was 17 years old and it was for a performance piece in my theatre arts class... It got me an A, and that was the point.

But I guess the fact that I elected to register in theatre arts instead of GYM 2 might have been an indication of things to come. I didn't play any sports, nor was I any good at them, but it was certainly not because I did not want to. No sir! In fact, back then I was dying to be in sports. Any sport. But I was 16 years old, and I was not quite 5 feet tall. (Thankfully I grew to 5'10 in the following 5 years, talk about a late bloomer. I was still losing baby teeth in University).

But I never played with dolls. I am somehow very proud of that. Maybe it is because I failed too many other tests of masculinity growing up. We had the ultimate test of masculinity growing up. We had a game that we called "Faggot". The game was played on bicycles. Everyone would ride on their bike except for the faggot. The faggot would have to run around trying to tag the guys on their bikes. Once you were "it", you would dismount your bicycle and try to tag someone else, because you would not want to be the faggot too long, it would get annoying after a while since part of the game was chanting: "FAGGOT!! FAGGOT!! FAGGOT!!" as you zoomed by the faggot. Surprisingly, I was very good at this game and seldom became the faggot. My brother, who is now married and arguably one of the most masculine guys I know, was constantly the faggot. So much for putting any worth in those games boys play.