I felt the cloth from the rug. I saw the glare from the T.V screen. I watched Power rangers and transformers, while daydreaming about being a hero. I thought of all my family, that I would impress, and of all my friends, who would aspire to be a hero like me. I was seven years old and full of courage. However, I understood cause and effect, and I knew that I would have consequences for my actions, but I still enjoyed the thrill of excitement and adventure. I disliked boredom and motionless wastes of time. I was very difficult to put to bed because I would always sneak out. I would, constantly, be up until 2 or 3 in the morning, from a very young age.
When I and my Mother moved to Weyburn, the first action we did was get to know our new neighbours. Our neighbours were two females. One was a single Mother, the other was her daughter. I and her daughter became very close friends; we hung out quite a lot. We played video games together, played with her stuffed animals (we mixed soap opera with action packed fighting), went on imaginary adventures, and finally, collected Yu-gi-oh cards (back when they were popular). We had another male friend, who lived shortly up the hill from us. He sometimes came to play with us. This lasted until grade four, because eventually, we started to drift into our stereotypical gendered social groups. This was caused by others claiming we liked each other. However, this was not the case; I only viewed my friend as a human being, which I enjoyed a friendship with. Eventually, I could not talk to her anymore because I was afraid of people getting the wrong idea. This ‘Social Conditioning’ ruined a normal human friendship, between two normal healthy human beings.
I remember seeing multiple groups of single gendered people, males with males and females with females on the playground. I started to recognize a great majority of my friends were male. I started to question why society dictated it this way. I never had any close female friends again until high school, but they were never genuine because they wanted romance, not friendship. Every time this happened, I pondered about my first female friend, and I questioned why two different gendered people, could not be just friends? I saw masks being applied, jealousy, sexism, and finally, depression. I asked myself, why does human nature lead people to lie and manipulate just to reproduce? I remember the time before I recognized my own and other peoples gender, and I remembered the laughter, the happiness, content friendship, and finally, peace. I wondered what life would be like, if everybody just saw each other as human beings without a gender, but this only brought more curiosity and fascination. I felt a cold wind of excitement, as I realized that I could learn and read about other people with different genders. I thought maybe I could understand why society functions this way.
Thank you for your story Brandon!
To start, I think that it is interesting that you began to question these stereotypes and relationships at such an early point in your life. Unfortunately, the reality is that when peers and other people in our lives see two people of different genders spending more time together and building a strong friendship our minds jump quickly to a romantic relationship. Whether or not this is true to the situation the way people view us can greatly affect our relationships and how we interact with others. You write “I questioned why two different gendered people, could not be just friends?” I have often heard this same expression that men and women cannot be friends, even you have questioned this common ‘social rule’ within your writing.
You start your story by describing what I see as stereotypical young boy interests and activities such as playing with transformers and power rangers, but regardless of your different typical gender roles you and your young female friend compromised and could play together both of you seemingly genderless. I have experienced similar frustrations with relationships to this where myself and two preteen boys were all very good friends until just like in your account our relationships were ruined by others assuming we were romantically interested and even himself seeing me as a girl instead of just a ‘human being’.