might have worked for my stepdaughter’s generation, it would not have worked for me. Growing up athletic in the mid-1960s, before Title IX and the women’s movement, I was a tomboy, and I relished the word. Neither just a boy nor just a girl, I could be different. My sense of “otherness” had some kind of name. It was a name that gave me what I needed most: a way into the world of other children.
The road to my becoming a tomboy began when my grandparents went to the 1965 World’s Fair and came home with the most unlikely of gifts: a baseball glove. I was seven years old. When my grandfather took the gift out of the package, my jaw dropped. Why had they brought me a baseball glove? I had never expressed any interest in the game. Were my parents behind it?
As I stood gazing at this odd new possession, my grandfather explained how to use it. He told me to catch the ball in the webbing between the thumb and the forefinger, and to throw the ball with my other hand. Because I was a leftie, he put the glove on my right hand. Then, he lightly tossed me my very first baseball.
I was immediately hooked. If I could have stood out in the backyard tossing the ball back and forth with him forever, I would have done it. As it was, I decided to learn all I could about baseball. I started to follow the Red Sox. I avidly studied the mannerisms of all the players and soon became an accomplished mimic. Determined not to “play like a girl,” I learned how to slide, how to catch, and how to throw. By the time I was eleven, I could throw a fastball, a curveball, a slider, and a forkball.
Of course, officially, I was not a tomboy. Officially, I was still a girl and, therefore, not allowed to play Little League. So my games were all neighborhood pick-up games. Every day, I’d run home from school, change out of my dress, and set out to find a group of kids. One afternoon, as I ran out the back door, I realized that someday I would have to do something other than assemble another ad-hoc team. Someday, in the unseen and distant future, I would be a grownup.
But not now. Not yet. I had a game to play.
When I did think about becoming a grownup, my fantasies centered almost exclusively around baseball. I wasn’t just planning to become the first woman to play for the Red Sox. There was more — much more. I would lead the team to victory in the World Series by pitching a perfect game.
Every night, before I went to sleep, I rehearsed the entire scenario. Dressed like a boy, my long hair hidden under my Red Sox cap, I’d take the mound for Game 7. Inning after inning, no one on the opposing team would hit a ball out of the infield. Nor would I give up a single walk.
As the innings ticked by, the suspense would increase. By the top of the ninth inning, a hush would come over the crowd. When I finally struck out the last batter, I’d take off my cap, throw it into the air, let my hair come down, and show the world that I was really a girl. Pandemonium would ensue. The other players would carry me off the field on their shoulders to the roar of an amazed and grateful public.
My interior life was quite rich.
While things did not turn out quite as I’d planned, baseball gave me many gifts that might otherwise have eluded me.
The sensory experience itself was a joy. I loved the smell of a new leather glove, the sound of the bat meeting the ball, and the feeling of the dirt as I slid into home. When I played baseball, my senses gave me great delight and a sense of accomplishment.
Playing baseball also relieved me of the pressure of socializing with words. Instead of hanging around on the playground conversing, I could run and move and shout. Freed from the onus of having to stand still in a group and search for the social nuances that eluded me, I could be aggressive, loud, and tough. In a baseball game, I was never awkward. I knew just what to say and what to do. When I yelled, “He can’t hit! Strike him out!” no one looked at me strangely. I was part of something.
Of course, my tomboy days did not last as long as I’d hoped. Decades have come and gone since then, and with them, many struggles. Yet when I look back on my girlhood, I can feel the sense of pride, strength, and possibility that were mine when I wore my baseball glove and took to the field.
In those moments, being “other” was not a bad thing. Being “other,” in fact, was wonderful.
Ethan Davidson
Ethan Davidson is 48 years old and lives in San Francisco. His writing has appeared in various publications. He has been aware of his Asperger’s for eight years.
Language-Type Asperger’s: A Way with Words or Words in the Way?
While not officially diagnosed, I believe that I am on the autism spectrum. I also believe that the same is true of my parents.
My father was a semi-famous science fiction and fantasy writer, known to all of his friends as quite eccentric. He was a prolific writer, an even more prolific reader, and admired by all who knew him as highly intelligent. But he was never able to get a college degree, or hold a regular job, or maintain a relationship, or make a good living from his writing. In his later years, despite his wit and sense of humor, he became depressed and irritable.
He talked to himself, as do I.
My mother, though less famous, was similar in many ways. Their short marriage in the early 1960s produced a few written collaborations, a lifelong friendship, and me.
After my parents’ divorce, my mother remarried — a marriage that has survived.
From an early age, I was a thoughtful but peculiar little kid. I spent lunch and recess during first grade digging a hole — the same hole. Other kids joined me at first, and then moved on. I didn’t care. My mastery of spelling, handwriting, math, and sports was poor, though I had good skills in the areas of reading and writing. I was bullied, and in the sixth grade, I remember leaving my physical education class, where I was supposed to be learning football, to lie on the concrete and see how close I could get a seagull to come to me. I was a comic book fan until age 12, when I started reading the books from my mother’s college literature class and became an avid reader.
At the same age, I started quarreling with my parents, using intoxicants, and becoming fascinated with religion, studying seven of them at once. While I grappled with Western and Eastern theologies, my grades remained poor. As is normally the case when grades and intelligence level don’t match, I was blamed for not trying.
The next six years were completely chaotic. Between the ages of twelve and eighteen, I never lived anywhere for more than six months. When I was not bouncing back and forth between my parents, who were totally nomadic, I joined a cult, lived on a commune, wandered all over Belize and Guatemala, and lived with punk rockers in the slums of San Francisco. I attended only about two years of high school. By 17, my drug use had reached the injection stage. At 18, back with my mother and stepfather, I contracted hepatitis C and was kicked out of the house.
What to do with an adult like me? Two possible plans were laid out. I would try to get SSI. If that failed, I would join the Navy. Thankfully, I got SSI.
At that time, my psychologist might have saved my life by seeing that I had a learning disability. She diagnosed me with motor skills dyspraxia (poor motor skills) and a personality disorder. In retrospect, I believe that the personality disorder was not there. But the motor skills dyspraxia definitely was.
I have other quirks that cannot be fully explained by motor skills
