Little Queen on the Prairie: The Halloween Special

So, what have we here? The year is 1976, it is Halloween and we have a clown, a hobo, and, oh, gosh, what is that? That is a 10 year old tawdry little cross dresser perched daintily against the garage door. Would it be me? It sure would.
It took me 20+ years to find this picture funny. The only reason I'm in possession of it today is that I stole it from my mother's photo album in my twenties out of shame. Why? That particular Halloween was one of my first moments of awareness that I was different than other little boys and that different did not always go over well with one's parents and friends. I very clearly recall my mom encouraging me to be something else, my dad asking why the hell I wanted to go trick or treating as a woman and getting teased a bit by my friends. This photo was hard to look at for a long time. Now, I just feel sorry for the kid in that picture for not having someone around to give him a squeeze and let him know that he should hang in there for another 8 or 10 years at which time he can get the hell out of that little town and see there is a world full of people just like him.

Today, I get a really good laugh out of this picture. There are just so many things wrong here- the hair painted on my legs, my trailer trash makeup (which is the only makeup I could ever do- my upbringing I suppose), the fact that in a gay universe my exaggerated feminine pose would be just as it should be, but in Decorah? I was also a tall child. The other two in the picture are a few years older than me. I could have passed for a really trashy 15 year old. Had I had my wits about me back then, I might have wandered in to the Corner Bar and seen if the locals would have bought me a drink. Mmmmmm. Locals.

Little Queen on the Prairie- Chapter 1

Walking back to my desk from a meeting today, I started thinking about the little speech impediment I had as a child and what a strange formative event the treatment was.
In kindergarten or first grade, I remember being asked to follow my teacher down the hall to a little office, not too far from the special education room. I didn't figure I was being moved into that classroom, but at 6 or 7 you haven't really got a great read on where you stand among your peers on the intellectual capacity chart. So, I'm sitting in the office for a few minutes and in walks Mr. L (name changed to protect him if he's still alive)- probably mid to late 30's, dark hair, persistent 5:00 shadow and in a boy scout troop leader shirt, unbuttoned to expose lots of chest hair. EEEEEK! (Today it sounds maybe sort of sexy minus the boy scout business, but that's not the point.) The room was a little dark and very quiet and Mr. L spoke in a very calm measured way that creeped me out more than a little bit and made me want to cover my private areas with my hands. He told me that my teacher and my parents thought it would be good if I saw him to talk about how I pronounce the letter S out the side of my mouth. (BOOM! Instant paranoia for the rest of my life.) Then he held a mirror up horizontally up to my lips and asked me to say some words and phrases that included the letter S. As I recited words, he moved the mirror around to the side of my mouth it started to steam up on my right somewhere between my eye tooth and my molars. Wa la! A lateral lisp, otherwise known by the common name of "slushy lisp." (This is more descriptive and will allow you to imitate the condition while saying fun phrases like "Suck it, sexy" or "Sexual intercourse is super." Have a tissue handy. It can get messhhy.) Anyway, when the session was done, Mr. L told me I could go back to class and to tell my friends that I was just getting some help with learning my letters. (BOOM! More paranoia.) For the next however many months, I saw Mr. L a couple of times a week until I steamed up the mirror in front of my front teeth. What did I learn?

• ...that I should lie to my friends about the real reasons I might seek therapy, even though it is still kind of fashionable to hit the couch
• ...that authority figures are secretly talking about me (more on that later)
• ...that Boy Scouts and their leaders are kinda psycho creepy and you would do well to keep a close eye on your genitals in their company

There you have it whether you wanted it or not. So ends the first chapter.