Childhood Memory

The other day, I was having a conversation with J, who made the comment about how it was cute when a little boy got past the “girls are yucky” stage and started looking at them in a new light, as sexual and romantic partners.

I thought about it for a moment, then told her that I’d never gone through that “girls are yucky” phase; that I’d always been interested in them, even before I knew just what sex was.

As we talked, I remembered an incident that happened when I was about six years old. At that age, I was good friends with a girl who lived down the street, who was a year younger than me. There weren’t a lot of houses on my street at that time, so you just played with whomever was available who was roughly your own age, regardless of gender.

Our neighborhood was in a wooded area, so we played out in the woods a lot, away from the eyes of adults. One day when we were out in the woods, I told her to pull her pants down and bend over; that I wanted to see how girls were different from boys. She didn’t bat an eye, but simply did as I requested. I looked at her very carefully from all angles for a few moments, but did not touch. My curiosity satisfied for the moment, I told her that was enough, and we moved on to something else, once she’d pulled her pants back up. Oddly enough, she did not make the same request of me, nor did I volunteer to satisfy her curiosity.

I’d not thought about this for a long time, but I found it rather interesting to remember, considering how I’ve turned out.