Gender Police and the Boy Scout

Why do you sit like a girl?

“Why do you sit like a girl?”

I’m at a picnic table, tying knots for a merit badge test. We’re in the Sierra Nevadas, on a hiking trip with my Boy Scout troop. I’m probably 10 or 11.

I look up. “Huh?”

Three of the older guys from the troop loom over the other side of the table. I squint to keep the bright sun from melting them into the mountains.

Their ringleader Dave asks the question again. He’s tall and muscular. An Eagle scout. He has a driver’s license. Shaves with a real razor. I only pretend, secretly scraping Gillette Foamy off my face with the back of a comb. He has thick black hair. On his legs as well. A few years later, I would learn the word to describe him.

Dreamy.

So very dreamy.

“What do you mean?” I ask. I honestly have no clue.

“Look at your legs.” The three of them laugh.

I stop looking at his and lean back to peer under the table.

My ankles are crossed, the toe of my left hiking boot gently tapping the dirt, my right ankle resting on the back of my left Achilles tendon.

“Girls cross their knees, not their ankles,” I instruct them, and return to practicing my knots.

“I guess you’d know,” one of them snickers as they walk away.