A New Hobby
A Vignette
By Maryanne Peters

The fact is that when Toby and I fell out of that tree both our mothers said that we needed to find a new hobby – something to keep us busy and wear off the “excessive energy” and something not dangerous and preferably inside where they could keep an eye on us. One of them said, or maybe both of them did – “If only they were girls, we could have them enter those tweeny beauty contests!”

The fact is that both of our mothers had been beauty queens in their school days, and Now I can understand how frustrating it must be not to have a daughter to carry on a family tradition. Anyway, I guess they looked at one another and said – “Why should their being boys be a problem?”

I can think of a whole bunch of things, but nothing can stop a determined mother, or two.

We both had long hair for boys back then. Not super long – just long enough to be rebellious and different, but long enough to be pulled back softly and have fake curls pinned on. That was all it took, plus a little makeup and a little training. That first contest we were ready just to go along with it to get them off our backs. We would hate the experience and whine like crazy and they would open the door to the backyard and we would be free again – simple – right?

Wrong.

The fact is that we kind of liked it. I mean, it is competitive, and winning matters. There was now a competition other than climbing trees “first to the top rules” between us, but now we were also competing against others, and competing against girls. They never even knew we were guys. When we went through the first round with our sporting “special talents” it seemed like we had a real chance. Imagine that – a couple of guys winning a beauty contest. It was too good not to keep going, so we did.

The photo is of our second pageant. We placed in the top three but neither of us won, but I guess we sort of got the bug, and we had to sign up for the second, and then the third.

Intensive training requires home schooling and so we sort of left the guys we were behind. It was just the way things turned out.

Somehow when it came time to go back to school after we placed first and second, we figured that beauty queens can’t go back to being boys. Besides, neither of us wanted to cut our pretty hair. You can understand that? I mean – look at us. We’re simply gorgeous.

The End

© Maryanne Peters 2022