I came home from the hospital swaddled in a green blanket with elephants on it. I grew up in Oshkosh B'Gosh clothes - it was the thing in Oshkosh Wisconsin - from the boys and girls sections, depending on whatever my mom thought was cute. When I started kindergarten, I wore anything from pink flowered leggings and a horribly mismatched turtleneck to frilly blue dresses. My parents never made gender a focus of my life, choosing instead to encourage me to read, learn math, and experiment with baking-soda and vinegar volcanoes through my first years of elementary school. In third grade, I switched into Challenger, meeting my best friends and developing a total dislike for the jumpers and skirts we had to wear. Though our small class of twelve was divided equally into six boys and six girls, we all had our share of 'girly' and 'tomboy' moments. The girls wore shorts under their skirts so that we could take those swishing skirts off in order to get rid of any disadvantage in our daily dodgeball games. The boys were often the ones helping us improve our ridiculous art projects, especially since my art skills hadn't improved since the days of drawing turkeys by tracing with our hands. After going back to a public middle school and high school, I realized how 'abnormal' my behavior was. Girls didn't go around playing dodgeball or taking their skirts off to play sports. Girls were a lot more calm and more into dressing nicely and being pretty. I can't say that it's completely rubbed off on me, but I'm definitely no longer the 'tomboy' I thought I used to be. At the same time, I'm not really into always trying to dress in whatever is the latest fashion. I guess I'll always be a little nostalgic for the time when I could dress in whatever I wanted. I've probably been gendered into wanting to fit in, but for now, I guess I'm not feeling rebellious enough to want to change any part of that.