I'd like to thank my mother for remembering my girl parts: a response to Chuck's chapter 7

I played soccer.



I played soccer because I was not allowed to play the sport I wanted to play. I was not allowed to play ice hockey.



Ice hockey, my mother said, was not for girls. When I fervently rejected this notion (approximate age: 10), my mother calmly, sternly replied that ice hockey was not for girls. It was rough and I might hurt my...self.



Initially I took this to mean that my face would beat up, nose broken, etc., etc. But reading between the lines of adult ambiguity, I finally found out what she was getting at...that is, my mother was protecting my uterus.



See, I have resented this protection for many years. At a time when Northeastern girl teams were becoming increasing popular and prep schools were granting scholarships for players, I was taking out my aggression on the black-and-white bane of my existence, resenting my pre-adolescent life and my mother who didn't know anything. Ice hockey was my Golden Ticket.



The thing is...if she would have allowed me this opportunity, I wouldn't have resented this unfortunate part of my life...I would have quit within two years (or less), like I did everything else...clarinet, piano, debate club, yearbook, college, marriage, and many part-time jobs...uterus in tact.



Instead I will pass along my genes in mint condition, helping to further overpopulation. I will raise my children, a black spot on my heart. And someday, I, too, will limit my children's ambition by way of gender. I, in my adult blindness, will single-handedly overturn their destiny.