Both girls play a variety of sports, dance, do crafts, climb trees - you name it, they will try it. Here is M. at softball practice. She was warming up waiting for her turn to bat. She's still perfecting the level swing.
I tweaked this photo to make it look like a film one that might be from the time I was playing ball. As I stood out behind the school watching the girls bat, run, and chatter (with the coaches yelling "girls! pay attention to the ball") I was thrown back in time and flooded with memories.
I'm sure I've mentioned before that I have 2 older brothers, all of us close in age. So when I learned how to play games and community sports, I played with them. That meant I played baseball for the first couple of years. At one point, the boys were big enough and they community had enough kids to create separate baseball and softball leagues. I was no longer allowed to play baseball, because softball was the girls' sport.
I did not like it. Not one bit.
I couldn't understand why if the girls were "weaker" we had to hit the bigger, heavier ball. Then, what was with the arching pitches? (Yes, we played slow pitch). Who wants to hit that kind of ball? It was the beginning of my education about how men and women are treated (and expected to act) differently. I played a lot of years and will always love sports of all kinds, but the little girl in me never really got over my mad about not being able to play baseball with the boys anymore.
M.E.
