Tomboys (memoir)

In the 1970’s, when my friend and I were nine or ten, we were tomboys. We never referred

to ourselves as such, in fact people who called us that to our faces generally meant to put us down.

It was a bit like saying ‘You’re not a proper girl,’ or ‘You’re pretending to be a boy.’ But, actually

it was neither of those things. For us, being tomboys didn’t mean we wanted to copy boys or be

boys, we wanted to have the same kind of fun as them. We wanted to compete and sometimes win.

Deep down we knew that anything a boy could do we could probably do every bit as good, or even

better.

Our heroine in those ‘Famous Five’ days was George, the girl who could outshine her

comrades, Julian, Dick and Anne without effort. While her real name was Georgina, she wouldn’t

answer anyone who addressed her as that. She loved climbing and sailing and was contemptuous of

her doll-loving cousin, Anne. We had no time for Anne at all. She was the kind of girl we

absolutely didn’t want to be - domesticated, helpless, a scaredy-cat. In Enid Blyton’s ‘Five go off in

a Caravan’ her own brother described her as a ‘very good little housekeeper!’ That was the last

straw!

Jo March in Little Women was another inspiring character in children’s literature. In an old-

fashioned strait-laced world she was feisty and boisterous, with a temper and a sharp tongue. She

whistled, which was totally unheard of for a young lady at the time, and that was music to my ears.

My friend and I lived next door to each other and, since we were obliged to go home for our meals,

we had to come up with a system of letting each other know when we were ready to go out again.

We saw some boys doing a low whistle by clasping their hands tightly together and blowing

through their thumbs. It took a lot of practice, and I blame it for some of the wrinkles that have

developed around my mouth over the years, but we mastered it. And that low whistle, which we

could eventually modulate by raising and lowering fingers, became our calling card.

Jodie Foster and Tatum O’Neill were our on-screen heroines. We only had one TV channel,

RTE, at the time, but when Jodie featured in the series ‘Paper Moon’ we were hooked. Here was a

sassy American girl, smart, brave and tough. Our kind of girl! She was the antithesis to the good

convent girls we were being reared to be, and we loved it. And yet, there was nothing bad or

devious about her. She just said it like it was. No nonsense and definitely no apology for being a

girl.

Tatum O’Neill was in films like ‘The Bad News Bears’ and ‘Freaky Friday’ in the ’70’s.

Sitting in the the darkness of the Colosseum cinema in Carlow we imagined we could be that

baseball playing, confident kid, who boys looked up to because she was the best, and she knew it.

The world of child stars was only opening up for us, and while most conformed to stereotype, the

ones who didn’t were the most memorable for me. There was more than one way to be a girl. Who

knew?

Laura Ingalls and the ‘Little House on the Prairie’ came on the scene a little later. It was a

bit saccharin and the girls wore ridiculous dresses by our standards. But Laura, despite her attire,

was definitely one of us! She was a plucky girl with spirit and determination. She loved fishing and

baseball and, as we watched her grow up, we saw how a spirited young girl could grow into a

strong woman, even in a man’s world like Walnut Grove and we were impressed.

In our everyday lives we grew up in a newish housing estate where there were droves of

children, all roughly the same age. We passed the summer and the long evenings playing on the

greens building grass-forts, kicking football and playing rounders. We were usually the only girls

and the last to be picked for teams. That is, until they got to know us. When they realised that we

had more to prove and were willing to give one hundred and ten per cent, we were in.

We learned the hard way that boys don’t like being beaten at marbles. Especially by girls.

Having gone out on the street with a small bag of plain marbles, some ‘Colouredies’ which had two

tones in the glass, and ‘Jarrows’ which were the big ones, my friend and I as a deadly duo, came

home once with twice as many as we started out with. Then, mysteriously, the boys were

unavailable to play, and we were left to play kerb-ball on our own for a while until egos had

recovered. I’ve never been sorry that I spent my childhood climbing trees, crawling through long grass

and flying kites. I remember long days full of adventure, going to bed exhausted and jumping up in

the morning to the sound of the low whistle that told me my friend was outside and this tomboy was

going to have another fun-filled day.