As a girl growing up in Texas, I tended to waffle between slightly tom-boyed and girly-girl attitudes;depended on what the situation called for. A Southern woman always knows how to hedge her bets. So, if the day's fun called for chunking dirt clods, then I was right out there getting my fingernails crammed full of dirt. Having only one brother and no sister meant I had to learn the boy stuff pretty quick. As a playmate, Bear was not about to dress up a Ken doll or build a playhouse. Thanks to him, I learned the business end of a bat, how to throw a football, and the best way to skip rocks.
The day of the neighborhood clod throwing contest, I caught one full in the face, knocked out a tooth and split my upper lip up into the tender part of the nose. Face swelled to a #3 cantelope. Rule #1: never walk in front of a future boxing contender when he is intent on heaving a big dirt clod over the uppermost highline wire. In later years, when all the Tijerina boys were big stars in the Golden Gloves tournaments, I would chuckle to think I took a punch from one of them and lived to tell the tale.
As I recall, when the blood started spurting, the Tijerina kid hightailed it out of there. My mom way-laid my brother, until I could sputter through the busted lip to tell her he was not the culprit. Still today, I carry a tiny gristled area in my upper lip as a reminder of that day's antics. Can't complain, gave my upper lip a very perky bow shape. Just one of those little childhood scrapes that would result in a messy lawsuit in today's litigatory-happy world.
Ways To Know If You Are A Girly-Girl:
1. If you never learned to make a spit ball that would stick on it's target...you could have been a girly-girl.
2. If you're too ladylike to break out in a run in public...you could be a grown up girly-girl.
3. If you enjoyed fishing but were never able to bait your own hook...you could have been a girly-girl.
4. If you've never gone swimming in a ditch after a big rain ...you could have been a girly-girl.
5. If you never once sat on the roof of the house you grew up in...you could have been a girly-girl.
6. If you've never swung from your knees on a swing set or tree limb ...you could have been a girly-girl.
7. If you've never worn abandoned locust skins as jewelry...you could have been a girly girl.
8. If you've never been scolded for making unladylike noises with your palm cupped under your armpit...you could have been a girly girl.
9. If you never tried to dig your own swimming pool and fill it up with the water hose, only to end up with a mud hole instead...you could have been a girly-girl.
10. If your mama wasn't always reminding you of the things little ladies did and did not do...you could have been a girly-girl.
(this list courtesy of Shellie Rushing Tomlinson)