Playing Doctor – True Stories from Childhood

“What if I don’t Want a kiss?”

Lewellen, played by Dakota Fanning,  asking her friend for a look at what’s beneath his pants in exchange for a kiss, in “Houndog.” 

 

 

It’s a right of passage, one few of us forget.  For some the experience haunts and scars. For others it might be a humorous memory.  But I doubt any of us forgot it.

 

I grew up in the sixties.  In a suburb of New York City.  It was a place where property sizes were tiny – just enough for a house, a bit of perimeter and a small backyard.  When we needed space to play, it was “around the block,” Morningside Lane, where bunches of kids came together to play kick ball or stick ball or just rode bikes up and down the same block.  Going further would be foolish. We lived at the top of a hill that was the steepest you’d ever seen, and going down, would have meant having to push one’s bike or body back up that hill with great effort. 

 

It was a time when fathers worked and almost all the mothers stayed home to cook and clean and mind the children.  My own mother didn’t have much interest in minding the children.  I’m sure if it was the fashion to diagnose every behavior, as it is now, she would have been found to have OCD , or obsessive compulsive disorder. The OCD was focused on cleaning. The kitchen floor was so spotless, one wouldn’t have any hesitation picking up some food item that had dropped and popping it in one’s mouth.  But within minutes, out woudld come the bucket and mom would scrub the entire floor on her hands and knees. 

 

Mom’s cleaning left lots of time to fill without parental  supervision.  Those days that were not suitable for going around the corner to play outside usually signaled the a.o.k. for the neighborhood kids to come to our house, or to go to the “Riggi’s” house. No, I didn’t make that name up. If you knew them all – the universally Italian American, with a few odd nationalities, like Armenians, thrown in – you’d  laugh.   

 

One hot summer day the kids were sparce. July, the time for families to take the car and the kids for a week or two somewhere, anywhere, though not too far away. For we were not wealthy. None of us. Hershey Pennsylvania or Virginia Beach would be a very special trip.

 

With nothing to do, and few kids to do it with, Judy, Claire, and myself came up with a brilliant idea.   We needed a boy and the only one available was my brother. 

 

We were 8 and 9. Judy and Claire were cousins and lived across the street from each other. My brother was a year and a half younger than me, at  6-1/2.   

 

The plot was simple.   We corralled him into the small bathroom in our basement, the one that was designated for handwashing while doing loads of wash or relieving oneself if you were in the small backyard. It had a shower, but the whole room was tiny.  Floor space might have been 4′ x 21/2′ or so, but we managed to entice him in with the promise of showing him something.

 

Poor Jim. He was small. A tiny thing at age six and outnumbered 3 to 1.  

 

“We want to see you pull down your shorts,”  we said in  unison. 

 

Jimmy wasn’t prepared for this, but for his age was tough.  “No,” he looked at us with disbelief that I can still see in my mind’s eye.  “Why would I want to do that?”    That was a good question and we had the answers.  We were going to show him our “tops.” After he pulled down his pants we would pull up our shirts, we explained. 

 

Now this wasn’t fair, of course, and it didn’t seem fair to him at the time, either. We should pull down our pants too he said. A fair amount of negotiation took place.

 

Would we pull down our pants and pull up our shirts?   That didn’t seem right either. We certainly didn’t need to see what was under his shirt: that would be a two for one deal for him.

 

After what must have been “forever,” he finally agreed. He pulled down his pants very quickly then pulled them back up.  White jockey shorts!

 

That wasn’t the deal, we howled! Everything had to come down! More negotiations resulted in an agreement that one of us had to lift our shirt first for that.  

 

Why is was me, I do not know.  Maybe because I was the youngest of the girls.   It certainly wasn’t because I didn’t have any problems with my brother seeing my flat chested chest.  I did.  The modesty that begins to arise around that age was in full force.    

 

I did it. It was a flash.  My t-shirt went up and down as quickly as his trousers went down and up. 

 

Again the standoff.   He had made a deal. We instisted he stick to it.   Jimmy continued to persist, enlisting the tough stubbornness he maintains today as a manager of 100+ New York City engineers and contract negotiator for the city.  Judy and Claire were next. They did it, mimicking my swift action. Claire, the oldest, had small buds: a poorly timed blink would have meant missing them.  

 

Nonetheless, there was no bargaining power left for my brother.  Reluctantly and  swiftly the whole business came down and we all got to catch a glimpse.

 

My brother, now, at 45 is – as they say – “hung.”   He also has none of the modesty we all  had back then when he was as a six year old.  If he emerges from his bedroom of our Montauk family house wearing only underwear, as he is known to do many morning, I have to avert my eyes.  A flash of the memory from that summer day hits me, with no small amount of embarrassment and shame.  

 

Now he is no longer a skinny little kid. His torso is sculpted and he walks about as if he’s a Calvin Klein Underwear model, rubbing his abs in an Alpha male gesture to indicate hunger that should be addressed by the women of the house. 

 

Perhaps size matters;   There is no mistaking the size he carries around with him and the lack of resemblance to the tiny circumcised penis we girls got a glimpse of in 1971.   

 

And yes. We did get “caught.”  The negotiations must have run overtime, into dinner, which was always promptly at 5:00pm.   No sooner had my brother revealed himself, my mother banged on the door. “What are you all doing in there? Get out right now.” Emphasis on right. 

 

“Nothing.  We’re doing nothing,” we said, as all four of us filed out of the bathroom.

 

 

Do you have a playing doctor story?