Embracing Oscar Madison
When I was a little girl, I realized I was different as far as girls were concerned. I was a tomboy – not a little, but a lot. I still possess the scarred knees, elbow, and shins to prove it. Perhaps my being different was due to my mother being an unusually strong, albeit feminine, woman for the time period, or because my father, sans the son he always wanted, often told me that I would be President of the United States someday. For whatever reason, I liked running, collecting rocks, playing football, and doing "boy" things. I owned purple hi-top Pro-Keds that made me believe I could fly. I raced the boys in the school yard and often beat them. I wanted to like girl things, but I didn’t. My mother’s constant reminders to "act like a lady" prompted my usual reply, "what does a lady act like?" which I said with an inaccurate, and slightly mentally-challenged, British accent (I believed being British automatically made you more ladylike), an extended pinkie finger, and suddenly-crossed legs. My mother’s lessons in femininity were lost on me.
During my primary school years, my mother forced me to wear only dresses, lovingly made by her, with matching tights for family events. But before the day was over, I would have a hole torn into the dress and also my knee (the tights as well as my skin), because I was attempting to climb a fence – usually while racing one of the many boy cousins that were part and parcel of a large Italian family. I had even perfected jumping the fences that divided the neighborhood yards, where I grew up, using only one hand and one foot – up and over. Something I saw one of the boys doing, so I learned to do it faster and better. Maybe instead of discouraging my different behavior, my parent’s should have entered me in the Olympics – Suburban Fence Jumping, perhaps.
When my mother passed away, my sisters and I claimed the childhood stuff, my mother had been keeping for us. Pictures, baby books, and mementos were transferred from my mother’s spare bedroom closet to mine. While cleaning my closet a few weeks ago, I found the "School Years" book my mother had started when I began grade school, and I noticed something interesting.
In first grade, I wanted to be a writer and felt strongly enough about my career choice to write it, in my best first-grade print, in the "other" box under the what I wanted to be when I grew up section of the School Years book. Strangely, the career "writer" wasn’t a selection for either the boy or girls’ columns, but I scrawled the word "writer" in pencil as my future career choice for each corresponding year from first grade until fifth. This led me to another interesting discovery. Beginning in sixth grade, I stopped penciling in "writer," and instead checked the "mother" box that was under the "Girl" column. Being the tomboy-girl that I was, I also checked the "police officer" box which was under the "Boy" column. Incidentally, this was the same year that Charlie’s Angels became a hit TV show, and I deluded myself into believing that I was Jaclyn Smith’s character, Kelly Garrett. My sixth grade year was also when I discovered boys were cute, and I began worrying about my appearance even becoming somewhat girlie. I spent hours getting ready – doing my hair and picking out clothes to wear.
This obsession with my appearance lasted until about the age of 35. Then it hit me – being feminine is not who I am. I am sometimes envious of feminine women, but I don’t want to be one. I am the female version of Oscar Madison from the seventies show The Odd Couple – sitting around in my underwear scratching myself while writing or reading rather than doing my hair or painting my nails. I’ve had numerous friends, family, and the former minister of my church jokingly compare me to Oscar Madison, and they were correct.
It is scary to me that I project Oscar Madison qualities to the world. But I’ve learned that it’s okay to be who I am – different, often unpolished and unrefined, but me. My husband loves me for who I am, and I clean up well when I have to. I didn’t pursue a traditionally female job, even at my mother’s insistence that I needed to be a nurse. I didn’t pursue writing professionally or being a police officer either, but I excelled in engineering which was a nontraditional path for most women.
As a woman, I don’t feel the need to look a certain way or to live up to others’ expectations of what a woman should be. I live my life without pretense as much as possible. I fully embrace my Oscar Madison side, and I still battle my mother’s incessant messages about being ladylike. But I pay strict attention to the numerous other important life lessons my mother taught me about being a strong woman. And I like that.
MJ Hurley lives with her husband and Border Collie in suburbia. She is pursuing her lifelong passion for writing with two novels and many short stories in progress. Learn more about her at http://mjsalternatereality.blogspot.com/
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