Musical Chairs

My next 'kindergarten' story is about my first memory of gender bias. (I probably only remember it because the bias went against me.)

I should start by mentioning (again) that my parents were recent immigrants so I had not been properly indoctrinated in the 'Ways of the American Kid'. A lot of it was foreign to me and kindergarten was the first time I was exposed to games like "London Bridge" and "Skip To My Lou". They seemed totally pointless but were enjoyable nonetheless.

I should also point out that my sister's friend Kathy Ring had taught us "Ring Around the Rosie" (which I just recently found out is about the Black Plague - people actually thought posies helped prevent it??). But there was a twist - I thought the word "posies" was "pohtsie"... That was my mother's word for nasal mucus. (As I've mentioned before - when my mother didn't know an English word she'd make something up). So when we played "Ring Around the Rosie" I thought we were singing about having a pocket full of snot. That struck me as pretty darn funny at the time... Actually, it still does :-) But I digress...

In kindergarten I was the ace at musical chairs. I owned that game! It was really pretty simple. First - you had to know at all times exactly which chair you were going for. If you started looking around after the music stopped it was too late. And second - you had to watch the person at the phonograph. You could usually see their hand move before they picked up the needle - it was only a split-second but sometimes that was the difference between victory and defeat. If you did those 2 things you couldn't lose. (Or so I thought...)

There were around 25 kids in my kindergarten class so it took over 20 minutes to play musical chairs. And once you were eliminated you had to sit quietly at your table until the game ended - that provided an incentive to stay in the game as long as possible.
One day we were in the first round of a new game. When the music stopped I was one of the first ones to score a chair (as usual). I ended up sitting off to one side (inadvertently) leaving a bit of the chair exposed. And when the last kid still standing saw it she went for it. I couldn't believe it! And after squeezing her narrow butt onto the edge of my chair the little so-and-so started shoving me over to get a bigger 'bite' of the seat!
You can only imagine Mrs. Brinkmann's surprise when she saw that there was nobody left standing. She spent a couple of minutes walking around in circles counting kids and chairs (and looking seriously puzzled) until she finally realized that the girl and I were 'double parked'.

And she said "Peter. You're out!".

I was stunned! Surely she must have noticed that the girl was the last one standing?? I insisted (rightly) that I had been on the chair first, and my 'joint tenant' didn't deny it, but Mrs. Brinkmann still insisted that I leave the game. When I asked her why she said:

"She's a girl".

Excuse me? So, because she's a girl she can break the rules and get rewarded for it?? At my expense??? I was even more stunned than before! I mean this was musical chairs!! (Dammit!!)
Of course, I wasn't angry at the young lady - she was just playing the game. And she got eliminated in the next round. (No surprise there.)
But I got even with Mrs. Brinkmann - I spent the next 20 minutes quietly kicking the leg of my table. And when she told me to stop I pretended like I didn't realize I was doing it. Yes - I was quite the outlaw back then :-)

It wasn't until I was older that I realized how much the 'gender playing field' was tilted in my favor. But I still stand by my anger. It was arbitrary and unfair and that shouldn't be OK regardless of which direction it cuts...