Flashback Friday: Cross Dressing edition

I don't remember a great deal about first grade. I mean, I know that kindergarten was full of horrible pain and injustice, but for the most part first grade was alright. I had a nice teacher and I was still naive enough to think I might not be wasting the best years of my life in stupid school.

But there is one incident that stands out in my memory. It was 1991 and Simpsons merchandising was at an all-time high. Actually, I don't know if that's true. But I do know that I had a Bartman t-shirt. Remember Bartman? I don't really know what that was all about, to be honest. But those were the early and confusing days of The Simpsons where they had the occasional full-length music video and the accompanying licensed apparel. The shirt was just an image of Bart Simpson, wearing a cape and mask, along with a cartoon speech bubble that read, "Watch it, dude."

But the point is, I thought my Bartman t-shirt was extremely cool. I felt that wearing it made me extremely cool. I'm guessing that I wore it to school approximately once a week, and I wore it with great pride. Bartman was a badass and I wanted to be a badass. Think about it. "Watch it, dude." Who is he calling dude? And why do they need to watch it? You don't want to know, man.

There was a girl in my class named April. I was not a big fan of April. She was a roly-poly first grader with a bossy streak and a messy desk. I hated the kids with messy desks. It also kind of annoyed me that she was nothing like the pretty, plucky reporter April in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. She gave Aprils a bad name, and I didn't like that. On behalf of Aprils of the world, this girl offended me.

One day, April loudly and accusatorily informed me that my awesome Bartman shirt was "a boy's shirt." I did not appreciate this bit of information. First of all, this was the 90's. If I wanted to wear a so-called "boy's shirt" then by god, I would wear a boy's shirt. And besides, what makes a shirt a boy's shirt anyways? Because the cartoon character on the shirt is, in fact, a boy? It was a t-shirt. What if the shirt had a puppy on it? Would I have to determine the sex of the animal before I could rightly wear it? And what about your shirt with Jason Priestley on it? Apparently that's okay. Apparently Jason Priestley is "girly" enough. But where can I find these rules? Because I just don't know, April.

But somehow, I managed to make it through the rest of my educational career, boys' shirts and all. Because let me tell you, that was not the last boy shirt I wore, no sir. I had two older brothers and absolutely no fashion sense.

Anyways, when I was recently reminded of this incident, I told Pat, knowing that he would be similarly outraged and sympathetic to my 6-year-old self.

Me: "And she said it was a 'boy's shirt'!"
Pat: "Oh, that's totally a boy's shirt."

Well. Some husband.