I played with girls

Don't get me wrong, I was no pansy on the playground. I could smack the handball and tether ball as well as the tallest and burliest of the boys. And that's saying a lot for a small Chinese boy.

But I also liked the change of pace when playing with girls at recess.

The difficult thing about hopscotch was that I never had a marker. Girls usually used stretchy beaded bracelets, those hair-ties with the balls at the end, or some other kind of jangly accessory. I would often have to resort to using a rock. That was a severe disadvantage because unlike girly trinkets, the rock would bounce around randomly and refuse to stay in the squares. I don't remember ever winning a game. But I played anyway.

Girls are very graceful when they hop. Like a butterfly or like Tinkerbell in Peter Pan. Sometimes a girl would brush her hair behind her ears before bending to pick up a marker. That was super pretty.

The thing with double dutch is there's just too many variables for a 9 year-old boy to calculate. With two ropes moving like sine waves in opposite directions, you have to run into a small space and jump high enough to clear the slapping rope below but not too high or you'll get whipped in the head by the wooshing rope above. How girls managed to make it look so easy, I'll never know.

When I played, they would use just one rope. Is that single dutch? After a while, I got the hang of it with the nodding technique. I was so happy when I finally got in and could keep jumping. But then getting out became the problem. I kept getting whipped on the butt on my way out. That made girls giggle.

The one girl-sport I was awesome at was four-square. I could beat the pants off any girl, but what's the fun in that? Sometimes two girls would call "tea party" and just pat it back and forth to each other all friendly-like. I didn't understand the point. You totally can't win like that. But oh well. That's just something girls do.