Perhaps it was the anticipation of our sister, who arrived when we were five. But during that time, as a stay at home mom during the scarcity of World War II, she sewed a lot of our clothes using patterns she got from the Simplicity company. Along with our clothes, she made some girl's dresses. I recall her trying them on us, to my embarrassment. There was even a picture taken of the two of us, but thankfully I was dressed as a boy and my brother had to be the girl. Whew! That was close!

At a very young age, dressed alike and blue-eyed blonde, almost everyone we met, strangers or relatives, would gush and say, "Oh, they are so cute! What are their names?” Regardless of what my mother told them, they would call us Rogie and Ronnie. At some point, I found that being called, Ronald, was way too formal and to be called, Ronnie, was equivalent to being called a sissy. So I insisted that everyone call me Ron. I called my brother, Rog, for many years, until, perhaps sometime in his professional life, he preferred being called, Roger.

By first grade, our mother had paired us up with local girls in grade school, friends of the family. I can't say that I was embarrassed by being a boyfriend, but I was shy and not really interested in girls at that point. I do recall later, whenever any girl that would call my brother and me, "cute," I had an immediate retort. "Does that mean you want to kiss me?" I don't recall anyone that ever took me up on that offer. Kissing came much later, so that's a story for later.

About first grade, Roger and I were to become part of the Christmas show, The Nutcracker, at our church. Mom made our costumes. They were simple because we were tops. And they were complicated because they were tops. One of us was blue and the other one was yellow. I remember she made us hats from cardboard Quaker Oats containers. I thought that was very creative. There was a metal hoop about 4 feet in diameter with fabric around it around our middle. The fabric, in a perfect circle, from our neck to the hoop and then from the hoop to our ankles. I'm not sure how tightly the fabric was around our ankles, because I recall that I could walk in the costume. I do recall it was embarrassing being a simple top and spinning around. There were much nicer roles that other kids played.

We had only two weeks of kindergarten. But we were already prepared by our mother's homeschooling with a good understanding of reading, writing and arithmetic. The kind of start that helped me all the way through school. I recall our old carved up desks that were full of petrified wads of gum. We used pencils so the inkwell, while still there, with no ink in it for pranks like dipping the girls' braids in the ink. We did use paste for paper projects, and I do recall some kids eating the stuff. Probably were starved at home and needed the starch. Everyone had their own lunch. Some kids were so poor they barely had shoes in winter, let alone healthy food like we had.

All winter long, we wore snow pants and heavy coats and boots that were lined up out in the hall where each of us had a hook because there were no lockers to hang our coats and snow pants on. One day, spring came. It was warm and the playground was dry. We didn't wear our snow pants or boots to school. Like always, we had our recess out in the backyard. When recess was over both Roger and I were creatures of habit and rushed to our hooks. We arrived at our hooks in a hurry to get back in the classroom, hung our coats on the hook, and then, simultaneously, both pulled our pants down thinking we were pulling down our snow pants! Our teacher in the hall, saw us in our underwear and quickly told us to pull our pants back up! That was probably my most embarrassing moment in my young life.

We moved to the big city, Wausau, to a drafty, huge Victorian home with a frosted etching on the window of the front door of an elk in a forest that I always admired. Gas lights that had been replaced by electricity sometime before that often blew fuses. The house came with an upstairs apartment that my parents immediately rented. Our first renter was a woman with a teenage daughter who taught piano. I remember seeing Dad help lift that upright piano and a refrigerator upstairs taking the whole weight at the bottom and noted how strong he was, something that he proved over and over again without getting injured.

Very soon, Mom decided that we would take piano lessons. And then, along about third grade, the whole class got tonettes to play and help learn music. I never really did. Dad played the trumpet in high school… Said that he, "Learned to play by ear." Both of my grandmothers played the piano from sheet music and they both said that they were self-taught. But Roger and I were more interested in being outside playing rather than inside learning to play. Quickly forgot what we learned about music.

One time, shortly after having a few lessons, we were invited to go on an afternoon show at a local radio station. We were given a short time to perform on the air. We hadn't prepared or practiced and both botched our performances badly. I was so embarrassed that I refrained from doing anything in front of the public except sing in choruses at school after that. Public performance was not for me.

During our elementary years, we would often go visit our cousins on their farm. Keith was two years older and knowledgeable about all things, and Wes, "Butch," was a year younger than we were. It was always fun to see what was going on in the barn, like whether it was burning because they had put up wet hay, or how they rigged the radio to play music and news to keep the cows and milkers contented, getting up at 5 o'clock in the morning to do it.

I don't remember what it was, but we all had something exciting to tell Mom in the farmhouse. We ran inside and no one was in the kitchen or downstairs. So we all four ran upstairs quickly and into the master bedroom at the end of the hall that I had never been in before. To our surprise and great embarrassment, Mom was there with our grandmother and our aunt, talking away, probably about clothes. But our aunt, Keith and Butch's mother, was standing there, smiling and talking in only thin panties! We blurted out what we had to say to Mom and scurried out of that room as fast as possible. I don't recall any of us discussing what we saw. Too embarrassed.

There was a huge chestnut tree halfway up the block from our house in Wausau. Sometimes we found chestnuts under it that the squirrels and other kids hadn't already found. We heard that you good make pipes and carve all kinds of things out of chestnuts, but I never did, just kept two or three in my possession for a while.

Two boys, one older and one younger, moved in a house near the chestnut tree and we befriended them. The older of the two boys decided to school us on the latest hip language. We learn words like sexy, sexless, sexier, and the like. I don't remember them all. And I don't remember ever telling our folks that we knew those words.

But one day when my parents had friends over and we came into the house, Dad called out to me, and said, "Ron, tell them (the visitors I don't remember) those words that you know."

So Roger and I went ahead and told them the words while they laughed. I was really embarrassed. Our secret words were no longer a secret.

Copyright 2019 © Ronald W. Hull

6/19/19