out for their gaze, plucking my stiff skirt for uncalled-for- greater fullness.....nervously! The boys whispering together in obvious disapproval and I'd thought I looked so hopelessly

attractive!

·

A change in attitude when my hostess introduced me, "Little Miss Suzanne, but if you look closer you'll see it's really Jeff Watt." Nervous laughter, changing to real laughter from the boys, facetious whistles, and 'wows!' and 'Howdja do it?' all of which took as complimentary, wonderfully comforting. The usual boy's party took over from there, sometimes raucous, sometimes downright athletic. And a tomboy CAN forget her skirts, almost, and become one of the boys, almost. But I needed several trips to the powder room to 'freshen up!'

In spite of my wholehearted participation, I did sense a continued remoteness, a separation from the boys not unkindly of them. Clothes do make the girl; I was certainly a different specie from the boys in skeleton, Superman, clown and ghost costumes. Some, according to backgrounds were leaning over backwards toward me while others were unusually solicitous. Superman was asked to serve me my cocoa and cookies while the rest had to get their own (and I didn't spill anything on my pretty frock) and I sat there, loving the extra attention given me. The "louts", in discreet corners where the hostess wasn't around, asked to see more of my underthings than were casually visible, EVEN my garters, but I refused modestly....sometimes haugh- tily. The "gentlemen" asked if I'd learned to dance yet, and if I could curtsy. Curtsy I'd learned only an hour earlier but my hostess nixed the dancing (thank goodness!).

Then party over and my hostess's "Who will walk the young lady home?" - dangerous for little girls this time of the night (it was all of 10:00 O'clock). Allowed my choice, Ichose Superman with his pure rag-content buldging muscles -- he'd been nicest to me that evening. My hostess kissed me on the cheek in my private powder room when I went for my coat and hat, making a bow of my fragile scarf about my neck against the October cold, whispering conspiratorially, "Your presence made the party so much less raucous! Thank you, dear, and thank your mother."

Superman, with his coat on, looked at last again like my friend Kenny. I was enjoying sugar-plum fancies of looking like his precocious date. The ten block walk home through the shaded busy streets of our little home-town wasn't eventful - but

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