April 18, 2022

          Boys and girls are different.  I’m talking about girls and cartwheels.

          Let me explain.  My wife and I raised three sons.  I was as happy as a June Bug when our first born was handed to me.  A fine baby boy.  I was already day-dreaming about baseball, hunting, fishing.  Guy stuff.  Best friend in the world stuff. Pals forever.

          My wife, she wanted a little girl.

I can almost hear her saying “You got your boy, I want a girl.” 

After three boys, she said “Enough!”

We watched them grow up.  That meant we had soccer, we had baseball, we had basketball.  We did football. We went camping.  We fished together.  We joined a hunting camp.

They were rough and tumble.

We had regular visits to doctor’s offices and Emergency Rooms.  I learned to remove stitches with a pocket knife and a pair of tweezers.

I don’t think they ever turned a cartwheel. 

Suddenly, they finished high school, went off to college, found romance, fell in love, got married and produced children of their own.

Grandkids.

Grand daughters to be precise.  Five of them.

Beautiful little girls.  Active girls.  Soccer.  Dance class.  Ballet. Tumble lessons, Voice lessons.  Pink socks with a hint of lace.  One hundred dollar dresses, a half dozen roses. A real china tea set.  

My friends say it’s gonna cost a lot more.

Suddenly had to have nightlights and noise machines.   Warning: Do not misplace her sleep blanket!

Quiet different than the boys I talked about earlier.

And, here’s one more thing I’ve learned.

Girls turn cartwheels.

Yep!  They will turn a cartwheel on you in a heartbeat.  Give them 10 linear feet and a place  to land.  A second later, they’re going to turn a flip.

Let them have free reign on a sofa and within a half minute, one is going to tumble over the back of it.  Feet in the air, head in the cushion and over she goes.

I thought it was just a phenomena of my own grand daughters.  Others didn’t do such.

Wrong!

I started watching the girls at the local soccer field.  They are all turning flips, somersaults and cartwheels.

One of our Granddaughters joined a travel soccer league.  Other girls, other towns.  Serious soccer. They will be different.  Competitive.  Focused. 

 Wrong!

 They are all the same. Those girls are out there, in the midst of everyone, turning cartwheels.

 I watched a girls T-ball game.   A six year old in the outfield.  The game is slow.  Suddenly it’s head over heels. Her cap didn’t even fall off.

The bigger girls do the same.  I watched the eight and nine years old girls.  There was a tall outfielder with the red hair.  She turns flips between pitches. At the end of every inning, when she ran to the dugout she turned two or three cartwheels, smiling all the way.

Easy as pie to her.

I don’t think I ever saw one of their fathers turn a cartwheel.

Yep, the boys are different than the girls.

Please feel free to share.  I encourage and welcome your comments and thoughts.  Contact Mike Windham at amwindham100@gmail.com.  Please follow my blog at mikewindham.com.