by Gwen McMath
Recently I went to a church service where I heard a young preacher talk of his obsession of being Superman when he was a young child. He told of how he tied a towel around his shoulders and became his alter ego Super Hero and went around saving his world from bad things happening. His story set me to thinking of my own alter ego of about fifty years ago…
During the late 1950’s when school was out for the summer, things would get very boring in our neighborhood. My older sister Shirley and I were about two years apart in age and I really looked up to my older sister. Things were different then in that parents didn’t take their children on “play dates” or anywhere else much during the summer, we were left to entertain ourselves.
We had black and white TV but there were few shows for kids. One of the best shows was the Walt Disney Hour and it was this show that started our creative juices to begin to flow. The Walt Disney Hour came on once a week and had begun a new series called Zorro, about a man who dressed up all in black, rode a black stallion, and went around doing great deeds for the people in his community. Zorro was very good looking and both my sister and I were in love with him as only ten and twelve year olds could be. After seeing the shows on Friday nights, we would dream about and relive the episode until the next week. During one of those weeks we suddenly got the idea to create our own Zorro for our neighborhood. Since I was the one who ended up being the Zorro, I blame my sister for the whole thing. She must have pressured me with her older sister whiles to ever get me to dress up in Zorro attire.
Of course, for two girls, the costume was the most important part of the whole escapade. Please follow along in your mind as I describe my outfit and imagine what I must have looked like. I had short hair at the time, so I just used water to slick back my hair like a man’s. We had an old black hat that I wore on my head. The weirdest thing was my mustache, which my sister drew on with an eyebrow pencil, with a curl on each side. I think we made a mask for my eyes that tied in the back out of some black cloth. Of course, I wore all black clothes, and topped the costume off with a long stick of wood with a white circle attached to it made of cardboard to make a sword so I could go around and slash Z’s in things. I had a black cape left over from some Halloween costume to round the look off. Now, wasn’t I a sight? It was a good thing that we didn’t have any kids in our neighborhood at the time that were our age, because they would probably have really made fun of me. The little children in our neighborhood. were really hoodwinked by us. My sister would leisurely come outside late in the evening when you couldn’t see too well anyway and would pretend that she had just seen Zorro. She would ask the little kids if they had seen anything. Then I would come sneaking around flying by in my cape and make Z slashes everywhere with my fake sword. I would run back in the house and change my clothes and nonchalantly come back outside and talk with the kids about seeing Zorro. I would always just be a minute too late for the sighting. It was great fun for my sister and me. I know I though that the kids really thought I was Zorro but I don’t know for sure if they really did or if it was just a part of my childish delusions.
Looking back on that experience always makes me laugh. Nowadays, I would need gender therapy for a long time for my confusion but I know it was just two little girls creating fun for themselves during a boring summer.
My sister and I live far away from each other now. She lives in Dallas and I live in Corpus Christi but we still feel as close to each other now as we did when we were children. She doesn’t make me dress up like a man anymore but she still has lots of influence on me and has helped to shape the person I am today. Kind of makes you wonder what kind of person I really am to have done such a thing in my childhood, doesn’t it? If I had been caught in that outfit today, would anyone have known what to do with me? Thank you Lord that there were no pictures taken of me in that outfit.