Trouble behind

I did manage to make friends and have quite a lot of fun while I was in Geetam. Yasha was my best friend there, and though she was known as a rowdy, tough little trouble-maker, I was the one who seemed to get everyone in trouble. Kiran was a year younger than me and was a whiny, insecure little girl who had warts on her hands and was always sucking on her two middle fingers. Geet was also a year younger than me and was obsessed with sex. Sometimes, we would sneak away from class and hide in a tent to get naked and fool around. Kind of like what i did with Chana in Poona, but there were more of us girls involved. Lalit was also younger than me, we were friends, though he just tended to go with the pack. Forest was the same age as Geet and Lalit and was well-known for throwing amazing temper tantrums - full blown breath holding arm flailing wailing tantrums. Madhu was a sweet shy thing - again, about a year or two younger than me, small for her age, as was I.

There were also the older kids. They were teens or acted like them and were often put in charge of us "kids" in the kids house. Gyana was about two years older than me and always acted like she knew everything and was in charge of the world. My brother was there, at age 11/12 running around with older women and getting laid from what i heard. All of us kids lived together in a small house with bunk beds. We got to choose special kids sheets: Holly Hobby or Peanuts - I had Peanuts. Every Saturday morning, they brought in a TV so that we could watch Saturday morning cartoons together. It was sort of Lord of the Flies meets the Brady Bunch at that point.

At around this time, I turned 7. The school threw me a little party where they served a cake of my choosing: Chocolate cake with butterscotch frosting and my name spelled out in M & M's. Actually, I think this is what Yasha had for her birthday two weeks prior, and for this and several subsequent birthdays, I generally got the same cake as she'd had for her birthday. Actually, it was rather disgusting - too sweet even for me. She had better taste later.

It was also at about this time that I decided to be a boy. I had my hair cut short, wore only boys clothing, including boys underwear and bathing suits. I introduced myself to people in a generic way and let them draw their own conclusions. I never corrected them in either case. I wasn't a tomboy, i didn't scrape my knees, get dirty, play baseball, climb trees, or do tomboy things. I was never active or daring. My thing was my sense of humor: I told jokes. Dirty jokes, kid jokes, made up jokes, generally, I made people laugh. But I was now a boy who did these things and I stayed that way for a few years, pretty much until I started having real crushes on boys.

My final act of rabblerousing at Geetam was quite a feat. The commune was preparing for some sort of feast following a monthly meeting or something. They created this enormous spread of fruit, baked goods, drinks, etc. The adults for some reason had abandoned the site for an hour or so prior to the event and left noone to watch over the goods. I got Yasha, Kiran, Geet, Lalit and Madhu to follow me down and we decided to hit the fruit. We took all the grapefruits out of the baskets, cut them open, made juice and drank it all. We made a gigantic mess. We ate some of the cookies, but i think the biggest damage we did was to the fruit.

We got caught.

We got a stern talking to, had our TV-watching rights revoked, our allowances withheld, and were not allowed to go on next week's field trip to the mall nearby to get new shoes. We were commanded to stay in our bunkbeds, but when the others were watching TV, we were not allowed to look. Gyana made sure that none of us did. Lalit kept trying to pretend he wasn't watching but kept getting busted facing the tube. Gyana took it upon herself to tape his eyes shut with masking tape to make sure it didn't happen again. I faced the wall the entire time, eating an apple (we weren't allowed our weeky ration of candy) and letting the seeds drop behind the bed in my final act of defiance.

Meanwhile, back at the Ranch, Daddy had been asking permission for me to join him there. Word came back after my shenanigans, something along the lines of, "your daughter has to learn that she can't get her way by throwing tantrums." The next day, word came back again, "Sarv, your kid can come."