tutu

It was the fall of my fourth year and Olympus was far away. We had lived near a placid body of water in Olympus in a large villa. Now we lived, precariously perched on a hill, in a shoe, european styled, box. It was green though and that went a long way toward soothing my trauma. The people next door were really friendly, or so I thought. They smiled and laughed a lot. They showed me a room full of blue, red, yellow, white and green ribbons. There were pictures of horses on every wall. Tug was a year older than me and he didn't say much. I know why now. We spent a lot of time on the creek behind our boxes. The slope was so steep, you could practically lie back and slide down to the water. I don't remember why Tug's father wasn't ever there. Maybe he told me and I forgot or didn't understand. Maybe he just never talked about it. I do remember that he did everything that his older sisters, Penelope and Lulu, told him to do. I always thought they were pretty and fun to be around. Tug didn't think the same way though. I was looking for Tug one day when I saw Penelope, Lulu, and two other girls dancing on the pool. The pool was two houses over and sat on top of the ground. It had a cage around it and I always wondered if there might be a not so funny reason for that cage being there. There they were though, dancing on that plank that surrounded the pool and hanging on to the cage. Not having too pressing a schedule that day, I stopped looking for Tug and watched them dance. It sure did make me glad that I wasn't a girl. Aw, the goofy things you have to do to be a girl. I was just about to turn back toward my box with a very thankful heart when I realized that someone was standing close to me.
"Tug?" I hoped.
"Hey little Endy. Whatcha doing?" Lulu questioned with a tone that unsettled the Daniel Boone in me. No one had ever looked at me like that before. It was a look of weird happiness and it was unfamiliar. I turned away from those taunting eyes and looked at the now impossibly long distance between my little feet and our green box. I was not going to spend any energy answering her question.
"Do you want to learn to dance, Endy?" she asked. How goofy could girls be? Surely she knew that Daniel Boone didn't dance. I just shook my little noggin. Slowly I turned my view back toward the rockettes. They weren't dancing now. They were just giggling now like ... like a bunch of girls. They were intently watching Lulu and me and waving our way. Something was wrong, way wrong. As I turned to look back at Lulu she grabbed my forearm. Oh, for the love of a milkshake. This girl was touching me. I was ...I was forever humiliated. She was squeezing my foreman so tight that I thought it was going to snap.
"Well, WE are going to teach YOU how to dance. Yep, I guess today's your lucky day. Oh yeah, and we're going to put a pink tutu on you while we do it," she laughed visciously, as she pulled me toward the pool, with as much pleasure on her face as anyone I've ever seen in my life, so help me, Davy Crockett. Now I might have gone down there and danced a step or two just to see what was in that pool, and it probably would have made me a better person, but there was no buttermilkin' way that a bunch of girls were going to put a pink tutu on me. Lulu was laughing so hard that it shook my soul. I just turned into a tornado right there. I spun and twisted and jumped and fell and all over again with every ounce of everything that my little body had in it. She laughed the whole time and probably couldn't hold on to me because she was laughing so hard. I made it back to my green box though and to this day, have yet to worn a pink tutu. White and mauve, yes, but not pink. It's funny how hard a female can make little guys run.

do your duty
shake your booty