Today's story is inspired by a Tumblr post:
It's no secret in my family that I have three years of real-life ninja training, nor the amount of trouble it's gotten me in and around. My dad never misses an opportunity to spout some condescending line involving ninjas whenever any caution, perseverance, or circumspection is called for in a given situation. I don't resent this, it just makes me roll my eyes, and it keeps me humble. I mean, as humble as you can be when you've climbed mountains, eaten a scorpion, and trained with ninjas.
Anyway, I moved back in with my parents after my freshman year and took a couple years off to work and sort out my life. I went back to college in 2005, the same year my brother JD went to college in New Orleans. You may see where this is going. Katrina hit, and I offered to put him up in my apartment for a couple weeks as part of my own personal hurricane relief effort. We went to parties, played video games, and generally hung out doing sibling things. I also came out to him as trans, and while it was a thorny issue between us for a while, it was the only one. He had begun a remarkable and swift recovery from the infantilizing effects of his Good Child status under our narcissistic and borderline mother (Full Disclosure: armchair diagnosis; both narcissists and borderlines are notoriously hard to formally diagnose, as they are generally resistant to treatment of any kind), and we became much closer than we had ever been while we lived under the same roof.
So one summer, in an effort to bond over a common interest and kinda-sorta paper over my transness, I offered to teach him some fancy ninja moves. His martial art of choice was tae kwon do, so he had a good starting point, and I was careful not to repeat the thoughtless mistake I'd made with our dad years earlier. I formed the Proper Obligatory Mouth Noises about how I had no black belt and was no longer a dues-paying member of Bujinkan International, and so could not instruct him in any official capacity; but he could practice with me if he wanted. We'd go out to the park just around the block in sweatpants and T-shirts, and practice a wide variety of techniques: stretches, rolls, throws, sanshin, the fourteen fists, stealth techniques, you name it. On any given day, we'd spend an hour or so just practicing: with or without weapons, doing whatever came into my head.
It was a great summer, but the camaraderie and bonding was not to last. I distanced myself from my family somewhat since coming out to them - it was not well received, so I just shut up about it for ten years while I pursued therapy on my own and generally sorted out my bullshit. I also didn't tell my family I loved them even once during this ten-year period. In hindsight, I feel like it was a jerk move, but I honestly couldn't bring myself to say it: I had come to them for support on this deeply personal issue, and got nothing but what we would now call blatantly transphobic talking points. They had rejected the real me, and I felt that they therefore they didn't actually love who I was, but only who they wanted me to be. I couldn't love people like that, so I refused to say I did.
This was compounded by the fact that my friends had shown nothing but complete and unwavering support. I had expected the reverse: that my friends would reject me, but my family would accept me. So I told my friends first, was pleasantly surprised in the extreme, and then went to my folks on a cloud - only to be hit by the worst mood whiplash of my life. I continued to show up for most family events during these ten years, but I almost never took the initiative on any communication, frequently skipped holidays for no real reason, and responded with stony silence anytime someone said, "I love you."
Except for E and CJ. I told them I loved them all the damn time.
My youngest brother E was born when I was fourteen, and my sister CJ when I was seventeen. As my dad worked full time in a major city, and my mom was going to school full time for her RN and working full time in a local ER, childcare duties often fell to us Elder Three siblings: D (me), brother A, and brother JD. We changed diapers, fed meals, ran bedtimes, and generally did a decent share of raising those kids. I feel like a bit of a mom to them because of it, though I also do my best to keep those feelings in perspective and never use them to make any kind of argumentative point.
As a lover of lifelong learning, I enjoyed spending time with E and CJ, especially answering their naturally curious and often interminable questions. I was open and honest with them, never talking down or condescending, always explaining myself when questioned and communicating at their level. A and JD were by no means "bad" as surrogate quasi-parents; they each went the extra mile in their own way. But mine seemed to pay off more. As we grew, JD was the first to settle down and start a family; A was (and is) the most financially successful of us and has stepped in for most of the Big Picture future-planning; but I'm the one who came to more school plays, musicals, band concerts, community theatre gigs, marching band shows, and other life events than the rest of the family combined.
I'm no saint; I've disappointed everyone in my family in one way or another, and several times. I was the firstborn, but the last of the Elder Three to get my undergrad degree. One of the proudest moments of my life was when my grandpa said of me, "That D turned out all right," when I was twenty-five and in the midst of some intense therapy but also supporting myself. I'm getting sidetracked now, but the point of all this is that my attempt at concision got a little one-sided up there, so I wanted to hedge it a bit with some of my screw-ups.
The second point is that, especially among E and CJ, I became the favorite.
Mom would often ask them who of the Elder Three was their favorite, and they sometimes said A or JD, but they almost always said me - because I was the one who was there. Hooray for the Mere Exposure Effect! To put a pin in this little tangent, after ten years of politely icy chill between me and everyone but the tykes, I finally started hormones and then got in a goddamn three-month email fight with my parents over it - but they finally came to their senses, we reconciled completely, and now we're one big happy. For real, this time: no more papering over my deepest and most painful issue (and given my history with my mother, that's saying something). In fact, I now count them among my staunchest allies. Long and painful as the road was, it was worth the effort from all of us.
That said, CJ is my favorite. We've each got our issues, but CJ is far and away the most well-adjusted of us all. She also said to me one Thanksgiving when she was five or six, during those cold ten years while I was under strict orders not to come out to them, "D, you're a girl!" I asked her why she thought so. She said, "Because you have long hair, and earrings, and... and you wear glasses!" From the mouths of babes, amirite? One rare trans-related kindness my mom showed to me during this time was to tell me that, in the second (?) grade, CJ openly talked about me at school as though I were her sister (which I absolutely am and was; she just picked up on it despite everyone's efforts to hide it from her). It was the goddamn best thing going on in my life for a long-ass time.
So I knew her well, despite the physical distance that was usually between us, and I'd talk with her about her life any time I visited. On one such visit, when she was twelve-to-fourteen (not sure, exactly; early adolescence, tho), I asked how things were going with her friends. When I asked about one in particular, she said, "Oh, we haven't hung out for a long time. We're... not really friends any more."
"Oh, no! You guys were so close! What happened?"
"Her mom went kinda crazy," CJ said. Yeesh, I thought, I can sympathize with that.
"That's too bad," I said. "What happened that got between the two of you, though?"
"Nothing happened between us. It just got harder and harder for us to hang out, because her mom wouldn't let us do anything."
"How do you mean? Like, she stopped you two from hanging out?"
"No," CJ clarified, "I could go over there whenever I wanted, but her mom wouldn't let us go anywhere together. We had to stay inside. I wanted to go out and do things, but her mom kept saying no - we couldn't even go to Fakename Park right across the street."
"Why the heck not? She could see you from her friggin' living room!"
"That's what I said!" Claire took a deep breath. "It was so crazy. She said, 'No, you can't go, it's too dangerous! There are ninjas in Fakename Park! They fight with swords, and hide in the trees!' I don't know what was going on with her, but she was completely convinced that she'd seen ninjas doing, like, whatever ninja things, right in Fakename Park across the street. So stupid."
"Uhh," I half-stammered, half-chuckled. I coughed self-consciously, and got real serious. "About when did this start?"
"When we were like seven or eight. She just got crazier and crazier, and I finally stopped going over there because it wasn't worth the hassle."
"So. Funny story," I began, "But do you remember that one summer when JD and I both lived here again? You'd have been about that age."
"Yeah, why?"
"Well, you know how I've got some real-life ninja training?"
"Yeah, so?" She was classically dismissive - ninjas are suddenly super boring when you actually know one - but she was starting to connect the dots on her own.
"The thing is, we went out to Fakename Park almost every day that summer, and I taught JD pretty much everything I still remember: stretches, weapon techniques, stealth techniques, climbing techniques. So... she didn't 'go crazy,' she probably just saw us and freaked out."
CJ stared at me for a long time, and mom - cooking dinner nearby - busted out laughing.
After a few incredulous blinks, CJ said, "Whatever. She still shouldn't have freaked out about it."
And that's the story of how my chance meeting with a couple ninjas on the quad one day resulted in the breakdown of both a neighbor's sanity and one of CJ's friendships. Oops.
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