I Want To Wear Tights In The School Play Too!

Part Two: A Boy Gets The Chance That I Never Had - To Wear Tights In School

About ten years ago I was at a dinner party with some friends.  One of the guests was a woman I hadn’t met before - a friend of a friend who was in her late twenties and training to be a primary school teacher.  She was talking about some of the amusing things that had happened to her so far.  There were the usual embarrassing episodes involving small children, but her last story stopped me in my tracks: 

A few weeks before she had invited her class of seven year olds to come in fancy dress for a special Costume Day at the end of term.  The theme was Favourite Book Characters. 

The day had been a great success apparently, until she realised that one of the boys was missing halfway through the morning.  After a quick search of the usual places, she came across him in the cloakroom area by the classrooms in a terrible state, apparently crying big, nearly-hysterical sobs.  He was normally well behaved and well-balanced and so his behaviour was mystifying.  The teacher was terrified that he’d been beaten or bullied by one of the other children. 

It took her ages to calm him down and she was still really worried, but he wouldn’t say a word about what had happened.  He went back into class but she’d found him crying again a few minutes later.

As you can appreciate, this wasn’t a very funny anecdote and the table had fallen quiet as the lady told her story.  She carried on, and I wondered how the story was going to end up - I assumed that there would be a light-hearted pay off to make this a suitable story for a dinner party.  There was no immininant relief though as the young woman continued to tell us of the schoolboy’s distress, undeterred by the sudden hush of her fellow guests.

She explained that she was about to ring home as she was so worried about this little boy.  In one last attempt to try and calm him down, she told him he’d be sent home early if he couldn’t tell her what was wrong.  This made him worse - he said he didn’t want to go home and didn’t want today’s special day to end.

Why then was he so upset? As his teacher she needed to know, it was very important for her to make things better.

She could see that something had really got to this boy, and, eventually he asked if he could tell her a secret.  She was worried that he’d done something awful, but, after about much coaxing he admitted he was upset because of James.

James was another boy in the class.  What had he done?  Had James hurt him or said something horrible?  This didn’t make sense as James was another quiet boy.  What had he done to have upset the other boy so much?

Again, after much coaxing, in more floods of tears, the boy admitted it was James‘ pirate costume that had upset him so much, because James was wearing red and white stripy tights under his long shorts.  James was dressed as a sort of Disneyesque, Jim Hawkins pirate, apparently.

It tuned out the traumatised boy was upset because he wanted to wear tights as well. 

He was too scared to ask, but too upset to let the day pass by without getting the chance to wear them too.  Not seeing a way out of his dilemma he had collapsed in tears in the cloakroom.

It was interesting to note the fellow dinner guests’ reactions - they were equally divided.  Some (mostly the women) making an “Awwww” (a reaction to a cute puppy), whilst others (mostly male, but some women as well) went “Eugghhh” (a reaction to something nauseous).  My wife asked the woman to say what the boy’s parents thought.  The teacher’s response moved me incredibly and seemed to entertain most of the guests too. She finished the story:

“I didn’t tell his parents, I didn’t need to. I left it to him and he wore tights for the rest of the day before taking them off before he went home. I’ve never seen a kid so happy!”

There was more reaction among the dinner guests:

Had she given him a pair of girls tights?

She couldn’t do that to a boy!  What would his parents and friends say? 

Aww, what a kind idea!

She went on:

“Because he was so upset I went and found some spare tights from the Uniform Cupboard - we keep stuff like school sweatshirts, shorts, socks, tights  and hairbands in the school office to sell to parents or use in emergencies.  I got them out and put them on the middle of the benches in the cloakroom, looking really obvious so no one could miss them, thinking as well that I would put them away later if he decided not to touch them.”

“I didn’t want to force him and I couldn’t give them to him, or I’d have been accused of being weird.  So, I just left the tights lying there by his side where he could ‘find’ them if he wanted to.  He was still crying and so I told him to get himself together in his own time.  I dropped him a hint but I didn’t think he’d take the bait.   I told him that there were always things being left behind there during school, but they didn’t need to be put back in the lost property box until just before the end of the day.  If he wanted to go back to the cloakroom and pop into the toilet just before then end of school I’d let him go all by himself, he just need to ask me later.”

“I thought he’d leave them and carry on crying, but, no!  Lo and behold, the kid gets the hint and comes back five minutes later wearing the red school tights under his shorts!  Jumped at the chance and smiled all day long, and none of the other kids said anything.  He took them off and put them back just like I said before going home.  I haven’t heard a thing from anyone, except the boy himself who had written ‘Thank You Merry Christmas’ nine times in his card to me!”.  More laughs.

Secretly, I wanted to thank her for being so perceptive and for giving that boy the chance I never got: To wear tights in a safe acceptable way without him having to worry about anyone’s reactions.

Instead, I kept silent and tried to avoid eye-contact with my wife who had nudged me as soon as tights had been mentioned earlier.  She had loved the story and told me later that she thought that poor boy sounded like me.  If she only knew the half of it!

*****

It’s certainly very unlikely, but I must say it!

If you’re a young man of about 20 who once borrowed some tights to wear for a school costume day - I am happy and more than a little jealous on your behalf!

I hope that you’ve had even better experiences since and thank you for reading the blog.