My fourth grade class sat in the sweaty, orange box of my elementary school gym. As promised by my teacher, Mr. L, we were going to play European handball during class. My dad often told me I had an arm that rivaled Yankee’s shortstop Derek Jeter. Confidence bubbled under my skin and slipped out of my pores, making my face shine with excitement. 

Mr. L explained the rules of the game, multiple times, before they were permanently ingrained into my classmate’s brains. However, I already knew the rules, googled them the previous night, and researched potential strategies to ease my mind from the threat of losing. 

 “You can’t walk when you have the ball,” he announced. “You have to be ten feet away from the goal when shooting,” he said. Let’s get this show on the road, I thought to myself, trying to maximize playing time. “And, last rule, you must pass to a girl before taking a shot.”

“Huh,” a surprised remark slipped out of my mouth. That did not come up in my google search. “Mr. L, that isn’t a rule.”  

“I know, but it’s a rule that I made up for this class.”

Boys started a chain of whispers that sounded like a group of snakes conferring before an attack. 

“Why?” Though I asked a simple question, I was left sitting on the cold floor, patiently watching Mr. L stumble over phonetics, trying to piece together enough words to justify his sexist rule. 

“Well,” he finally replied. “Well, I just want to give you girls a chance. Sometimes, well, sometimes the boys wouldn’t think about passing to you if there wasn’t a rule in place.” 

The words leaving his mouth quickly turned into gasoline, dousing the brewing fire in my mind. Why wouldn’t the boys want to pass to me? I could throw the ball from third base to first by the time I was in third grade, a task middle school boys struggled to complete. I was strong. I could envision the court. Most importantly, I could put the ball in the back of the net. But, in the minds of my classmates, my attributes were nullified. I was a girl. Watching as others cheerfully joined their teams, peering up at the giant body of Mr. L, standing alone in the middle of the gym, I felt powerless. 

Reluctantly, I took my starting position. “I’m going to toss you the ball and then run up to the front. Just pass it back to me, okay?” I grabbed the ball from my teammate’s hands while holding back hot tears of anger.

The ball flew through the air, bouncing from my teammate’s hands back to mine. Each time I took a shot, I watched the ball, like a slow motion film, slip through the goalie’s hands and end up tangled in the back of the net. The score board kept adding numbers for my team. We won. 

My team lined up at the water fountain after the game. “The highest scorer can get water first,” Mr. L announced to the class. I was the highest scorer. 

She only scored because we were forced to pass to her,” a boy on my team yelled. “She’s a ball hog, too. She wouldn’t pass it back.” 

My face pigmentation was a dark shade of red, a combination of exercise exhaustion, anger, and sadness.  

“I don’t need water,” I muttered while walking to the girls locker room. 

I untied my sneakers and slipped on my ballerina flats. I took off athletic shorts and slipped on my flowery skirt. I undid my hair from my tight ponytail, revealing dark brown waves that covered my upper back. The rest of the girls trickled into the room, water dripping down their mouths from the fountain. 

“Did you think his rule was fair?” I asked them.

“Of course,” they replied. “The boys actually passed to me today! They are so much better at sports than us, but now they have to pass!” 

My reaction was the moon compared to their sunny faces. The boys weren’t better at handball than me, but they thought they were. While I know it wasn’t ill intentioned, Mr. L created a rule that confirmed their opinions. It fostered misogyny in young boys, and stripped young girls of their confidence and pride. The other girls didn’t realize it, but it affected them just as much as me. Girls have been taught they can’t compete on the same level as boys. We are put at a disadvantage in life, for the sole reason of genetic makeup. The thought is constantly lingering in my mind, swirling around, affecting every move that I make on a daily basis. In my fourth grade gym class, government offices, and the working world, women are not treated equally. 

I stepped out of the safety of the locker room and headed to math class, ready to learn about fractions and three digit multiplication. 

“Good game today,” Mr. L yelled to me. 

I waved. “Thanks,” I mumbled under my breath. This was the first time I was treated differently because I was a girl.