The Sand Castle by Tomboy tomboymbmw@aol.com Two brothers, 14 and 12, bully the wrong pair of sisters! Update: 06/10/1997 to misc3 Please address all comments, constructive suggestions and civilized requests to tomboymbmw@aol.com It was August, and my girlfriend Cindy and I had rented a condominium for a week on the outer banks of North Carolina. The condo complex was separated by a big sand dune from the national seashore park - a strip of white sandy beach that seemed to go on for miles. It was pretty deserted; the condominiums were about the only thing around. You had to drive five miles just to get to a convenience store. But we liked it that way - quiet and serene. That's because we both work at high-pressure jobs in New York City - Cindy is news director of a middle-sized cable TV station and I'm an account manager at a large ad agency. We have constant stress and way too many people around us for 50 weeks a year, which made a deserted beach sound just about ideal. We got down to North Carolina on a Saturday, and immediately settled into a very lazy routine: long walks along the surf, a little sailing on the bay, an hour or so in the pool at the condo, another hour on the tennis courts, a little swimming in the ocean, and catching some rays and reading on the beach. Most nights, we just cooked some fresh fish or scallops for dinner, shared a bottle of wine, and maybe took a long a walk in the moonlight. And of course we made love a lot, relaxed, unburdened, and very slowly. It was great, and also very uneventful, until Wednesday afternoon. The weather was cool and cloudy that day. We had been lying on a big blanket, just reading and feeling the cool wind around our bodies, when Cindy suggested a walk. We decided to leave the blanket where it was, but Cindy of course took her little video camera - she went everywhere with it. When she started out in TV news she had done a stint (non-union of course) as a TV camerawoman/reporter, and I think it got into her blood. She bought herself a small and very expensive state-of-the-art digital camera, and took endless tapes of everything she saw. By the time she finished editing the tapes and dubbing the sound track, all of our vacations tended to look like a travelogue, and seemed much more glamorous than they really were. This time, though, Cindy didn't need to edit the tape to achieve dramatic effect. It was about four o'clock in the afternoon, and we had walked about a mile down the beach without seeing more than a dozen people - some families and a few kids. The only sounds were the surging of the surf and the crying of the seagulls. As we walked, we saw in the distance, about 30 feet from the surf line, a big mound rising from the sand. Approaching it, we saw that it was a huge sand castle, and not only huge, but elaborate, with a wall, a moat, an inner wall, and then, in the center, a tall square castle tower. The whole complex was round, about six or seven feet in diameter, and the tower was nearly four feet tall. Cindy put her camera to her eye and began filming it. A young girl came running up from the water line, carrying a big pail filled with wet sand. She looked about nine, and was wearing a one-piece light-green knit bathing suit that nicely complemented her golden-tan skin. She had short light-brown hair and green eyes, and a bright little smile set in a squarish face. She also had a solid little body with just a hint of muscle in her calves and arms - the very picture of a cute, athletic little tomboy. We said "Hi" and she responded in kind, making the one- syllable word sound like three - definitely a southerner. We asked if we could film her working on the castle, and she said it was fine, so Cindy stepped back with her camera and recorded while the girl worked at sculpting one corner of the square tower. The beach was deserted except for us, the young girl, another young girl collecting shells at the waterline, and two boys walking along the beach from the opposite direction. For some reason, I happened to notice the boys before they got very close to us. I think it was the way they looked. The taller one, about 14, had straight light-blond hair that hung down over his eyes, very smooth tan skin and a build that looked athletic at a distance, but soft as he got closer. He must have been around 5'5" and perhaps 130, and while he wasn't fat, he didn't have any sign of muscle either. From a distance, it had looked like he had pecs, but as he got closer I could see that it was just soft flesh and not muscle. His stomach also had the same look - not fat or paunchy, but not firm either. His face was just a little short of handsome because of the slackness in it. The boy next to him had to be his brother - a smaller version of the other, a few inches shorter and about 110 pounds. He had the same light blond hair and the same softness in his face and body. The boys were walking straight towards the sand castle. Without saying "excuse me" or anything, they walked in between Cindy and the castle that she was still taping. As they passed in front of Cindy, the older boy, quite on purpose, suddenly pushed the younger one sideways, onto the castle. The boy fell on top of the walls, crushing both the outer and inner walls that surrounded the moat. "Hey," the little girl shouted, her face flushed red, "watch what you're doin." The older boy looked at her. "The tide's gonna git it anyways," he said. "Y'all can build another one tomorrow." With that, he started kicking at the wall, knocking it down, and then took a couple of hard kicks at the tower, knocking off a good chunk from one of the corners. He had an obnoxious, cocky expression on his face now, and I didn't like him at all. Neither did the young girl. She walked over to the much larger boy and pushed him away from the castle. He grabbed her wrists, and in a couple of seconds they were doing more than pushing each other, and it was starting to turn into a real fight. Cindy, the camera addict, still kept recording, now shooting the scuffle. I was watching it too, when I saw the other young girl come charging up from the water. As she came closer, it was clear that she was the sister of the girl who was being picked on - perhaps a year or so older, two or three inches taller and maybe ten pounds heavier than her younger sibling. They had the same hair and eyes, and the same athletic, but not stocky build. She was wearing a medium blue two-piece bathing suit with green piping around the edges, and her legs and arms showed some muscle and her tummy was flat and solid. With a smile on her face she would have looked exceptionally cute, but she certainly wasn't smiling now. She came up to the older boy at a full run and charged right into him with her shoulder, knocking him off balance and down to the ground. She came down on top of him and they proceeded to grapple on the sand. While they grappled, the younger boy started to get into it with the younger girl, locking fingers with her and trying to force her to her knees. This clearly wasn't going to be your standard kids' pushing match with a little name calling thrown in for good measure. This was going to be a real fight! Cindy was recording it avidly, having stepped back a little to focus on both sets of combatants. I said to Cindy "I think I should break it up." But she wasn't going to forgo the chance to tape her "breaking news." "Leave 'em alone, Tommy," she said, "they're not gonna kill each other and I really want to tape this - it's interesting." Having offered my good advice and had it rejected, I decided to stop being a responsible adult and settled down to my role of being the audience. I sensed that this was going to be quite a little show. The older girl now had the older boy in a headlock, and they were both lying on the sand, the girl to the right of the boy with her left arm wrapped tightly around his head and her right hand gripping her right forearm. She was squeezing hard, and the boy was unable to pry her arm off his head. She was doing surprisingly well. Meanwhile her little sister was also doing much better than anyone would have expected against the younger of the two boys. In their contest of strength, she had not only resisted the boy, who must have had a 40-pound weight advantage, but was actually beginning to force his wrists back. I watched in amazement, and Cindy recorded, as the girl stood there toe-to- toe with the boy, pressing him down with all her might. His legs slowly began to bend, and in a few more seconds she had forced him down to the sand on his knees. This boy, about 12 years old, had just lost a strength contest to a girl who must have been at least three years younger! She released her grip and, while he was still on his knees, quickly moved behind him and pulled him backwards by the shoulders. As he toppled over backwards, she instantly lay down on the sand behind him and wrapped her right leg around his face and then locked her left leg over her right shin. The boy was trapped in a classic figure-four headlock, while the girl sat on the sand behind him, using her arms to prop herself up on the sand. As he lay there with her muscular little calf gripping his face, he tried to release himself from the hold. But he couldn't do anything - his arms were far weaker than her legs, and he couldn't budge them. Meanwhile, the older boy had somehow freed himself from the older sister's headlock, and they were both on their knees, grappling for a hold. The boy was really getting pretty upset by now, and he threw a sharp, short right-hand punch to the girl's stomach. The girl sensed it coming and tensed up; his punch landed squarely, but it seemed to just bounce off her hard little tummy. She countered immediately with her own short right, which traveled just a couple of inches before it hit the boy's belly. I saw her fist seem to bury itself in the softness of his gut, and the boy doubled over a bit and let out a barely audible grunt. Sensing his vulnerability to stomach punches, the girl followed up with another short, quick right to his soft belly and then two more, each punch traveling just a few inches before it found its target. With the final punch, the boy fell over sideways onto the sand. Quickly, the girl put her left leg behind his back and wrapped her right leg across his stomach and locked her feet. She now had him gripped tightly in a body scissors. As she tensed the muscles of her thighs around his soft and yielding stomach, I heard him gasp in pain. His hands kept grasping at her legs, trying to break her lock, but it was no use. She kept up the pressure, and the boy, weakening, was now down on his back. No one would have believed the fight would go this way when it first started. The boy was maybe four years older than the girl, and at least 40 pounds heavier and about 10 inches taller. But she was easily dominating him and it looked like she would win. Meanwhile, her younger sister still had the other boy helpless in the figure four, and he was just lying there weakly pawing at her muscular little leg. Both girls were in the process of defeating much heavier, taller and older boys. I had never seen anything like it, and, obviously, neither had Cindy, who was still busily shooting tape of the whole encounter. The girls, however, seemed to be taking it in their stride. The younger one said to her sister "Hey Meagan, this is too easy. You wanna switch?" "I dunno Courtney," she drawled, "Ya think ya can take him? He's a lot bigger than you. He's about five years older, maybe more." "I can take him easy," came the response from the younger girl. "Besides, ya already softened him up for me. Let's change now." With that, she released the boy whom she had been holding her helpless prisoner in the figure-four lock for about the last five minutes. He lay there on his back, barely moving, as she walked over to her older sister and tapped her on the shoulder. The older girl, Meagan, released her body scissors and slid her leg out from under the bigger boy, who was lying on his back. The younger sister immediately sat on the older boy's chest, while the older sister, switching places, walked over to the smaller of the two boys and assumed the same position, sitting astride him in a schoolboy pin. Even though the older sister was still a couple of years younger than the smaller of the two boys, she looked like she would be able to handle him with ease. But the younger girl looked tiny compared with the older teenage boy whose chest she now was straddling. I wondered how she would be able to hold him down. Meagan, the older of the two girls, grabbed the younger of the two boys' wrists, and began to force his arms down on the sand. The boy resisted, trying to push her off of him. I could see his biceps, soft though they were, straining with the effort of trying to keep her from forcing his arms apart. But as I suspected, this boy of around 12 was no competition for the muscular little girl of about 10. She was just too strong for him. With a determined look on her face, she pulled the boy's wrists further and further apart, and he succumbed to her superior power. Slowly she pressed first his left arm, and then his right arm, firmly down on the sand. Then she placed her knees across each of his biceps and rode up a little higher on his chest. He was helpless once more, this time in a schoolboy pin. The girl's arms were free, and she cocked her little fist in front of the vanquished boy's face. "Ya wanna punch in the jaw?" she asked sweetly. When the boy shook his head to signify that he didn't, Meagan just smiled at him and said "Then ya jest lie there real still, ya hear." The boy obeyed her and lay there submissively, all the fighting spirit gone out of him. Having just been defeated and manhandled by Meagan's little sister, it was all too obvious to him that he was no match for Meagan, even though she was still several years his junior and a lot smaller than he was. It was clearly a case of one down and one to go. The younger girl, though, was having a bit more trouble with the older brother. The boy had recovered somewhat from the punishment that Meagan's body scissors had inflicted on him, and he had about a 60-pound weight advantage on her younger sister Courtney. With a supreme effort, he managed to shift Courtney off balance and push her off him, so that they were lying side by side, the fingers of her left hand still interlaced with the fingers of his right. As she gamely pushed back, trying to turn him over again on his back, he slipped his legs around her waist and locked them behind her. Now, it was a boy who had a girl in a punishing body scissors, and he squeezed for all he was worth. Initially, she was taken by surprise, and soon found herself on her back, his legs around her body. But instead of gasping in agony, as the boy had done when Meagan scissored him, Courtney just lay there with her stomach tensed, a little smile coming to her lips. "Is that all you've got?" she said. "I don't feel a thing." The boy, flushed with embarrassment, seemed to be squeezing with his maximum power, but I could see that his thighs were soft and showing no muscle, and they were having little effect on the younger girl's taut stomach. "C'mon, squeeze harder," she cried out, "Ah can barely feel it." The boy did what he could, but it was becoming clear that he was merely wearing himself out on the hold, which was having little or no effect on the tough little girl. Another minute went by, maybe a little more, and then his legs, exhausted by the strain, began to lose their strength and the girl was able to pry them apart with her hands. After Courtney escaped from the boy's scissors hold, she and the boy both got quickly to their knees and faced each other. Perhaps instinctively, the boy tried again what had failed to work on her older sister Meagan - a short right-hand punch to the girl's stomach. Courtney hadn't expected it, and as it connected I heard her give a grunt of pain and a surprised expression came over her face. The boy followed up with another short right to her stomach, and I expected it to have a devastating effect. But this time Courtney had an opportunity to prepare herself for the punch, and it just seemed to bounce harmlessly off her taut stomach muscles. Retaliating, she drove her own right fist into the boy's soft stomach. If he was tensed for the blow, it didn't seem to make a difference. The girl's little fist buried itself in the softness of his midsection, and the boy let out a sound that seemed to be the proverbial "ooof". Although Courtney apparently hadn't seen the exchange of stomach punches between the boy and her older sister Meagan, she could tell that the boy was going to come off second best in this exchange - his punch was too weak and his abdominal muscles were too soft. Facing each other on their knees, they continued to exchange a few more short punches to the midsection, each thrown from just a few inches away. With each successive exchange of blows, the much larger boy sagged a little more. Finally, after the fifth or so exchange, the boy toppled over on his side, having lost the stomach-punching contest to a much younger girl who was only half his size. Although she now had the boy "on the ropes," Courtney realized that she had to soften him up a little more before she could claim final victory. Her legs went around his waist, and amazingly, given their size disparity, she was able to lock her feet, although just barely. Then she squeezed, and I could see her thigh and calf muscles tense with the exertion. When the boy had put her in a body scissors a few minutes earlier, his legs had looked soft and weak, while her stomach muscles seemed tight and strong. Now, in stark contrast, her legs looked powerful while his midsection seemed soft and yielding. It was apparent that he wasn't going to get out of this very easily. The girl was pouring on the coals. She lay there on her side, her body propped up on her elbow, with the boy on his back, his waist clenched tightly between her thighs. A little smile crept over her face. She could sense that victory wasn't too far off. She squeezed harder, transferring all of her energy into her muscular little legs, and the boy was unable to resist her power. He was clearly in pain, and the body scissors was quickly draining him of all his strength. It was really incredible. Cindy was still filming the action, shifting focus occasionally from Courtney and her opponent to Meagan astride the other boy's chest. As the younger boy lay there helpless under Meagan's body, with his head turned to the left watching Courtney defeat his older brother, I wondered what he was thinking. Certainly he had not expected this result. Not only was he lying there helpless under a girl who was a couple of years his junior and obviously much stronger than he was, but he had also been overpowered and outmuscled by her younger sister, who was now in turn about to defeat his older brother. It must have been hard for him to come to grips with that. Actually, I was having a little trouble grasping it, but there it was, happening before our eyes. A teenage boy was succumbing to the muscles of a preteen girl who was at least five years younger and only half his size! Several minutes had gone by, and the older boy was still trapped in Courtney's powerful scissors, reduced to pawing weakly at her legs, trying without effect to pry them apart. Courtney was taunting him, calling him a weakling, challenging him to break her hold. The boy changed his tactics, and in a desperate effort, kept punching the girl's stomach to get her to release the hold. But his weak little blows made no impact on her tensed abdominal muscles. Another minute or two went by, and the boy ceased moving and just lay there helplessly. Satisfied that the boy had been sufficiently softened up, the girl released her hold and pulled her left leg out from under him. The boy just lay there on his back. Courtney got astride his chest again, and started to push his arms down, so she could pin his arms under her knees in a schoolboy pin. As her hands held his wrists, the boy tried with all his remaining strength to break her hold. She was pushing his arms down and outwards, while he strained to bring them up and inwards. But just as he had proved no match for the younger girl in punching power and leg strength, he proved to be no match for her in arm power either. It was evident that Courtney was now a lot stronger than he was, and I watched with interest as she overcame his resistance and firmly pressed each of his arms down on the sand. I had expected her to straddle the boy's chest and finish the fight with a schoolboy pin. But instead, she turned her head to her older sister and said "Meagan, let's finish them off with the pushups!" "How many?", replied Meagan. "Oh, 'bout 15," answered the younger girl. "I'll give the signal." Courtney then stretched her body out over the boy beneath her, and Meagan did the same on top of his younger brother. They obviously had done this before. Then, on Courtney's signal, both girls quickly pushed their whole bodies up off the boys, to a point about six inches above the boys' chests. It looked like the kind of pushups I've seen where people clap their hands and then go down on the floor again - I think they're called "Marine pushups." But instead of clapping their hands, each of the girls tensed her chest muscles and simply let herself fall down on the chest of the prostrate boy beneath her. In essence, the girls were using their sturdy little chests as battering rams. It may have been novel, but it seemed to be very effective. Each time they landed hard on the boys, it seemed that you could hear the wind being knocked out of their male opponents. By the time the count reached five, it was clear that this would take whatever fight out of the boys that they had left. By the count of ten, the boys had been rendered totally helpless, but the girls still didn't let up. The count went on - 11, 12, 13 ..., one pushup every five seconds or so. Finally, the count reached 15, and the girls stopped, breathing hard a little from the effort. The boys were just lying limply on the sand, incapable of offering any further resistance. It was over. As hard as it was to believe, the boys had been defeated - totally conquered - by much younger and smaller girls. Having easily defeated their male opponents, the girls were not above showing off for the camera. As Cindy still busily filmed the scene, each girl sat astride the chest of the boy she had bested, smirking at the camera and doing muscle poses. They also let loose verbally on the boys, taunting them for being so soft and calling them "the weaker sex." As the girls flexed their muscles over the prostrate boys, Cindy continued recording. The battle itself had lasted around 20 minutes, and Cindy had recorded it all. Now she wanted to capture all of the aftermath. I got the idea that it was more than just her "newshound" personality that made her want to do this. She seemed really excited by the idea that two young girls could put a couple of older male bullies in their place with such apparent ease. I was surprised, nevertheless, when Cindy actually proceeded to "interview" the kids on camera. She asked the girls to get off the boys' chests and let them sit up, and the girls reluctantly complied. First, she got the kids to confirm that the two boys were brothers and that the two girls were sisters. Then, pointing the camera at each one in turn, Cindy asked the kids to tell their first names and ages, what grade they were going into, and their height and weight. Cindy was always kind of a "numbers" person, and the statistics apparently made a difference to her. So here's what they were: Meagan, 10, going into 5th grade, 4'8", 78 Courtney, 9, going into 4th grade, 4'5", 67 Bobby, 14, going into 9th grade, 5'5", 127 Jimmy, 12, going into 7th grade, 5'2", 108 I could see Cindy doing number calculations in her head (her lips always move a little when she does that). Then she shook her head in visible disbelief. "This is really incredible," she said to the camera. "Not only did a 10-year-old girl beat a boy who was two years older and 30 pounds heavier and another boy who was four years older and 49 pounds heavier, but a 9-year-old girl - just going into 4th grade - defeated a boy starting high school who was five years older, a foot taller and 60 pounds heavier!" Turning to the girls, she asked "How were you able to do that?" It was beginning to sound more and more like a news interview. The girls hesitated a few seconds. Finally, Meagan said "I guess we're just real strong." "Yeah," chimed in Courtney, "a lot stronger than those weakling boys!" "I wonder if we could tell that just from comparing your muscles with those of the boys," said Cindy. "Let's see you all make a muscle so we can compare them." The girls complied eagerly, the boys somewhat less so. As Cindy continued to tape everything, she asked me to check out their biceps. Meagan and Courtney both had noticeable little biceps which, while they didn't exactly peak, swelled noticeably when they flexed. They felt solid when I touched them - not rock hard, but really firm nonetheless. Then I turned to the boys, who were looking a little embarrassed as they tried to make a muscle. As I suspected, neither of them had very much. And they were definitely soft - a lot softer than the girls. Courtney, the younger girl, felt the older boy's biceps and made it jiggle sideways, like jello, just by flicking it with her fingers. "You got nothin!," she taunted him. "My girl muscle is way stronger than your mushy boy muscle. Feel it." Then she flexed her own little muscle, practically sticking it into his face, and made him feel it. After that she commanded him to admit that her biceps was stronger than his, and the defeated boy, although very embarrassed, had to admit that it was true. Clearly, each of the girls did have more of a muscle than either of the boys. But Courtney wasn't going to leave it there - she was out to humiliate the older boy any way she could. "Let's arm wrestle," she challenged him. The boy, clearly disturbed about the prospect of losing yet another contest to his little nemesis, looked towards Cindy, as if to say "Do I really have to do this?" Cindy nodded her head affirmatively up and down, indicating that the boy had no choice. The 14-year-old boy and his 9-year-old opponent lay down on the sand, facing each other, ready to start. But before they did, I put a folded beach towel under Courtney's right elbow to compensate for her shorter arm. On my signal, they began. The teenage boy was desperate to prove he could beat this preteen girl in something, so he tried to put on a burst of power at the very beginning of the contest. But Courtney held him there, looking supremely confident with a little smirk playing on her lips. "Whats the matter," she asked teasingly, "can't ya do any better than that? You're 14 and I'm just 9 and ya can't even budge my arm!" Playfully, she felt his straining biceps with her left hand and taunted him again. "Oh, I forgot, all ya got is a soft boy muscle. No wonder ya can't do anything against a little kid." With that, she started to try to move his arm down with all her force, and I could see her little biceps grow rounder with the effort. The red-faced teenage boy tried his best to withstand her, but it soon became apparent that once again he was going to be outmuscled by this little girl just half his size. Slowly, but inexorably, she began to move his arm further and further down towards the sand, and his arm began to quiver as he used all of his strength to try to hold her back. As the girl's muscular little arm pushed his hand down more and more, she teased him savagely once again. "Whats wrong muscleboy, is a 9-year-old girl more than you can handle? Maybe you should try my 6-year- old sister next!" I could see the desperation welling up in the boy's face. He had to rescue his honor - he just couldn't lose another contest to this preteen girl! But despite giving it all he had, he was indeed losing. Finally, when his arm was about three inches away from touching the ground, he put one last effort into trying to stop her, but it was useless. She kept up the pressure, and a few seconds later the boy's hand firmly made contact with the sand. In a pure contest of strength, a 9-year- old girl had utterly bested a teenage boy! There was no doubt that the girls were much stronger than the boys. Their muscles provided some of an explanation for that. But then again, the girls weren't exactly bodybuilders, and their muscles, while strong, were still fairly small. That factor by itself could not have accounted for the girls' uncanny ability to overpower boys who were so much bigger and heavier. Cindy and I both felt that there had to be another answer. Cindy, especially, insisted on digging further for a plausible explanation of what seemed to be a very implausible experience. Plainly, these two little girls, athletic looking, but by no means hugely muscular, had just proved stronger than boys who would have been expected to handle them easily. There had to be a reason that would make sense. As a media journalist, Cindy was used to digging for answers. She quizzed Meagan and Courtney about sports they played, finding out that they were into soccer and swimming. But neither one of them was into serious weightlifting. As for the boys, they played little league baseball and the older one had even played midget league football. None of these kids was a couch potato, so evidently participation in sports or the lack of it was not the key to solving the puzzle. Cindy kept acting the journalist - I felt she was getting a bit obsessive about it. She asked the boys if they had ever been in fights with other boys. They of course said they had. She asked them how they had done in their recent scuffles. Their answers seemed to suggest that they had held their own against other boys the same age. Insofar as they were willing to admit, they had never actually had a real fight with girls before their experience with Meagan and Courtney. Then Cindy started questioning the girls again. "Have you ever fought any other boys, especially older ones?" Courtney just smiled and said nothing. Meagan replied, with a broad smirk on her face, "Maybe ya could say that." "What do you mean?," asked Cindy. "Well," replied Meagan in her soft drawl, "ya might just say that we weren't surprised we could beat older boys. We knew before this that girls are much stronger than guys - and boys." Cindy tried to get her to be more specific, but Meagan wouldn't give any details and just smirked at the camera. Courtney was smirking too, and occasionally let loose a giggle. The girls obviously knew something that they just weren't going to talk about, so Cindy decided to try another approach. "OK girls," she said, "my question is this - were you able to beat these boys because girls are strong, or because boys are weak?" Meagan hesitated, but Courtney spoke up. "These boys are weaker than lots of other boys," she said, "but we won cause girls are just a lot stronger than most anybody knows. We don't need big muscles cause we got girlpower!" Her voice became very emphatic on the last word. "And just what is girlpower?" asked Cindy. Becoming a little annoyed with all the interrogation, Courtney said huffily "Watch, I'll show you!" With that, she turned towards the younger boy, Jimmy, and bending her knees, grabbed his left wrist with her left hand and put her right hand between his thighs. Then, in a quick fluid motion, she lifted his legs up in the air with her right hand while she loaded him across her shoulders and straightened up her legs. A second later, the older girl, Meagan, did the same thing with the older boy, Bobby. Then the girls, with the helpless boys across their shoulders, walked a few steps towards the sand castle. Standing about ten feet apart, the girls began to spin the boys around on their shoulders while Cindy followed their every move with the camera and I just stood there gaping. This was amazing! Each of the girls was carrying and giving an airplane spin to a boy who outweighed her by more than 40 pounds! Then, the 67 pound Courtney easily carried the 108 pound Jimmy about 20 feet over to the sand castle and dumped him down on top of the tower. He crumpled the tower, and lay there groggily, sprawled on the remains of the tower and the castle moat. Following suit, the 78 pound Meagan carried the 127 pound Bobby the same way, and walking slowly over to the sand castle, dumped him next to his brother. The boys just lay there limply in the ruins of the sand castle, overwhelmed once again by the incredible power of the two much younger girls. The girls walked over to the boys they had defeated so easily and giggled happily. "Well, big boys," said Courtney, "ya wanted to mess up my castle and now ya got your way. Ya were just tooo tough for us little girls." Both of the girls giggled harder as they looked down on the helpless boys. Then Meagan placed a foot on Jimmy's chest, Courtney placed her foot on Bobby's, and the little victresses did another round of muscle poses over the bodies of the vanquished boys, grinning at the camera all the while. After a minute or so, the girls collected their pails and shovels and started walking away. Over her shoulder, Courtney smirked at the camera for a final time and said "That's girlpower!" and Meagan added "Y'all better wake up and realize that girls are the stronger sex!" Nobody needed another demonstration. Now we all knew what they meant, even if we couldn't explain it. I thought that was the end of it, but Cindy was remorseless. She made the boys get up, and they weakly staggered to their feet. Still recording everything on camera, she started chewing them out about bullying girls, telling them that boys did that only because they didn't respect girls, and that the only reason boys didn't respect girls is because boys liked to think that they were stronger than girls. "So," asked Cindy, "who's stronger now?" When the boys failed to answer, Cindy turned to Bobby and pointedly asked "Didn't the girls just prove that they're the stronger sex?" Bobby balked at conceding this, so Cindy, forgetting her "journalistic objectivity," pointed the camera squarely at his face and said "If you don't admit now that girls are the stronger sex, I'm going to put this whole video tape on the six o'clock news next week and everybody in New York City is going to watch you getting your butt kicked by a 9-year-old girl!" Cindy had a small strap-on purse slung around her waist. To add credibility to her threat, she took out her wallet and showed them her TV press card, which had the channel name and the title of "News Director" emblazoned on it in boldfaced type. Shaken up, the boys both begged her not to put the tape on the news. They really believed she would carry out her threat! "OK," she said, "so say it!" Bobby murmured "OK, girls are the stronger sex." "Louder," said Cindy. "Much louder!" Bobby practically yelled this time, since there was no-one else on the beach. "Girls Are The Stronger Sex!" Satisfied, Cindy made his younger brother say the same words to the camera in an equally loud voice. Then, with a final little sermon about respecting girls, Cindy let them go, and, after taking a parting shot of the practically destroyed sand castle, she shut off the camera at last. She must have recorded an hour's worth of tape. We walked back to the condo in silence. Finally, I asked Cindy, "Why were you so obsessive about everything, and why did you give those boys such a hard time?" "They deserved it," she snapped. Knowing her as well as I do, I could tell that she was hesitating, wondering whether to say something else. Finally, she went on. "When I was about 10 back in Indiana," she said in a softer tone, "some boys a year or two older picked on me and my girlfriend down by the lake. They unhooked our bathing suit tops and took them off and threw them in the lake, and then they teased us cause we didn't have anything on top - they called us pancakes! They thought they had the right to do that just cause we were girls and were weaker than they were and couldn't stand up to them in a fight. And we let 'em get away with it cause we bought into that crap, and thought that girls couldn't fight boys cause boys were just too strong. And now those girls showed us that girls are really the stronger sex, and we don't have to take anything from boys - or men. All we have to do is believe in our girlpower, and the myth of male superiority will crumble as easily as that sand castle! Too bad it took me until I was 32 years old to become enlightened and empowered!" From Cindy's tone, I couldn't tell whether she was being totally serious - she normally doesn't make soapbox speeches and she did have a touch of humor in her voice. In any event, I tried to put things into perspective, and suggested that while these two girls were clearly superior to much older boys, they may have been just the rare exception and not at all typical. But Cindy wasn't in a mood to buy any of that line of reasoning. She was on a "kick." "When I get back to the city," she said, "I'm going to do a human-interest news series on strong young girls - wrestlers, weightlifters, boxers, you name it." I bet we're going to find out there are lots of Meagans and Courtneys - lots. And with some good role models and the right ideas, there'll be lots more! Many, many more! I've got a new attitude about this subject, and it's not going to change!" Then, finished with her tirade, she smiled at me and things were more relaxed for the rest of the walk back to the condo. That night we had sea bass for dinner, and then we finished off a whole bottle of wine as we watched the video of the afternoon's events. Somehow, the girls looked even more impressive on tape than they had in person. Cindy decided that while she had promised not to use the tape on the news (and she probably wouldn't have used it even if she hadn't promised - she's too professional for that), she was going to make a little list of people to give copies to, including her 8-year-old niece, a couple of single female friends, and even a few married couples whom she thought would get a "kick" out of the tape. Poor Bobby and Jimmy - they were probably grateful that there hadn't been crowds of live witnesses to the encounter on the beach, and now their humiliating defeat at the hands of preteen girls would be viewed by who knows how many people, as copies of the tape made the rounds of Manhattan. "Well," I thought to myself, "at least the tape has some redeeming educational value - a lot more boys will learn to respect girls and a lot more girls will learn to have confidence in themselves. If humiliation is the price of progress, then so be it!" We went to bed early, around 11:00 o'clock. We finally got to sleep around 2:00 in the morning. You're free to imagine what Cindy and I did during those three hours. All I care to say is that Cindy really had some interesting new attitudes about girlpower that night, and I liked it a lot.