The Sand Castle

[Amazing]

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!

[Amazing]

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.

[Amazing]

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.

[Amazing]

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.

[Paradigm]

Please continue! I'm curious to know what happens next!!