I have always been friends with boys, so we always did what boys would do. We would play basketball or football, watch boys cartoons such as The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, or anything else that boys were always doing at a young age. But that is where the difficult point is in trying to figure out how I was gendered. I never wanted to play with girls toys or do anything that the girls did when I was younger, I pretty much chose to do everything that boys do.
From the earliest days that I can remember, my best friend Danny was always around. We were basically best friends since birth, well, maybe just my birth, he was two years older than me. We did everything and nothing together. We would play sports watch television and movies, and play video games together. Even when we were doing nothing, we were doing it together. Every night, we would walk down the block to Blockbuster. It didn't matter what my sister or his sister wanted to watch, we had to rent some sort of action movie. After every movie, we had to go and "play fight," which was always known in my head as "Danny's time to kick my ass." He was two years older than me, and twice my weight, so it was pretty much a given. Even though I would get beaten up all the time, I still had fun, it's what I wanted to do. .
When I wasn't getting beat up, I was getting beat at a game of basketball, but I loved the sport and always wanted to play anyway. It was the best thing for me, because Danny was way too good so every time I played against him I got better, so at school I beat everyone like nothing.
Any time my parents came home with new toys for me to play with, they were always toys that were made for boys. It's not that they tried to force them on me, because everything that they bought me was something that I wanted. The only times that anyone would see me playing with girls toys was taking my sister's Barbie corvette and driving around with my turtles in them.