Squeaky is portrayed as an aggressive, competitive tomboy, who is the fastest girl in her neighborhood and cannot wait to take first place at the annual May Day races. Squeaky mentions that the most popular event on May Day is the May Pole dancing, which consists of local young girls getting dressed up and dancing around poles in a celebratory manner. Squeaky's comments reveal that she does not see eye-to-eye with her mother, who would prefer if she wore an expensive dress and new shoes to dance around the poles with the other girls her age. Squeaky has no interest in behaving like a typical, feminine girl by participating in the pole dancing because she is more focused on winning the fifty-yard dash and beating her new rival, Gretchen. Squeaky has been endlessly training for the fifty-yard dash and is solely focused on winning the event. Her tomboy personality and affinity for running and competition prevent her from being interested in something as trivial and feminine as the May Pole dancing.
Squeaky thinks that May Pole dancing is a waste of time because for the dance she would have to buy a “white organdy dress with a big sash” and “white baby doll shoes,” items that she’d probably wear only once in her lifetime, hence a waste of her money. Also, the dances are not quite her thing. She would rather do the track meet instead of spending her time “prancing around a May Pole” and pretending to be someone she was not. She feels like the May Pole dance is a foolery of sorts, comparing it to the time she had to play the strawberry in a Hansel and Gretel pageant in nursery school and spent the day dancing “umbrella steps” and looking like an idiot just so as to please her parents. Squeaky is a tomboy and does not like to do girly things like dressing up for dances or just dancing. Her mother wishes that she’d sometimes behave like a girl and is always encouraging her to participate in events such as the May Pole dance.
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