The summer of 1972 was glorious. The end of the school year was always a source of joy. To make school bearable, I would begin the count-down on the first day in the fall: how many days until Christmas vacation, then how many more until school was out for the summer. But that year, summer vacation was more significant than ever. You see, I had survived 7th grade.
The change from elementary school where I had the exalted status of a 6th-grader to the Junior High where I was a punk 7th grader was shocking. I was a creature of routine. One teacher in the same classroom day in and day out was ideal. Now my school days were spent on a sprawling campus where I had to find a different class room every hour. There were weeks of wandering with my campus map until I got the hang of it. And I will not discuss the calamity of P.E. which was only hinted at when the shopping for ‘back to school’ clothes included the purchase of an unusual garment to be worn only for gym class.
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| Ford Pinto or was THIS the worst car ever? |
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| Chevy Vega - worst car ever made? |
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| The Osmonds Phase 3 Ick... |
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| Three Dog Night Harmony Awesome |
But occasionally, their friends would stay. They would hang out in the living room playing Three Dog Night or Chicago or, heaven forbid, the Osmonds, while somehow carrying on a conversation over the blaring speakers of the straining console stereo. If mother had only known. But she was at work, where she was every weekday until 5:30 or 6:00 in the evening. Those hours between the end of school and mother's arrival home were sort of a free-zone from the usual decorum that had to be observed on the return of our sole, overworked parent. And the usual decorum most definitely did not include rock ’n’ roll.
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| Need more bell... |
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| What straight hair was all about. |
An awareness came to me that these female friends of my sisters were — aside from their propensity for loud and laughter-punctuated talk that made absolutely no sense whatsoever — interesting in a way that the girls at school were not. It was the era when long, straight hair was required on girls, and straight-legged jeans were absolutely outcast. A large amount of time was spent straightening hair and sewing extra denim into the legs of jeans so they would be transformed into massive bell-bottoms.
In the summertime, the visitors came more frequently. School had ended. The sun and Coppertone® were out in force. Jeans gave way to cutoffs. And halter-tops. And bikinis. Until that summer, I may have only been vaguely aware that the surface area of a person had so much skin. (Something in the neighborhood of 17 square feet. Do the math.)
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| Before 'SPF' |
Skin looked so much better on tanned girls than it did on my pale, scrawny physique. So when my sisters had visitors, I would find all sorts of excuses to make the trek from my room (where I was by an unwritten protocol imprisoned due to my complete uncoolness) to the kitchen at the opposite end of our boxy trailer, whereby I had to pass through the intoxicating sanctum of music and teenage femininity. The sights and sounds. The unconscious gesture of a girl's hand flipping a wisp of hair back over her shoulder was enough to make me stumble. Should one of them look my direction, my mouth would suddenly parch. I would swallow hard. Sure, there were girls in Junior High, but they merely hinted at the promise that these companions of my sisters embodied: womanhood in full bloom.
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| Tanned, lovely, high school girl. |
On my return trip to the meagre bedroom I shared with my brother, I would occasionally hear whispered tones and quiet giggles. A suspicion came to me that perhaps I was the unfortunate cause of their mirth. Still, I told myself, it had to be better to be noticed than to remain invisible and virtually non-existent.
I had not progressed much beyond that awkward, tongue-tied state several years later when I met another tanned, lovely high school girl. Providentially, she knew how to carry a conversation that continues to this day.
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