I had lunch today with a friend I met almost fifty years ago. (Just typing that truth freaks me out a little. How did this happen?) We talked a lot about retirement, foreign places, road trips, art classes, and mutual friends. And then we went to that place where all old friends eventually go . . . our memories. Or maybe our perceptions of memory. The further removed we become from our past, the more difficult it is to call it up with any certainty. Did we ever have a class together? We're not sure. Did we each know that the other was smart? Not really. What was the name of that guy you went out with? Hmm . . .
But there are some things we remember with certitude, as unbelievable as they may seem now. A year behind me in high school, her class was the first one in our school in which girls were allowed to wear pants in their senior year. That's right. As a member of the Class of 68, I had to wear a skirt or a dress to school every single day of my time in public education. It was the rule. Not only that, but I was subject to the humiliation of having to kneel down on the tile floor to make sure the hem of my skirt was below the knee. In other words, if the hem of the skirt touched the floor, I passed muster. An equivalent "test" for boys was to do a deep-knee bend with hands in pockets. If the rear seam of the pants split while doing so, the pants were too tight. And the "correction" for that rule-breaking was to be sent home to change pants . . . which one had to do anyway as the pants were split wide open in the seat.
Still on clothes, we recalled wearing nylons and garter belts. Crazy little contraptions, but they were part of our "uniform." We thought how much simpler our lives would have been if we could have just put on a pair of pants to go to school. Like the boys did.
We both wondered if we might have participated in a sport in high school . . . if there were any. Years before Title 9, giving girls equality in sports offerings, we had a couple of alternative choices: cheerleading or twirling. Actually, I recalled being on both the girls' field hockey team AND the girls' soccer team my senior year. How could I be in two fall sports at the same time? Because each had only two games! We were also banned from taking certain classes, causing us to wonder if our career paths might have been different if we had had access to more options. I wanted to take Mechanical Drawing my senior year but was told pointblank: Girls can't take that. And I said, "Oh." It was 1967. Career choices for girls consisted of teacher, nurse, secretary, or hairdresser. That was about it. And we said, "Oh."
So why am I in love with this trip down Memory Lane? Because we remembered that we felt safe. We felt free. We didn't worry about terrorists or computers crashing or dropping our cellphones in the water or debit card debt or having our identities stolen. We didn't have to keep up with technology; there really wasn't much. We didn't have to pay for our phones or cable TV or Internet access; we could spend our money on after-school Cokes and fries and the juke box. Gas was 29 cents a gallon, so we could "tool the town" for hours and hours. And being seen around town was our number one pastime.
Simple. Life was simple. And I love remembering it.
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