When School was Cool

“High” School

I feel sad that teenagers today will never know just how much fun high school was then, and how inconsequential our big so-called problems were compared to today’s schools and students. That loss of innocence, how sad. Our idea of wild rebellion was to congregate during lunchhour in “the field” about a block from the school and—-gasp!! smoke cigarettes. I was always with my “gang”, all six of us, we were the snotty, infamous Fickle Pickles. We were carrying on a tradition from previous members who, when they graduated, bestowed the title on the most worthy girls they knew. That was us. When we graduated, we decided there were no girls good enough to carry on with the Fickles’ lofty standards of excellence, beauty and all-around wonderfulness. What a bunch of brats we were.

Hard to comprehend, I suppose, but just like “Happy Days” we too had our place to hang out after school. In our case, it was Militzer’s Dutch Treat and we apparently never tired of cherry coke ’cause that’s all I remember drinking. Along with a platter of french fries. It was a great place to schmooze and make goo-goo eyes at the boys. They mostly ignored us, but we were so conceited we thought they were just being shy. Oh, some would swagger over to our booth and sit with us, but they made sure we knew they were just doing us a favor. And honestly, we were not exactly skaggy wretches, I’d say all of us were pretty damm cute.

I was 5′ 8″ tall. Many of the boys were not. If there’s any tall girls reading this, they’ll know what I mean when I talk about how miserable it was to slow-dance with your knees bent and trying not to let your butt stick out in this exercise in futility.

But it wasn’t until our senior year that the boys had a final spurt of growth and I finally found some taller than me. What a relief! We all “went steady” a lot, in fact, one really neat guy went steady with me AND four of my Pickle sisters  (not all at the same time…eeuuuu!)  – Our idea of passion was to lie on my bed (obviously my mother wasn’t home) and “neck” a lot, and doing what we called “dry humping” thru our clothes. Gawd, those poor boys, it was a wonder they could walk home with their cojones all blue like that. We didn’t care because “good girls didn’t” in those days. And “reputation” was everything as I recall—it must have been important since I was a virgin when I graduated. I know, hard to believe, ain’t it?

Tagged as: cherry coke, clubs, Dutch Treat, high school, pickles, seniors