Carlene Havel's Blog: Carlene - Posts Tagged "physics"
1960s
Starting today, I'll be serializing a short story about a 1960s high school adventure. Enjoy!
Every girl in my high school wanted to belong to the popular clique, but that required being pretty and appealing to the opposite sex. There was also a group of girls we called fast. Fast girls wore piles of makeup. Some bleached their hair. Most smoked an occasional cigarette in the girls’ bathroom, and all were rumored to have done it. I wasn’t sure what “it” was, but no matter. My hawk-eyed parents would never let me wear enough makeup to run with this crowd. By default I drifted into a small group of self-styled smart girls. We thought of ourselves as studious, since never having a date leaves a lot of time for hitting the books. Smart girls did homework during study hall instead of passing notes to reveal who liked whom.
Athletes wore their letter jackets on the day they were awarded. For the remainder of the year, the jackets would be worn by the popular girls. A boy who wore his own jacket in the hallway thereby signaled he had broken up with his popular girlfriend. In a week or so the trophy would pass to another member of the in-crowd. The previously disgraced male of the species could resume hauling a double load of books. He would again fit in.
Every girl in my high school wanted to belong to the popular clique, but that required being pretty and appealing to the opposite sex. There was also a group of girls we called fast. Fast girls wore piles of makeup. Some bleached their hair. Most smoked an occasional cigarette in the girls’ bathroom, and all were rumored to have done it. I wasn’t sure what “it” was, but no matter. My hawk-eyed parents would never let me wear enough makeup to run with this crowd. By default I drifted into a small group of self-styled smart girls. We thought of ourselves as studious, since never having a date leaves a lot of time for hitting the books. Smart girls did homework during study hall instead of passing notes to reveal who liked whom.
Athletes wore their letter jackets on the day they were awarded. For the remainder of the year, the jackets would be worn by the popular girls. A boy who wore his own jacket in the hallway thereby signaled he had broken up with his popular girlfriend. In a week or so the trophy would pass to another member of the in-crowd. The previously disgraced male of the species could resume hauling a double load of books. He would again fit in.
