Junior High Romance

Janice was the prettiest, and the quietest.  Anita couldn’t be called pretty, but she was attractive.  She was the most uninhibited girl in the eighth grade, and that alone made her attractive.  She lived with her Mom, a Dad wasn’t in the picture.  Single-parent families were very rare in our neighborhood, so that made Anita especially exotic.  Barbara was way prettier than Anita, but she wasn’t intimidatingly pretty like Janice.  Barbara was the one I had my eye on.  

However, the only time we spent together was walking home for lunch and after school.  I was hoping for the chance to get better acquainted with Barbara, and one Friday I thought I saw my chance.   On our way home for lunch, the girls told me they were going to “booze” Home Ec that afternoon.  In our local patois that meant to cut classes, go truant, or play hooky.  Both Barbara’s parents were working; the girls would have the house to themselves.

Before going on I must explain, the people who make the rules had decided that all schools must teach all adolescent boys how to make cutting boards and bookracks, and that all adolescent girls must learn rudimentary Domestic Arts.  But I attended a Catholic school, and our school did not have the facilities for teaching these skills.  We spent Friday afternoons developing these abilities at a local public school.  Not exactly local.  The nearest public school, once known as Oklahoma Ave. School and now named for long time Congressman Clement J. Zablocki, was two blocks from my school.  But we learned our industrial and domestic arts at Morgandale School, which was located a brisk twelve block walk from St. Helen’s.

OK, so I wasn’t exactly invited to join the girls, and they were surprised when I showed up, but I wasn’t sent away.  My arrival had interrupted whatever the girls were talking about, and there was an awkward silence while I desperately tried to think of something clever to say.  And the girls, I suppose, were trying to think of something to talk about with me sitting there.  The four of us puffed away on our cigarettes as we pondered the situation.  Before we resolved anything, there was clamoring at the back door.

Barbara’s mother came home unexpectedly, and since the back door key was not in the milk chute, someone must be home.  She banged on the door demanding to be let in, while inside Janice and Anita hid cigarettes, emptied ash trays, and waved at cigarette smoke, and then ran into a bedroom.  I tried to leave by the front door, but I couldn’t get it opened, so I followed the girls into the bedroom.

And while the girls and I were scurrying around, Barbara was opening the back door to her angry Mom.

Mom pushed past Barbara and into the kitchen.  “Where are those other two?” she demanded.  And Janice and Anita stepped into the kitchen, leaving me in the bedroom.  The girls underwent a brief, but severe, tongue-lashing.  When she finished, Mom sent the girls off to their cooking or sewing or whatever class.  I heard the girls at the back door. 

I peeked into the kitchen, and Mom was standing at the sink, mumbling.  I might be able to sneak past before she turns around, I thought.  I almost made it too.

The girls had stepped through the back door, and I had my hand on the doorknob, when Mom thought of another thing to scream at the departing girls.  But when she turned she didn’t scream what she intended to scream.  Instead she screamed “Who is that boy?”

“I’m Robert,” I fibbed, as I made my escape.  I’ve never been a very good liar.  That’s why I try not to lie too much.  This was a dumb lie anyway.  Robert didn’t arrive at woodshop half an hour late, but I did.  Since we didn’t have anywhere else to go, or anything else to do, we trudged on to Morgandale School for our industrial and domestic educations, respectively.

Nothing much happened to us for our misdemeanors.  It was close to the end of the school year, they’d be rid of us soon enough.  Besides, I was a lost cause anyway, coming as I did from a ‘broken home’.  We all had to, individually, spend an hour with Father Ed.  I have no idea how it went with the girls, but I thought it was weird.  I didn’t understand why until sometime later, when I was more  worldly.  Father Ed was a perv.

I have no idea whether or not he was an assaulting, pedophile priest, I think not.  Looking back, what I think is, he wanted us to confess to, at least, teenage groping, and, hopefully, explicit explanations of certain satanic and demonic rites.  After we confessed, he would forgive us, and rush to his room to masturbate.  But, unfortunately, I had nothing to report, I’m sad to say.  I don’t know what the girls might have told.  Anita’s account might have been interesting.

Barbara and I went to different high schools, and we lost tract of each other for about ten years.  Then we happened to bump into each other.  She was still pretty, but I didn’t look at her as I did when I was 14.  And for some reason, she agreed to go out with me.  I was pretty excited.  But things got off to a bad start. 

At the time I was driving an Austin-Healy 3000.  The finance company had not yet repossessed it.  First of all, Barbara was not impressed with my fancy sports car.  And I had the top down; that messed up her hair.  To top things off, getting in or getting out, she brushed against the door and got grease on her blouse.  Our one and only date didn’t go well.

Maybe I should have hit on Anita.