I hear this song and I'm in the back seat of a car, at the tail end of a double date. We're on our way to the Greater Pittsburgh Airport, just to walk around, hang out, see whatever there was to see. I don't remember who my date was. No one important, then or later. It's winter, cold, and was it really raining or is it that song puts rain into my mind? I don't know. Memory is a funny thing, isn't it. The boy I'm wondering about has dumped me, that I know. Alan. My first short blond. My first kiss. My first makeout. My first breakup.
CUT -- This is just not working. I'm trying to get myself back in the moment to write an amazingly evocative trip back in time and it simply isn't happening. Sorta like the orgasm that just won't roll over...or the sneeze that dies before it's out.
Part of it, I know, is the the bevy of prancing girls circling Del Shannon. Are they doing The Pony? Or just making like a carousel. And if so, to what end? And isn't their hair bouncy? As if they're refugees from a Breck commercial.
That's what we looked like in the Sixties. Exactly.
Friends today see the photos of me back then and gush, "You were so good-looking. The boys must have just loved you." Well, no, they didn't. The boys loved the blondes; we brunettes were always consigned to the second banana role. Think Betty and Veronica. Or Sandra Dee and Susan Kohner. Besides, I was too "ethnic". Read, Jewish. Not WASP. The Other.
And also, too smart. Smart was not in then. Smart came about five years later.
I always was ahead of my time...
My sis had the same problem. She went to a HS where the primary ethnicity was Scadinavian, so if you weren't blonde and had a name that ended in "sen" or "son" you were out of the club. Brunettes were seen slutty and dumb...
ReplyDeleteGreat picture... You're gorgeous, and 'other' or not, that is some great hair. I have always been blonde but also always other because of my personality. I never was a Sandra Dee. It kind of hurt in HS but now I am beyond glad not to be just like everyone else.
ReplyDeletesueb0b: slutty and dumb? just goes to show how cultural bs works. in my world, blondes were slutty and dumb!
ReplyDeletenina: I am still woefully in touch with the hurt of HS. God, when does a person get over this shit?????