"Go F*** Yourself" and other happy high school memories

Time to stagger down Memory Lane. Here's another short excerpt from the book I'm writing on growing up in Los Angeles in the 60s. This is from the Fall of 1965.
Football games were usually followed by Friday night dances. I won’t belabor this excruciating exercise. Janis Ian made a nice living writing songs about teenage angst at dances and such. But it was a chance to see how much more fun life would be if I were better looking. Or could dance.

Meanwhile, on the Janis Ian-girl side of things, it must’ve been worse. First off there was now a level playing field. In junior high the early bloomers got attention regardless of looks or personality. But now they all had breasts. Bad skin and braces were no longer overlooked for Double D’s (well, maybe for Double D’s but certainly not B’s.) And decorum dictated that boys had to ask them to dance, not the other way around. So every two-minute song it was another round of rejection.

One night I spotted one of these undesired girls. She was standing by herself in her ill-fitting party dress. She looked heartbreakingly sad. So I approached and asked her to dance. And she told me to go fuck myself. From that day on my Friday nights were spent at home watching TIME TUNNEL.

Taft was no different than any high school. There was the caste system, there were cliques, where you sat in the cafeteria defined your place in the world. Everyone wanted to bang the cheerleaders. “Reputations” were important. If you made out with too many boys you were labeled a slut. Good girls lived in mortal fear of guys bragging (which at that age they all did). One good girl ingeniously got around this problem by sleeping with her brother.

My classes that semester included English Literature taught by a woman who must’ve dated Chaucer. Geometry taught by a very attractive young babe who only had one arm. Chemistry where I was introduced to the magic of the Periodic Table. I think I had history. I don’t remember. Drivers’ Ed (a class I would repeat endlessly as "Traffic School" to clear speeding tickets off my record), P.E., and my elective was “Art Production”. We painted banners and posters for upcoming school events. Imagine getting class credit for tagging!

1965 was really the last year of the 1950’s. We still thought and acted like we were in THE DONNA REED SHOW or OZZIE AND HARRIET. There was an innocence that steadfastly persisted despite pesky flashes of reality – riots, a war, civil unrest, drugs, teen rebellion.

Still you don’t believe, we’re on the Eve of Destruction.

In truth it was more like the Eve of Distraction. At least for me. It was hard enough to focus on my own self-centered little life with all the changes that were about to take place.