Back
in the day, I was friends with a junior high crowd who always ran for class
president and got selected class sweethearts.
We
were the “cool crowd,” the trendsetters.
In
the seventh grade, one of my BFF’s hosted the first boy/girl dance party, and
all of a sudden this light turned on in my brain. Boys
weren’t yucky. Another friend was the first to go “steady” (this meant
nothing more back then than holding hands and smooching with mouths closed),
and I was even more intrigued by a new notion.
Boys are not yucky and kissing boys
is good.
When
Mother Superior discovered these new events, she dragged our whole gang into
her office without benefit of lawyer representation or being given our Miranda
Warning. Sensing she may have been too
late to stop our sinful spiral, she called for stricter intervention – she
summoned the parish priest.
Father
stood like Moses before the sinning Jews at the foot of Mount Sinai and warned
us about the evils of handholding and how that eventually led to even more sin
– kissing. Now he really had my attention – kissing
someone other than your old great aunt must really be fun.
It
was when he tied in all this sin with the commandment on coveting that he lost
me. I had no idea how my interest in
smooching had anything to do with my neighbors.
Mrs. Cowser lived alone with three Chihuahuas, and the Delgado family
stayed up all night and ate all day long. I had no desire to covet anything
they owned. I just wanted to hold hands with a boy and experience smooching.
He
finished his admonition by proclaiming there would be no more boy/girl parties,
there would be no PDA on campus (and that included hand holding), and the boys
and the girls were not to associate with each other during our free time - recess
and lunch. We were asked to agree to the new rules and some of my friends nodded
and a few actually agreed out loud.
But
there were some of us who just stood there weighing our options.
Let’s
just say, you don’t get to be “cool” by following all the rules. Coolness transcends convention. The Truly Cool
live on the periphery, defying restrictions. We real cool.
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