To be a girl

Photo by Simon Maage on Unsplash

My daughter has a project in school that requires interviewing several women about their journey into the now, modern day and all that comes with it. At first, I did not feel there much to add, but she felt so and noted things in her phone while I rambled on, and what came out was more than either of us expected. It was when we moved on to high school and what it was like to be a girl amongst all the macho football players who all the other girls thought were cute while we were being smashed into lockers and such. Here's what I thought was interesting:

Looking back, my girlfriends and I were tight. We didn't have boyfriends, nor did we want any; we didn't seek out the jocks and popular types, no, we stuck together. We were the rebels, the jokers, the outsiders. We laughed and dreamt and aspired to get out of our small town to make something of ourselves if only for a few years before succumbing to the pressure of an invisible biological clock, which sometimes feels more like a time bomb. I remember one specific sleepover where we sat around a kitchen table and discussed what each of us aspired to be in the future: a writer, a fashion designer, a doctor. We were feminists, though perhaps with no real understand of what that meant at the time. Those late teens can be overwhelming--confusing to say the least. A part of you does want to date the jock and the popular kid. Sometimes you pray to wake up with the perfect hair, face, body, or perhaps the ability to speak in the right kind of persuasive way. But those desires were fleeting- and guess what? We did become a writer, a fashion designer, and a doctor (psychologist). 

I was really happy to relay this to my daughter. 

What I didn't say were the times we drove to the elementary school on Friday nights to smoke and talk about boys, or how we got drunk the night before graduation and had hangovers the day of. Perhaps that kind of information is best left out of school reports . . .

Senior year my friends and I went to prom together as an all-girl force. There, at some by-the-highway hotel, we gathered around a cut-out of PeeWee Herman (God, I wish I had that picture!) for official photos--he was our official date, and then went inside to drink frosty pink punch in plastic cups and complain about how crappy the music selection was. 

Also that year, we three girls went camping all by ourselves in the Mark Twain Nature Forest. The stories I could tell about that trip! Girls these days go to the nearest beach to flash guys, but we didn't even think of doing things like that. To us, WE MATTERED. We held each other in high esteem and propped up our female-status and future goals like gold in the making. And guess what? It was gold. And knowing we did that touches me to my core.

Sometimes you wish you could go back and see and feel and experience high school again, yet perhaps we all know staying in the future, the now, is for the best. I am glad that my memory will always be about three young women standing up against the world and sticking together through it all.