TheBanyanTree: GONE WITH THE TIMES

[Sharon Mack]

Written to the prompt on 1/12/03  Write to the next generation about things that no longer exist and relate your experiences. (For another workshop)

See if this doesn't bring back memories for some of you.....ha!

GONE WITH THE TIMES

When I was a girl I went to a school that held every grade, first grade through twelfth, no kindergarten.  It was in a small town in Ohio.  It was here that I experienced my first sock hop*a real one.  We actually had to take off our shoes and leave them at the door and dance on the gym floor in our socks.  They were held every Friday night and you had to be in at least sixth grade to go.  It was here that I met my very first boyfriend, John.  The "gang" threw us together because we were the only two people without partners. He was in the seventh grade.  He was an older guy.  Everyone was pretty impressed.

At first we were awkward and not really sure we liked the idea of us being an "us."  We stood around for the first two dances (they were fast dances).  Then they played a slow song.  That was it.  We were boyfriend and girlfriend until I moved away the next year. 

Sock hops aren't the only thing that no longer exist (except when someone does a 50's mock-up).  The 45 records are gone and the dances that went with them.  The jitterbug was the dance that John and I did when we finally got brave enough to dance a fast dance.  We were pretty good as it turned out and used to practice with our friends in his basement.  I don't think too many people do that anymore either.  It was the cool thing to do back in the day.  You were able to get away from the adults for a while and still stay within the rules.

Saddle shoes and white bucks are gone, too.  White bucks also came in tan for the guys. You wore them with bobby socks. Pony tails are gone, too, and duck-tails.  I actually wore crinolines under a "poodle" skirt and jumped rope to crazy sayings on the playground or during lunch.  We did that until I was in the seventh grade.  Then it became too childish.  Instead we played hand clapping games where you sat in a group all clapping out a rhythm calling out one another's name on the beats one at a time.  If your name was called then you called out a name on the next beat.  Sometimes we changed it to numbers we assigned, sometimes to crazy sayings of the day.

Beatniks are gone.  They left with Maynard G. Crebbs.  I used to love the crazy poetry readings.  The hippies came close but never could quite make it to "cool cats."  Cigarettes were the big evil of the beatniks.  If they ever elevated to drugs I never knew about it.  I was too young to be looking for it anyway.

But the saddest loss is the innocence.  It took me a long time to lose that.  I am afraid that my counterparts in this day and age are far beyond where I was in the sixth grade and the following middle years*.and that is sad.  It's a cool thing to be innocent at that age.  I think I enjoyed my youth more but who knows, maybe I'm just an old fogy and don't know what I'm talking about.

Sharon A. Mack