It seems like a good time for lighter memory. It has been hard for me to write about my musical memories. There are several more still in draft form on my computer, one is my late brother’s story and is only tangentially about me. The second is about my efforts in college to put aside my feelings about music, but these two stories will wait for another day.
My social life was somewhat stunted by going to an all-girls convent school. The nuns were not big on coed social events. My parents view meshed with the nuns. I never went unsupervised to a coed event with a date until I entered college. Further, my ethnic family had additional rules beyond those imposed by the nuns. My brother had to know and approve of anyone that I went out with even to school functions. If I was going to a non-school function, my brother came along with a date of his own. If I received an invitation even to a school function, I would check with my parents, who would check with my brother. If the date cleared those hurdles, then the unlucky suspect had to meet my parents, who would grill my date and lay down the law as to when I had to be home, usually immediately after the school function. This rigamarole really put a damper on my social life.
When I finally got to college, I learned just how much of an impediment this routine had been. I met a nice guy who told me that he had always wanted to date me in high school. He went to the same high school as my brother. I flippantly asked him why he hadn’t tried. He informed me that my brother was like a dragon at the mouth of a cave, and no one was going to come near his sisters. This information came as a relief to me, for I had always told myself that the reason I had such an awful social life was that I was an unattractive nerd. In college I slowly emerged from my suffocating cocoon.
School Dances Were a Big Deal
My high school had two or three coed events each year – a semi-formal fall dance, sometimes a semi-formal winter dance, and a very formal spring prom. Given the infrequency of these events, they were a very big deal. Girls would pull out all the stops to secure an acceptable date. Having an older brother gave me some currency with my peers. He never missed being invited to a dance at my school.
In the 50s and early 60s girls wore tea-length fancy dresses to semi-formal dances and long prom dresses to the spring prom. Shoes were carefully dyed to match or coordinate with the dress, and a little formal purse completed the outfit. I will always remember one dress bought specially for a semi-formal in my sophomore or junior year in high school. It was a very bright dress, a gorgeous wide ethereal organza plaid in orange, yellow and blue over a full crisp under layer. It had a blue velvet belt, and my shoes matched the belt.
My mother and I shopped for the dress together, and she was as pleased as I was with it. In fact, my practical mother took a flight of fancy and gifted me with several pairs of shimmery gold-toned nylon stockings for the dance. They really enhanced the sunny quality of the ensemble.
This all happened before women started wearing panty hose. We wore stockings that were hitched either on a garter belt (a medieval torture device) or to some type of undergarment. I owned both a garter belt and a flimsy elastic panty girdle. I was slim and trim and did not need the discomfort or “control” offered by a more restrictive girdle. Stockings were purchased based on height. If they were too long, they would pool in rings at the ankles and not hitch up properly. Some minor adjustments could be made with the garters. Unfortunately, I grew in high school. My mother’s vision of my height did not mesh with the length of my very special shimmery nylons.
The evening of the dance, I put my stockings on. I knew they seemed a bit short, hard on my feet, but I was blinded to the reality check that was coming. I made it to the dance, and all seemed to be going well, until I was chatting with some friends and their dates and felt something happening under my dress. The battle between the too short nylons and the weak girdle had been won decisively by the nylons. I felt my panty girdle slowly easing its way off my rear. I looked at my ankles and to my horror saw my stockings starting to pool into shimmering rings. It took just the slightest additional movement for my panty girdle to quit the battle and slide into constrictor mode. It did not slide all the way down. I did not let it happen. I hobbled off the dance floor to the ladies’ room furiously gripping the failing panty girdle with my thighs and knees. It was not my most graceful exit.
Once safely in the ladies’ room, I pulled off my panty girdle and the nylons. Luckily the ladies’ room was the gym locker room, so I was able to stash the defeated panty girdle and nylons in my gym locker. I went back on the dance floor without my fancy stockings and hoped that the nuns would not notice my bare legs. I somehow escaped the notice of both the nuns and my mother when I got home. I truly welcomed the advent of panty hose and embraced the concept, knowing that I would never have another wardrobe malfunction that involved stockings and a panty girdle.
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