20 Girls
I had a mother and a sister, grandmothers, as did most of my friends. There were women and girls everywhere, so if to understand women requires first-hand experience, then I have no excuse. I failed.
By the time I entered my early teens, my friendship with Jimbo began to fade as we developed different interests. I still saw him regularly at church, of course, though this was becoming mostly a Sunday morning thing, as his other activities kept him busy the rest of the week.
One of his biggest activities was girls. One summer in high school, his parents sent him to a camp at Illinois Wesleyan, a college in Bloomington Illinois, coincidentally the same town where my cousins lived. In a psychology class he took, he was diagnosed as being exceptionally interested in girls. I guess his hormones were raging.
His stories were interesting to me partly because they seemed to tell of an unknown world, one full of adventures I couldn’t understand because they were so unfamiliar. Partly this was due to his natural assertiveness and ability to talk freely to anyone. Many girls may also find attraction in self-confidence, which he had in large measure: he carried himself in a way that implied dashing and charm, a sharp enough contrast with my nerdy personality that perhaps he needed to dial down his relationship with me.
Still, I was interested in trying. Summer Bible camp was the ideal place to experiment. Jimbo and I were there for a week together, and although the rules naturally kept respectable distances between the boys and girls, there was plenty of time to mingle during mealtimes and at camp activities.
Jimbo took full advantage of the opportunities and within the first day had already selected a target or two, and was well on his way to pairing off.
I realize that to modern ears, this story may seem hilariously quaint, but in those days of Camp the thing to do was to get a girl to sit next to you in the evening church services. There wouldn’t be much opportunity to talk in the service itself, but afterwards there was plenty of time to walk her back before curfew to the border that separated the girls and boys’ sides of camp.
Since Jimbo was generally lucky enough to have a companion within the first day or two of the week, I was left to fend for myself, sitting alone for the service unless I took matters into my own hands and found the nerve somehow to ask a girl for myself.
So it was, with herculean effort on my part, that I chose a target and by Thursday was ready to ask her to join me at the nightly service, and to my surprise she agreed – provided she could bring one of her friends. No problem I though, and in fact it worked out great because now Jimbo was happy to be seen with me, now that I had a girlfriend too, so we all sat together.
I thought everything went well. I was very polite, of course, and after the service walked the girls back to their side of the campground without incident and being very gentlemanly the whole time. Relieved that I had conquered my shyness enough to have an actual girlfriend, I was looking forward to the Friday night (and final) service when I’d get to repeat our encounter.
Sadly, it was not to be. The girl informed me, via her friend, that she was not ready to be seen with me again for the Friday night service.
“She has a hard time concentrated on God when you’re around,” her friend confided to me. That was the last I ever saw her.
Perhaps expecting (hoping?) that my siblings and I would have more success in the dating game, my father decided sometime when I was in middle school that our family should set specific rules for boy-girl interaction. By clarifying these rules upfront, he hoped to head off any conflicts that might arise later. He wanted to specify the ages at which we would be permitted to date.
That I no longer remember the rules tells you that Dad’s concerns were unwarranted. If anything, we probably could have benefited from tips on how to be more aggressive in finding girlfriends.
With so much of our social lives consumed with church-related activities, our choices were already pretty limited, mostly to the opposite sex siblings of our friends. Yes we occasionally attended events with other churches where we might meet new people, but opportunities for interaction were brief.
I wanted a girlfriend, but it wasn’t until much later that I learned how unlikely I was to get my wish. It’s not because I was undesirable; I’m pretty sure there were girls out there who secretly thought about me. But despite having a sister, a mother, and being surrounded by girls at school and church, I lacked the confidence that is a basic requirement for a boy who wishes to get a girl’s attention.
As always, my experiences contrasted sharply with Jimbo, who always seemed to have a girlfriend. It was not until years later that I learned how many girls he had been seeing. He had access to his parents’ car, which certainly helped, and I remember once riding with him all the way to Minneapolis to meet a girl at the airport, someone he had met over the summer. Meeting her at her airplane gate, he kissed her, on the lips, in front of me and everyone else! Looking back, I assume I was there as a chaperone, a parental requirement intended keep him in line. We met her, drove her to her destination (I assume it was a relative nearby) and then we went back to Neillsville. That was it.
In the 1970s it was still possible, even common, for a public figure to be ostracized for what in those days we would have called sexual immorality. In today’s world, where I don’t think those two words can go together (is there a such thing as immoral sex?), the assumptions under which I was raised are described as “traditional”, a word that carries tinge of oppression, like a background pall in the air that suppresses us from living full, free lives. But I didn’t feel oppressed, or restricted, and I don’t think my friends and family felt that way either.
“Oh, well you were a white boy, so of course you had it made!” is the standard view today, but I think that’s a simplistic, naive way to describe a society where everyone, including white boys, had both freedom and responsibilities, expectations that, when fulfilled made all of society better off, but brought swift trouble when unmet.
In our simple, farmer-based perspective, the needs and desires of boys and girls were treated not much differently than the way the community treated the needs of cows and bulls. The innate differences between the two sexes was so obvious as to be unworthy of debate.
Of all the immoral sins, sex outside marriage was among the worst. Today it’s hard to watch even the most “family-oriented” movie without seeing teen sex as a normal, healthy part of growing up, but in my memories the very idea was shocking, and I internalized that attitude. It was unthinkable to me.
That said, of my graduating class of a hundred kids, at least half a dozen girls were married or pregnant.
At least through high school, my brother had no better luck than I did. But he had money, and a car, so girls were definitely interested in him. Like me, he simply lacked the self-confidence to put his charms to use.
Everything revolved around our church. The youth group was split equally between boys and girls, and I’m sure the girls were as interested in us as we were in them.
One highlight of our church youth activities came at regular outings to the big city of Marshfield and its roller skating rink.
My brother and I were both tall and lanky, he more than me, and being relatively unathletic we were somewhat at a disadvantage on roller skates. But it’s also not an especially difficult activity, so we learned and we were okay.
But once or twice during the evening, the rink operators would turn down the lights and play a 70s love song. Boys were encouraged to invite the girl of their choice to join them on the rink and even – gasp – hold hands. Awkward as this was to a shy boy like my brother, somehow he always managed to find a partner. They would skate around a few times during the song, hand in hand, and then it would be over.
Sorry, but that’s pretty much it for the gossip.