Flashback - to the Fifties

Life Lessons

So I was ten and gawky and shy but also pretty darned snotty, and when Anita Grintals and I got together we were naughty. Not juvenile delinquent naughty, but we liked to play pranks. We called drugstores and asked if they had Prince Albert in a can, then if they said yes, we’d shout, well let him out! And cackle like crazy.

But we didn’t stop there, we also did the is your refrigerator running, and yelled, well go catch it! Ha ha . And most fun of all, we’d dial randomly and when someone answered, one of us, the one not on the phone would shout out from the background “George. Get off of me!” That was a hoot. We loved that one, little snots that we were, until one day the person on the other didn’t hang up and the line stayed open and we were sure that he was having the call traced and the police would be at our door any minute.

We never did that again.

One day that year we were ten, Anita Grintals and I made fun of some teenage girls, heavy and coarse looking, three of them sitting on a wall near the school smoking. We probably said they were fat. We were ten, ok? Well, we ran off, thinking we were very clever, and oh, no, there they were, at the top of the hill, big, heavy girls, with sneers, ugly mean girls, they herded us back down behind the school, No one else was around. It was a Saturday. My house was over the hill, through the woods, a small copse actually, but who knew from copses in those days?

We were on our way home and didn’t make it. Lost ground, backed against the back brick wall of the elementary school. By three very large ugly mean, cigarette smoking teenage girls. The biggest meanest one took out after me. I knew she would kills me, she would smash me flat with her big meaty hands. Her friends would stand there laughing and Anita was helpless. The other two surrounded her; so big so huge and overarching were they, there wasn’t even room to take a breath. I’m lucky I didn’t pee my pants.

“What did you call us?” big mean no. one tough growled at me. I squirmed, looking for a way out, for a teacher, for the principal, a parent, another kid, anybody. There wasn’t anybody, not even a dog, I mean, who but us, would nag out by the elementary school on a Saturday?

“Well,” she was growing impatient. “Uh I don’t know,” Yes you d, you called us fat, didn’t you? You sad we were fat.”

The other two chiming in, their low voices menacing, “You’re a brat. You don’t know anything. We’re not fat. We’re big and hard and tough. We can beat you up.”

I think Anita did pee her pants.

We were cornered, alone in the school yard with the schoolyard bullies. These girls were way too old to be at the elementary school. Do they routinely hang around loking for little kids to beat up?

We were surrounded; we couldn’t run away, even if w weren’t so scared our legs turned to jelly. What would they do. The biggest one, the leader of the pack, the bully in chief, took pity on us, or so we thought, naïve little girls that we were. “Wait, girls,” she said to her pals, who were rolling up their sleeves to pound lumps on us. “Let’s let these kids go.” The other two looked really disappointed, like they were hoping to smash some prepubescent bones today.

“No,” the big one said, pinching my delicate little arm, “we’ll let hem go after this one,” she pinched harder, “kisses my big fat butt.”

Oh, gross, I thought, help, Mommy, let me out of here. Anita backed away; they weren’t holding her arm anymore. Another one grabbed me, as the big one turned around, bent over and then looking coyly over shoulder, said, ‘Well, I’m waiting. Or would you rather get beat up.” Why do these things always happen to me? I thought, giving up all hope of squirming out of this one. She spanked herself n the butt. “I’m waiting.” The other two were cackling like the demented teenage torturers that they were, as I took a deep breath and held my breath as I bent over and touched my lips, as delicately as I could, as if I was kissing the papery skin of my medicinal smelling grandmother, and vowed to wash out my own mouth with soap if I got home alive.