Ethel Has Her Say: Step 63

During my years at Samuel Morse Junior High there were certain girls who no matter what I did in class or at school to attract their attention they had absolutely no interest. Then, there were girls like Lori who held no attraction for me but I always knew if I showed the slightest interest she would reciprocate. That never happened. Finally, there were the girls who I had no desire to attract and I just assumed had no attraction to me. Ethel was such a girl. She was loud, blonde, and curvaceous. Ethel used a technique known as ratting to pile her hair high on her head and coated it with hairspray. Her perfume preceded her into the room, her lipstick was thick and dark, and her skirt revealed so much thigh that if she moved wrong one might get a glimpse of where they meet. As far as I can recall we only ever had one class together, Mr. Ruvolo’s citizenship class. I had Mr. Ruvolo for social studies, but Ethel wasn’t in that class because it entailed doing reports and studying for tests. In citizenship class Mr. Ruvolo would stand at his door, have the student show him the completed worksheet from the previous day and check it off on his clipboard. Following this simple plan assured a passing grade. One day I was sitting at my desk at the front of the room, when Ethel having just had her worksheet checked, walked straight at me, bent over and said, “Did anyone ever tell you that you have bedroom eyes?” No, no one ever did, not before or since, but it’s stayed with me all these years. I’m not sure if she meant it as a compliment, or if she was putting me on, or she had some other intent, but I am quite sure everyone in the room as well as Mr. Ruvolo at the door heard her. There is little doubt my skin turned tomato red and probably remained that way for the entire class period. However, in my own devious way I had to wonder if a certain girl in that class who fit into the first category might not have gained some interest in me. After all, I had not instigated this attention grabber. I was sure the girl, Pam, a cute slender blonde with a beehive hairstyle and perfect bangs, would think “bedroom eyes” were an asset. Unlike other communities, when I was growing up kids in Milwaukee would go from house to house for Trick or Treat the night before Halloween. To avoid having older kids spoil the fun the city sponsored a dance at each of the junior high schools. Even Mayor Maier came and thanked us for our good behavior, and Tom, the baritone sax player in Mr. Krueger’s band, joined Tony’s Tygers on the stage for a couple songs. Our entire cafeteria was wall-to-wall kids with girls dancing with girls most of the time while the boys huddled on the other side. Finally, after building up enough nerve, I told one of my friends I was going to ask Pam for a slow dance. He warned me she had a boyfriend who attended Marshall who was going to try and get into our dance. Sure enough, after picking my way through the crowd I saw her dancing eyes closed on the shoulder of a boy at least a head taller than me. Naturally, I was disappointed but there was no sense in causing trouble. After all, the lights were probably too low anyway for her to notice my “bedroom eyes.”