Junior High Shelley
I had two really close friends in high school, Shelley and Judy. This story is my tribute to Shelley. Shelley was the daughter of the apartment manager in the Southview community. She was one year younger than me, so she was still in junior high when I met her. Her dad had told her that she had to meet me and be nice to me because I had just moved to Maryland and didn't know anyone. That meeting never took place because she wasn't interested in forced friendship, and I didn't blame her for feeling that way.
I finally got to know her after about a month. She was one of the kids that would hang out at the drug store after the school bus dropped us off. Since she was still in junior high, there was always a lot of teasing her about her need to grow up. She was a cute girl, but someone had given her a bad perm that ruined her hair's appearance. It was just frizzy and ugly. And she didn't know how to style it or manage the frizz. We lived in a very high humidity area, so her hair mostly looked like fuzzy cotton candy. If the bad hair wasn't bad enough, she had another big issue, she had just had braces put on. It wasn't that the braces were so bad; it was that she kept her hand in front of her mouth when she talked and laughed. That made a person focus more on her mouth than they normally would. Most of the guys in Southview teased her about the braces. They mostly called her Metal Mouth. And she still dressed like a little kid and wore socks, yeah socks with skirts and dresses. She had fashion issues.
As we got to be better friends, she would come over to my place after school. I was very fortunate because my aunt and uncle were both hairdressers, and they had taught me a lot about hair care and style. I started experimenting with her hair. I taught her how to roll it on big rollers to smooth out the frizz. Then I showed her how she could style it. And then we put some makeup on her. She looked totally different; she looked good. I told her to ask her mom for some conditioner and creme rinse to smooth the frizz and make her hair softer. I explained that the only options for correcting the bad perm were to cut it short or deal with it until it grew out. She went for the option of letting her hair grow out.
The next obstacle was to try and do something about her clothes. We wore the same size so I told her she could borrow my clothes until she could convince her parents to buy her new clothes. The most important thing I told her was that she had to stop wearing socks. The plan was she would start babysitting, buy some hose, and wear her socks over them until she got to the bus stop, then she would take them off. She was going to have to do that until her dad got used to the idea of her not wearing socks. So she would wear the hose at home, and eventually, her dad stopped paying attention to what she wore. These plans helped her and helped her younger sister Karen transition from a kid to a teenage girl.
Shelley was a new person. She looked great; she was very attractive now, even with the braces. Now she entered the realm of BOYS. She was a normal teenage girl. It seemed like she changed overnight. She just had to find a boy that she liked. She didn't have to wait too long.
We hung out constantly. She often spent the night, and when she wasn't at my house, we were on the phone. Her dad would take us to the roller skating rink in Alexandria a couple of times a month. Her sister Karen would go and take a friend, and her younger brother would go and take a friend. That little Rambler station wagon was packed with kids. Once we got there, we would make her brother stay on the opposite side of the rink. He was someone you didn't want around if you were checking out guys. Shelley was pretty uncoordinated; she was prone to falling for no particular reason. Skates just aggravated that situation. She was one of those people who skated with her arms stretched out in front of her. She reminded me of Frankenstein on skates. And she couldn't stop herself without either running into someone or something. If she grabbed you, she was taking you down with her. And getting up was almost impossible because we would be laughing hysterically. And so would other people. Many times I dodged her, and she would mow perfect strangers down. That was even funnier. I could skate really well, and I would come up behind her in the rink and buzz her and then pass her, watching her trying to regain her balance, hands, and arms flailing in the air. We went skating a couple of times a month for about two years, and she never improved.
Shelley was in the car with us the night I met David. She was really taking a chance by going with us, but she did. She didn't like the person she got stuck with, but she was always funny and made everyone laugh, so that car trip earned her an opportunity to meet somebody she did like about a month later. In fact, it was her ticket to meeting a lot of guys in the future, after she got off of restriction from riding in the car and getting caught. The next time David came to see me, there was a guy named Sonny with them. This was on a mutual snow day during the middle of the week. When David got to my house, he asked me to call Shelley because Sonny wanted to meet her. I called and told her there was an adorable guy at my place that wanted to meet her, and she was there in a nano-second. He was from California, a little surfer type guy, very adorable, and just as funny as she was.
They hit it off, and Shelley went from a non-kissing young girl to a makeout maniac. It was just a one-time thing with him because he moved out of state, but it changed her forever.
In February of 66, we had a blizzard that kept us out of school for over a week. I lived in a hi-rise apartment building facing woods. The girl pack decided to go walking in the woods in the 18-inch snow. None of us had ever been in those woods until that day, so we didn't know anything about the terrain back there. We bundled up; it was freezing, about 20 degrees, and the wind was blowing hard, but we went anyway. We were back there clowning around, singing and slugging each other with snowballs, climbing over fallen trees, and chasing each other. Somehow Shelley found a creek bed that was not frozen solid; she found it by stepping in it and then falling in it. She was having trouble getting out of it because of the ice, and she kept falling down. We were all laughing hysterically at her, and it was making her mad. We all went over and tried to pull her out, and she fell again. This time, she started crying, so we felt bad. We started pulling on her and started laughing again; it made her start laughing too. When we finally got her to her feet, steam was coming off of her body. Well, "you guys made me pee in my pants" was the first words she screamed at us. And now she was freezing and about to start a chain reaction from the frigid air and laughing too hard. We got her up and out of the woods and back into the house. She had to strip so her clothes could be washed and dried. From that point on, when she was laughing hard, we asked her if she was okay or was she about to pee her pants. And we never went back in those woods.
In the early spring, Shelley decided she was going to learn how to skateboard. That was a very dumb decision on her part. She couldn't walk across a crack in the sidewalk without tripping or falling. I told her I wasn't going to do it because I knew I couldn't do it. She decided to try it with another friend around her for moral support. Her mom called me later that day and told me Shelley had broken her ankle. She was in the hospital. I went with her dad to see her. She didn't tell her parents that she was skateboarding when she fell. She told them she turned her ankle. I didn't say a word, but when her parents left the room, I was compelled to saying, "I told you so.". It was a nasty break, and she was going to be wearing that cast for awhile. She didn't go out much for a few months. She went out with David, Steve, and me a few times, but our skating trips were halted indefinitely. She would break her ankle two more times before she got out of high school. It was hard for her to walk around much, and that cast made her more unstable when she walked than she already was. Her mom or dad had to drive her to and from my house, so most communication was done by phone.
Shelley had the cast removed right before the end of the school year. It was going to be a good summer because she would officially become a high school kid. Her leg was pretty weak, and swimming was a good way to build it back up. We were getting our pool groove on. Instead of going to the hi-rise pool, we would be going to the family pool, but that was okay because all of our friends would be at the same pool. The "California Girl" look was THE LOOK for the summer. I knew that I would never have the California tan, but I did streak my hair with blond highlights. Shelley's awful hair had finally grown out, and I cut it for her, getting rid of the last of the frizz. Then we put some Summer Blond hair lightener on her hair to get rid of the dirty dishwater color. She was transformed; it made her look amazing. Of course, her mom had to get used to it. We went shopping and bought new swimwear and summer clothes. We were ready for action. The pool action consisted of encamping with all the guys and girls from the complex. We would take over a big area of the pool grounds away from the moms and little kids. We listened to music and played around in the pool until we would get a whistle blown at us from the lifeguard.
When I started dating Steve, Shelley and her sister Karen would be with us frequently that summer. We took them to their first drive-in movie. Shelley was always gullible. I told her that we had to sit outside of the car when the movie started; that was why the speakers were out there. Right before the movie started, Shelley and Karen got out and sat on the gravel. Steve and I just looked at each other; we never said a word. In a few minutes, they were asking why we were still in the car. A few guys from another car went over to them and asked them why they were sitting there. The speaker wasn't even turned on. They were humiliated when the guys told them you had to sit in the car, put the speaker in the car and turn it on. Funny.
That summer, we started going horseback riding. I had never been, but Shelley and Karen had gone many times when they were younger. I was looking forward to it. We went to Forestville to ride. For 10 dollars, you could ride for an hour, alone, without supervision. We all had to have help getting on the horses. Once we got on the trail, the horses started trotting, and that was a butt killer. I couldn't take the bouncing, so I let my horse run. That was so much better. Poor horse, I ran his tail off for an hour nonstop. Shelly and Karen did well, and they were running behind me. It was uneventful and fun until the next day. The next day the back of my legs and rear were solid bruises; I could barely walk. Shelley and Karen didn't fare much better. We were determined to go back the next week. We went several more times without any problems, and we were not hurting anymore after the ride. The last time we went that summer, I was given an enormous white horse to ride. As soon as I got on it, the horse headed out. It was trotting down the path, and the saddle started slipping off sideways. Shelley was coming up behind me. I asked her to get someone because I could not get my left foot out of the stirrup. I was hanging sideways. Her horse refused to go back to the barn. My horse decided he would trot back to the barn with me hanging on for dear life. By the time we got back, I was almost hanging upside down. One of the workers came over and helped me get loose. "Don't pay no attention to that horse; she puffs her breath out when the saddle is put on her back. Then she lets her breath back out." "Isn't that funny ?" No, that is not funny. Do I want to get back on her? NO! I waited by the car for my two cowgirls to come back in. That was the last time I went that year.
I was invited to go to Ocean City with Shelley and her family. It was July; it was hot and miserable. I had never actually been to a real beach before. I was excited. We left about four in the morning. Everybody else was asleep. I was riding shotgun. When we got to the Bay Bridge, I was terrified. Totally terrified. The bridge was moving in the wind, and damn, how much further is it to the other side? I was probably green Everyone woke up shortly after that. Shelley's mom had nerves of steel. She coped with five kids, including a toddler, and never spoke a harsh word. When we got there and parked, her mom told us to go ahead and put on our swimsuits; wait, what? In the car? In the car. That was the only bad part. We dressed and then carried all of the junk down to the beach. It was so pretty. Shelley told me to be careful of the riptides; what is a riptide? We all went to the water. I stayed close because I couldn't swim. Everyone else was out further. The babies and I were the only ones near the shore. Shelley was calling to me to come out further. I cautiously started walking out. I got this! When I got up to about my chest, the undertow started pulling me out. I was fighting it, trying to walk back in. I wasn't making any progress, and I started to panic a little. Right about then, a wave hit me. All I remember was rolling over and over and over and gasping because sand was in my mouth. I finally landed on the shore, gasping. I got up, wiping sand off of my face. Then I realized that the top of my bathing suit was gone and I was facing people' Oh my God!! I sat down in the water and started looking for my top. There it was, floating about five feet away. I snatched it and put it on. Now all I could think of was who saw me? I walked way down away from where we were at, hoping that nobody would recognize me when I came back. I was done with the water.
When Shelley came back in, she asked me what happened. I told her, and she cracked up laughing. Payback for the pee incident. That is what it was. We decided to go up on the boardwalk and mess around. The first thing we did was buy a bucket of those magnificent french fries. We sat on a bench, eating and people watching. With our feast completed, we started walking around the rides. We ran into two guys. They happened to be from Potomac Senior High. I knew who they were but didn't really know them. They started following us around, so we just stopped and started talking to them. Before you know it, we paired up. We went off the boardwalk, and my friend started kissing me. It was fun; it was like something from a book. We smooched and walked around for ages until it was time for us to go eat with Shelley's family. We said our goodbyes and swore each other to secrecy; we would never talk about it at school because it was just a "thing."
That was a fun trip for us. We talked about it over the years and always wanted to go back, but we never did. Now, we would have to get ready for the new Shelley to start back to school. There was a lot to do.
I finally got to know her after about a month. She was one of the kids that would hang out at the drug store after the school bus dropped us off. Since she was still in junior high, there was always a lot of teasing her about her need to grow up. She was a cute girl, but someone had given her a bad perm that ruined her hair's appearance. It was just frizzy and ugly. And she didn't know how to style it or manage the frizz. We lived in a very high humidity area, so her hair mostly looked like fuzzy cotton candy. If the bad hair wasn't bad enough, she had another big issue, she had just had braces put on. It wasn't that the braces were so bad; it was that she kept her hand in front of her mouth when she talked and laughed. That made a person focus more on her mouth than they normally would. Most of the guys in Southview teased her about the braces. They mostly called her Metal Mouth. And she still dressed like a little kid and wore socks, yeah socks with skirts and dresses. She had fashion issues.
As we got to be better friends, she would come over to my place after school. I was very fortunate because my aunt and uncle were both hairdressers, and they had taught me a lot about hair care and style. I started experimenting with her hair. I taught her how to roll it on big rollers to smooth out the frizz. Then I showed her how she could style it. And then we put some makeup on her. She looked totally different; she looked good. I told her to ask her mom for some conditioner and creme rinse to smooth the frizz and make her hair softer. I explained that the only options for correcting the bad perm were to cut it short or deal with it until it grew out. She went for the option of letting her hair grow out.
The next obstacle was to try and do something about her clothes. We wore the same size so I told her she could borrow my clothes until she could convince her parents to buy her new clothes. The most important thing I told her was that she had to stop wearing socks. The plan was she would start babysitting, buy some hose, and wear her socks over them until she got to the bus stop, then she would take them off. She was going to have to do that until her dad got used to the idea of her not wearing socks. So she would wear the hose at home, and eventually, her dad stopped paying attention to what she wore. These plans helped her and helped her younger sister Karen transition from a kid to a teenage girl.
Shelley was a new person. She looked great; she was very attractive now, even with the braces. Now she entered the realm of BOYS. She was a normal teenage girl. It seemed like she changed overnight. She just had to find a boy that she liked. She didn't have to wait too long.
We hung out constantly. She often spent the night, and when she wasn't at my house, we were on the phone. Her dad would take us to the roller skating rink in Alexandria a couple of times a month. Her sister Karen would go and take a friend, and her younger brother would go and take a friend. That little Rambler station wagon was packed with kids. Once we got there, we would make her brother stay on the opposite side of the rink. He was someone you didn't want around if you were checking out guys. Shelley was pretty uncoordinated; she was prone to falling for no particular reason. Skates just aggravated that situation. She was one of those people who skated with her arms stretched out in front of her. She reminded me of Frankenstein on skates. And she couldn't stop herself without either running into someone or something. If she grabbed you, she was taking you down with her. And getting up was almost impossible because we would be laughing hysterically. And so would other people. Many times I dodged her, and she would mow perfect strangers down. That was even funnier. I could skate really well, and I would come up behind her in the rink and buzz her and then pass her, watching her trying to regain her balance, hands, and arms flailing in the air. We went skating a couple of times a month for about two years, and she never improved.
Shelley was in the car with us the night I met David. She was really taking a chance by going with us, but she did. She didn't like the person she got stuck with, but she was always funny and made everyone laugh, so that car trip earned her an opportunity to meet somebody she did like about a month later. In fact, it was her ticket to meeting a lot of guys in the future, after she got off of restriction from riding in the car and getting caught. The next time David came to see me, there was a guy named Sonny with them. This was on a mutual snow day during the middle of the week. When David got to my house, he asked me to call Shelley because Sonny wanted to meet her. I called and told her there was an adorable guy at my place that wanted to meet her, and she was there in a nano-second. He was from California, a little surfer type guy, very adorable, and just as funny as she was.
They hit it off, and Shelley went from a non-kissing young girl to a makeout maniac. It was just a one-time thing with him because he moved out of state, but it changed her forever.
In February of 66, we had a blizzard that kept us out of school for over a week. I lived in a hi-rise apartment building facing woods. The girl pack decided to go walking in the woods in the 18-inch snow. None of us had ever been in those woods until that day, so we didn't know anything about the terrain back there. We bundled up; it was freezing, about 20 degrees, and the wind was blowing hard, but we went anyway. We were back there clowning around, singing and slugging each other with snowballs, climbing over fallen trees, and chasing each other. Somehow Shelley found a creek bed that was not frozen solid; she found it by stepping in it and then falling in it. She was having trouble getting out of it because of the ice, and she kept falling down. We were all laughing hysterically at her, and it was making her mad. We all went over and tried to pull her out, and she fell again. This time, she started crying, so we felt bad. We started pulling on her and started laughing again; it made her start laughing too. When we finally got her to her feet, steam was coming off of her body. Well, "you guys made me pee in my pants" was the first words she screamed at us. And now she was freezing and about to start a chain reaction from the frigid air and laughing too hard. We got her up and out of the woods and back into the house. She had to strip so her clothes could be washed and dried. From that point on, when she was laughing hard, we asked her if she was okay or was she about to pee her pants. And we never went back in those woods.
In the early spring, Shelley decided she was going to learn how to skateboard. That was a very dumb decision on her part. She couldn't walk across a crack in the sidewalk without tripping or falling. I told her I wasn't going to do it because I knew I couldn't do it. She decided to try it with another friend around her for moral support. Her mom called me later that day and told me Shelley had broken her ankle. She was in the hospital. I went with her dad to see her. She didn't tell her parents that she was skateboarding when she fell. She told them she turned her ankle. I didn't say a word, but when her parents left the room, I was compelled to saying, "I told you so.". It was a nasty break, and she was going to be wearing that cast for awhile. She didn't go out much for a few months. She went out with David, Steve, and me a few times, but our skating trips were halted indefinitely. She would break her ankle two more times before she got out of high school. It was hard for her to walk around much, and that cast made her more unstable when she walked than she already was. Her mom or dad had to drive her to and from my house, so most communication was done by phone.
Shelley had the cast removed right before the end of the school year. It was going to be a good summer because she would officially become a high school kid. Her leg was pretty weak, and swimming was a good way to build it back up. We were getting our pool groove on. Instead of going to the hi-rise pool, we would be going to the family pool, but that was okay because all of our friends would be at the same pool. The "California Girl" look was THE LOOK for the summer. I knew that I would never have the California tan, but I did streak my hair with blond highlights. Shelley's awful hair had finally grown out, and I cut it for her, getting rid of the last of the frizz. Then we put some Summer Blond hair lightener on her hair to get rid of the dirty dishwater color. She was transformed; it made her look amazing. Of course, her mom had to get used to it. We went shopping and bought new swimwear and summer clothes. We were ready for action. The pool action consisted of encamping with all the guys and girls from the complex. We would take over a big area of the pool grounds away from the moms and little kids. We listened to music and played around in the pool until we would get a whistle blown at us from the lifeguard.
When I started dating Steve, Shelley and her sister Karen would be with us frequently that summer. We took them to their first drive-in movie. Shelley was always gullible. I told her that we had to sit outside of the car when the movie started; that was why the speakers were out there. Right before the movie started, Shelley and Karen got out and sat on the gravel. Steve and I just looked at each other; we never said a word. In a few minutes, they were asking why we were still in the car. A few guys from another car went over to them and asked them why they were sitting there. The speaker wasn't even turned on. They were humiliated when the guys told them you had to sit in the car, put the speaker in the car and turn it on. Funny.
That summer, we started going horseback riding. I had never been, but Shelley and Karen had gone many times when they were younger. I was looking forward to it. We went to Forestville to ride. For 10 dollars, you could ride for an hour, alone, without supervision. We all had to have help getting on the horses. Once we got on the trail, the horses started trotting, and that was a butt killer. I couldn't take the bouncing, so I let my horse run. That was so much better. Poor horse, I ran his tail off for an hour nonstop. Shelly and Karen did well, and they were running behind me. It was uneventful and fun until the next day. The next day the back of my legs and rear were solid bruises; I could barely walk. Shelley and Karen didn't fare much better. We were determined to go back the next week. We went several more times without any problems, and we were not hurting anymore after the ride. The last time we went that summer, I was given an enormous white horse to ride. As soon as I got on it, the horse headed out. It was trotting down the path, and the saddle started slipping off sideways. Shelley was coming up behind me. I asked her to get someone because I could not get my left foot out of the stirrup. I was hanging sideways. Her horse refused to go back to the barn. My horse decided he would trot back to the barn with me hanging on for dear life. By the time we got back, I was almost hanging upside down. One of the workers came over and helped me get loose. "Don't pay no attention to that horse; she puffs her breath out when the saddle is put on her back. Then she lets her breath back out." "Isn't that funny ?" No, that is not funny. Do I want to get back on her? NO! I waited by the car for my two cowgirls to come back in. That was the last time I went that year.
I was invited to go to Ocean City with Shelley and her family. It was July; it was hot and miserable. I had never actually been to a real beach before. I was excited. We left about four in the morning. Everybody else was asleep. I was riding shotgun. When we got to the Bay Bridge, I was terrified. Totally terrified. The bridge was moving in the wind, and damn, how much further is it to the other side? I was probably green Everyone woke up shortly after that. Shelley's mom had nerves of steel. She coped with five kids, including a toddler, and never spoke a harsh word. When we got there and parked, her mom told us to go ahead and put on our swimsuits; wait, what? In the car? In the car. That was the only bad part. We dressed and then carried all of the junk down to the beach. It was so pretty. Shelley told me to be careful of the riptides; what is a riptide? We all went to the water. I stayed close because I couldn't swim. Everyone else was out further. The babies and I were the only ones near the shore. Shelley was calling to me to come out further. I cautiously started walking out. I got this! When I got up to about my chest, the undertow started pulling me out. I was fighting it, trying to walk back in. I wasn't making any progress, and I started to panic a little. Right about then, a wave hit me. All I remember was rolling over and over and over and gasping because sand was in my mouth. I finally landed on the shore, gasping. I got up, wiping sand off of my face. Then I realized that the top of my bathing suit was gone and I was facing people' Oh my God!! I sat down in the water and started looking for my top. There it was, floating about five feet away. I snatched it and put it on. Now all I could think of was who saw me? I walked way down away from where we were at, hoping that nobody would recognize me when I came back. I was done with the water.
When Shelley came back in, she asked me what happened. I told her, and she cracked up laughing. Payback for the pee incident. That is what it was. We decided to go up on the boardwalk and mess around. The first thing we did was buy a bucket of those magnificent french fries. We sat on a bench, eating and people watching. With our feast completed, we started walking around the rides. We ran into two guys. They happened to be from Potomac Senior High. I knew who they were but didn't really know them. They started following us around, so we just stopped and started talking to them. Before you know it, we paired up. We went off the boardwalk, and my friend started kissing me. It was fun; it was like something from a book. We smooched and walked around for ages until it was time for us to go eat with Shelley's family. We said our goodbyes and swore each other to secrecy; we would never talk about it at school because it was just a "thing."That was a fun trip for us. We talked about it over the years and always wanted to go back, but we never did. Now, we would have to get ready for the new Shelley to start back to school. There was a lot to do.
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