As a new teacher, I was unprepared for the boy/girl thing making an appearance in the first grade. They notice each other at a very young age now. Maybe they always have. Maybe the cultural fabric of our society breeds these feelings younger than it used to. I do not know. I am ill-equipped to say one way or another. All I know is, I did not think much of the opposite sex until I was further along in the grades. You remember cootie spray, right? I purchased it by the keg when I was in the lower elementary grades. I did not like boys then. I liked their lifestyle, to be sure. They had it made. They could climb trees and roll around in the mud, and forget to comb their hair, and no one said boo about it.
But I never liked the infernal teasing of the boys I knew. My mother said it was how boys flirted. Soooo you’re telling me that boys get you to like them by making you hate them first? It was this sort of backwards logic that was proof positive to me that boys are as dumb as I thought they were.
I could avoid them mostly at school and at church. But there was one place in my routine where it was nearly impossible to do so. That place was the Aloha Roller Rink on Pattern Drive. The St. Louis hot-spot for skating fun.
I grew up in a very conservative home and we attended a very conservative church. Ha! Did I say, “attend?” Attend implies that we visited our chosen house of worship occasionally, possible once or even twice a week. By “attend” I mean, I lived there; nearly literally. My church was also my school, and my father was the principal of said school. So church three times a week and school five days a week. Oh, and did I mention that our house was on the church/school grounds so I also lived next door to the church/school/home-away-from-home? Yeah, I was there a LOT. And loved it.
Back to the conservative thing… We had a pretty long list of things we were not allowed to do. Movies? Gracious no. Drinking? Only if we were comatose and a hobo poured whiskey from a brown paper bag down our unconscious throat. Cigarettes? We could feel our feet getting hot from hell's fires. Dancing? Don’t even think about it. If you think we had no fun at all, you are wrong. We had a blast and didn’t miss whatever it was the rest of society thought we were missing.
But I must confess, I always thought the dancing thing was a little over the top. That’s why I lived for the first Monday night of every month when the big, yellow school bus proudly declaring North County Christian School on its side would pull into the church/school parking lot and load up to take us to the Aloha Roller Rink. Those nights couldn’t arrive soon enough.
We never thought much about it, but a Hawaiian-themed roller rink in the middle of St. Louis was something of a marketing genius. It sounded so exotic. The “theme” décor was only a palm tree painted on the cinder blocks at one end of the rink, and of course, its name. Otherwise, it was just a plain ‘ol skating rink. Old, worn out skates, and old worn out employees in an old, worn out building. But we didn’t notice or care. We were young bloods ready to impress and wow with our coolness on the floor. If you could skate forward without leaving half your knees on the cement, then you were well on your way to coolhood. If you could skate backwards, well then, nothing more needs to be said.
The night of the skate, we carefully chose which bell-bottom jeans to wear and spent extra time on our feathered hair – boys and girls alike. We all had identical hair then; parted in the middle and feathered. We were so cool.
That’s when I was older. When I was still in grade school and was accompanied by my father, I didn’t worry much about wardrobe, hair, teeth, skin, or hygiene in general. I once went an entire summer without brushing my teeth just to see if I could get away with it. I did. Until my next dental check-up, that is, and a whopping seven-cavity report. “How often do you brush your teeth?” the dentist wanted to know. Define “often”….
Up until the seventh grade, I was just there for the pure pleasure of skating for a couple of hours, and for the grand finale every night, the Hokey Pokey. This was ALMOST like dancing, and we got away with it. We were so devious. Our parents never suspected a thing. We reveled in the rebellion.
In those elementary years, boys and girls began to show up on each other’s radar in fits and spurts. This was always evidenced at the Aloha during the obligatory Couples Skate; an annoying interruption to my evening that had to be endured. As soon as the Old Guy with the long sideburns and the microphone announced it was time for The Couples Skate, I suddenly had an urgent need to use the ladies restroom. The timing was uncanny.
There was only one reason I skeedaddled to the safety of the three-stall harbor. It ensured that no boys would ask me to skate. I would emerge on the last note of the cursed event and head straight to concessions. If any would-be Askers wanted to know where I had been, I would mumble over a mouthful of pink cotton candy that I had, “peen in tha mafroom…” This usually abruptly halted any further inquiry. I think it was the combination of embarrassment over my locale and watching me talk with my mouth full.
This all changed when I hit junior high. Oh boy, did it ever.
Now, instead of avoiding the very manly and squeaky-voiced males of my skating party, I hoped/longed/prayed that someone would invite me to join him on the floor for the mystical, magical Couples Skate. If you were asked by a boy to skate then three things were certain: 1. You got to hold a boy’s hand for 3:52 minutes, or however long the song was. 2. You probably had to wipe sweat off your hand when the skate was over. 3. You were cool.
However, now there was a new dynamic in play in the fatal minutes between the announcement of the Couples Skate and the beginning of the song. This was considered the Do-Or-Die Zone. A boy technically had right up until the first measure or two of the song to screw up his courage to ask. If you got to the chorus and no asking had been accomplished then a girl knew it probably was not going to happen. There was just one thing to do to save face. Head to the bathroom. The Shunned skated like fury to the Three Stall Safety Zone where we crowded into the small space, along with the younger Boy Avoiders. It was incredible how all bladders were synced to release simultaneously. There were times it was nearly hard to breath, it was so packed with the fairer sex.
When we heard the last strains of the song ending, and the “all clear” was sounded by The Lookout” standing at the door, then we gave our feathered heads one last toss-and-fluff, made sure there was no pink cotton candy stuck in our teeth, and nonchalantly skated back to the floor, like we had been completely unaware that a couples skate had even occurred. “Oh, that was NOW??” We skated past the girls wiping sweat off of their palms and shook our heads in derision. Poor saps. We were so secretly jealous!
This is where we suburban St. Louis kids learned the ins-and–outs of The Dating Game. It was a tough proving ground, but we came through stronger, I think, for having survived the brutal boot camp of Love. I think this is why most St. Louis newlyweds chose Hawaii as a honeymoon destination. Somehow it made perfect sense.
So as my little charges giggle at one another and make funny faces and tease each other into making one another hate the other until they like the other, I smile and know that these first crushes are merely a test run at the real deal later. Much later, I hope. It will require time, maturity, and an eventual hormonal surge. Oh, and a cinder block building with a tacky painted palm tree at one end.
Love, Aloha style…
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