Remembering My High School Years In Cumberland

We were rising high school girls and it was time to be picked out of the pack by a senior. A party was held where we could market our wares. It was a lineup. This one boy walked past me, then came back and asked me to step out, turn and bend over with my hands on the ground. He said my hips were too skinny but I had good enough boobs, a nice rack. I didn't tell him I was wearing a padded bra. In the end after other girls were picked he had to act or be stuck with a fatty.

There were initiation stuff for new girlfriends, baking cookies, washing his Letter Jacket. We had to show up for practice, take his workout outfit and jock strap home to wash them. A lot of rumors went around, had we heard that Ellie got it? Hope she doesn't get pregnant. Some girls did. Pregnant at 16. The school had an alternative campus for pregnant girls. I got it, but kept my mouth shut. I had a scare but after six weeks my period saved me. From then on it was strictly rhythm and pull out.

I got this handwritten note, 'what's it like having your cherry popped?' from another girl. There was alcohol at parties, I woke up vomited and with a headache. 'That's once' my mother told me. It never happened again. I wasn't really that sexually active, we were a large family and everyone had chores to get done. Half the time if I wanted to go out I had to take my younger sister. So the opportunities were few and far between.

High school was a lot of fun, until we started losing boyfriends to the draft. I can't tell you how it feels when your boyfriend gets called up. He was called up right after he was commissioned. I still get very emotional thinking about it. He came home, and my mother and grandmother talked to me, it was up to me to bring him back to civilian life, and put the war behind him. A man coming home from war needs a wife. It was time to get married, I was 19 and he was 23, an old man already. Summer of '72.