A moment seared in my adolescent baby boomer brain. I was walking upstairs for algebra class. As usual, I passed Marsha on the way. She was “bad,” and getting “badder” fast. That day she appeared with a skirt above the knee — the first girl in my high school that dared to cross the Rubicon.
The baby boomer generation sexual revolution of the 1960s began in the bursting-at-the-modesty 1950s. The female knee became the symbol of pop culture risque.
Approaching the image from below enhanced the effect. She wore a thin white silk blouse collar up — hood style, the top two buttons undone, no bra. I could see the outline of her nipples. And she had bleached the pony tail on her jet black hair blond. As usual, her eyes looked like a hungry fox. She sported a new, very bright red on her pouting lips. A “baby” boomer Lolita before Lolita. Her attitude was classic bitchy: detached, you can’t have me, but maybe if you’re the quarterback, and beg.
The guy ahead of me stumbled at the sight and I bumped into him, causing a chain reaction of rear-enders and flying books. She strolled right by the chaos, smirking like a rock princess.
Marsha ended up having an affair with a geography teacher. The joke going around was that he showed her places she’d never been before. She got pregnant, he got fired. The femme fatale dropped out of school, worked as a waitress, then settled down with a truck driver for the local Caterpillar factory. I recognized Marsha at my class reunion twenty years later only after a classmate pointed her out. Alcohol, four children and sixty pounds had changed her appearance, but she still had the shortest skirt in the room. She seemed happy.
Terry Hamburg blogged about the exciting and revolutionary baby boomer years and wrote this circa 2009. It’s part of our Oldies But Goodies Best of BoomSpeak collection.
