I had every intention of writing something inspirational
about following our individual paths in life... and then I remembered "The
Path", maybe because I had a
moment in the grocery store today when I was appreciating male beauty in the
guy ahead of me in line when he got carded?
It's either reminisce about the old days or start thinking of myself as
a dirty old lady, and I don't think I'm ready for that yet. Let's just all hope together that guy has a
great date tonight.
Anyway, the land around my junior high and high school was
surrounded by woods, with "Ridge Acres", a post-WWII housing development behind that. You know what those look like, kind of like
the green houses in Monopoly, but this was Willoughby, Ohio so all the houses
were white. Maybe somebody would break
out and paint their house beige, but you can always find a radical. They probably immigrated from Euclid, and
you know how those people are -- which you probably don't and I'm just teasing.
"The Path" was a paved strip for Ridge Acres
"walkers" to get to school.
For us bus riders, it where we congregated and smoked, you know,
cigarettes and stuff. It was the 70s
and we were oh so cool. I'm glad I was still
growing replacement brain cells at the time.
To show that as much as things change some things stay the
same, my main priority was watching boys. I had my favorites. There was a trumpet player who kind of made
me wish I hadn't given up my cornet or trombone or one of my many other stabs
at music. Another boy with long, dark,
curly hair... well, I could go on. I
was very boy crazy. My girlfriends
didn't understand. Even now I'm not
sure if it was the aesthetics, smoke, fantasies, wishing, or hormones, and I
definitely couldn't understand why my girlfriends weren't all a-twitter with
me.
My 2 best guy friends didn't seem pleased with my visual
appreciations either. Of course either
of them could've propositioned me, but noooo.
I liked looking at them too, but nobody, I mean nobody, asked me out
when I was in school. My sister assured
me this was because I was too tall and ugly, but I didn't think I was so ugly
nobody would ask. I pined, I looked, I
giggled.
Looking back on it, I'm now quite sure teenaged boys are
idiots and there probably were a few who simply lacked the nerve to ask. I'm also pretty sure that some of them saw I
was a train wreck and were too smart to ask.
Good girls didn't smoke on The Path.
I'd like to say I don't regret any of it, but maybe I
do? Did I really regrow my brain
cells? Was I a bad influence on other
people? It's hard to think of it
regretfully though because I had a lot of fun on The Path. I loved saying "hello" to
everyone. It was a happy place for me,
full of laughter, camaraderie, and really cute boys. Eventually I gave up on waiting for guys to ask me out and
started asking them instead.
I took this blurry photo of a mural I painted in high school
of the 4 seasons because Grandma said "Even though you think you'll never
forget what it looks like, when you get old you'll be glad to have a
photo". Thanks Grandma! Good advice. The mural was Path smoke inspired, plus I thought it was a most
excellent way to get excused from classes.
20 years after the fact I told the superintendent to get rid of it and
have another kid paint a mural there instead.
.
.
