“I never expected to see the day when girls would get sunburned in the places they now do.”
Being on the deck is tranquil. The neighbors left a day early, yesterday, and the only sounds I hear now are the birds, an occasional barking dog and the burbling of the fountain. Gracie is asleep in the shade at the corner of the deck. It is her favorite spot. She is stretched out along side the deck rail. I’m under the umbrella as the sun is warm, and here I can feel the breeze without the heat. Last night got cold, close the window in the den cold. I was up until the wee hours watching the Red Sox play Seattle. I just wasn’t tired and figured I might as well watch the game. They won.
August is spider month. My house is filled with webs. I clear them, and they return the next day in the same spots. Baby spiders are everywhere. I feel like a character from the end of Charlotte’s Web. I don’t like to kill spiders as I figure the bugs they catch and eat are for my benefit too, but I hate all the cobwebs. Miss Havisham, however, would feel quite at home.
Only once have I ever run into someone from my hometown here on the Cape. She and I graduated from St. Patrick’s together, and she recognized me right away, and I her. She was always the tallest girl in our classes from about the sixth grade through the eighth when we graduated. That was not a good thing as almost all the boys were shorter. She used to walk stooped a bit to minimize her height. Girls, when I was growing up, had little power and were considered lesser than boys in most things. I remember being told my friends and I couldn’t use any of the basketball courts on the school playground at recess. They were for the boys. It didn’t matter that we played CYO basketball. We were girls.
Expectations for behavior were quite different. Boys could be boisterous and playful; girls were expected to be more demure, at least in mixed company. Girls were never forward, not the right sort of girls. We were trained to sit always with our knees together though it was acceptable to cross our ankles and our legs, modestly when it came to the legs. It didn’t matter if we were wearing jeans or dresses. Gloves, especially white ones, were part of every young lady’s dressy ensemble. I remember a pair of mine with a pearl button on each glove to close it at the top.
When I was in Ghana, we had to wear dresses all the time as only yama yama girls wore pants. They were not the good girls. They were the ones with street corner evening jobs.
I couldn’t wear pants to classes in college until a freezing winter my sophomore year when permission was given for us to wear them, a humanitarian move. That opened the door, and it never closed.
Explore posts in the same categories: MusingsTags: decks, demure, girls, MISS HAVISHAM, SERENITY
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keepthecoffeecoming.blog 
August 13, 2011 at 11:51 am
Demure? Not demure? That is the question.
de·mure/diˈmyo͝or/Adjective
1. (of a woman or her behavior) Reserved, modest, and shy.
2. (of clothing) Lending such an appearance.
Well, as guys go, *I* surely have never been any more of these things than shy as a kid. *That* went away with the adult morning dew. /g/
August 13, 2011 at 4:23 pm
Rick,
You are a guy and such behavior is not expected. Notice it says,” (of a woman or her behavior).” You could be as rowdy as you pleased. I would risk censure from some displeased adult who would remind me to behave.
August 13, 2011 at 12:53 pm
This morning I awoke to the sound of rain. We haven’t had any in about 50 days or more. This rain will only put a dent in the drought that has plagued Texas this summer. It’s also the first day in the last 42 when the low temperature at night went below 80 degrees.
We in the US have always been more prudish than our Continental European friends. I was in Nice France in March of 2007 and I was surprised to find woman sunbathing topless on the main beach. The beach runs along the center of town and consists of pebbles instead of sand. The beach is divided from the main road by the Promenade des Anglais. It was a Sunday morning and the promenade was crowded with families waiting to see the beginning of a bicycle race to Paris. I can’t understand why these woman were topless when it was a cloudy day and the temperature was about 75 degrees. After a few minutes of gawking I soon paid them no attention. Woman lying around topless quickly became old hat and the breasts I did see were not that spectacular. Once you’ve seen one pair on the beach, you’ve seen them all.
You and I grew up during the last vestiges of Victorian values in America. These lies continued the myth that the human body and sexuality are sinful and shameful. Thank goodness we have progressed past all that prudishness. Those were the days when doctors and other “experts” told us that masturbation leads to blindness along with other fairy tales about human sexuality. It took Masters and Johnson to kick off the sexual revolution of the 1960s which helped to bring equality to woman.
When it comes to woman’s rights I say, “You’ve come a long way baby” and I think it has been wonderful because it has liberated both the sexes.
August 13, 2011 at 1:47 pm
Yes we do see things a bit different here in Europe 🙂 If Janet Jackson had shown her breast in swedish television (or any other european country) it wouldn´t have been a scandal but quite the opposite 🙂 🙂 🙂
Christer.
August 13, 2011 at 4:22 pm
Except for our cousins, the British. Of course my colleagues in the UK tell me in no uncertain terms that they are not Europeans. I reply that they live a lot closer to France than they do to the state of Main.
August 14, 2011 at 12:08 am
To be honest, we scandinavians really don´t see ourselves as europeans either 🙂 🙂 Those down in Europe does strange things we scandinavians wouldn´t 🙂 🙂
August 13, 2011 at 4:28 pm
Bob,
May you continue to be showered! Perhaps it is like the first thaw when you know winter has broken.
It was similar in Africa where women often didn’t wear tops at their homes or when breast feeding their babies. One time a man I didn’t know stopped me in my town and asked where the naked women were. I was disgusted with him and told him so. I also told him he’d best go before I told some of the market men (who probably wouldn’t have cared).
You are so right about the age when we grew up. I often wondered why there weren’t more blind boys in my classes.
The 60’s were so counter to all of that!
August 13, 2011 at 8:14 pm
Or blind girls.
One of the great liberators of woman was the invention of the birth control pill in the early 1960s. Once woman had complete control of their reproductive lives they could be free of the shackles that bound them.
Unfortunately, there are powerful forces, among them the Catholic Church, who want desperately to put the woman’s movement back into the bottle.
August 13, 2011 at 1:24 pm
I went to Meadowbrook and saw the last stop of the combined Los Lobos, Los Lonely Boys tour. I was happily perched in the front row as both bands played for three hours. I had requested on line “saint behind the glass” which LL played. After the show both bands signed autographs and chatted.
I simply don’t understand why Henry Garza is not a superstar. If Los Lonely Boys are anywhere near you, go and see them, you will be blown away.
It was an amazing show with high energy onstage and in the crowd. Wonderful stuff, oh and I now have a really cool LLB poster signed by Henry
August 13, 2011 at 2:51 pm
Oh, and even at 57 you don’t actually have to have front row tickets to be in the front row !
August 13, 2011 at 4:32 pm
My Dear Hedley,
How about at almost 64?
August 13, 2011 at 4:32 pm
My Dear Hedley,
Seldom to groups of any statue make their way to these parts, but should they even get to Boston, I will take you up on that. I do like their sound though I haven’t heard much of it.
I love music which blows me away!
August 13, 2011 at 1:55 pm
As You already know it was nasty cold here last night but the day has been nice and warm and they say it´ll be a warmer night too. But I don´t take any chances so I´ll start a fire in the stove tonight 🙂
We had those unwritten rules here when my mother grew up, that will be around late thirties and the forties but I can´t say that I ever knew them when I grew up in the sixties and seventies.
But I guess boys was looked upon as smarter but today things has shown that it is quite the opposite 🙂 It is girls that continues studying and make careers more than boys does. Boys rather work with practical job it seems.
Have a great day!
Christer.
August 13, 2011 at 4:34 pm
Christer,
I just turned my air conditioner on in the bedroom as it is warm up there. By the time I go to bed, it will be cool enough to turn it off. I hope it will be as cool as last night.
Boys will be boys we heard but never girls will be girls which implied rowdy behavior was not appropriate for a young lady. I also never heard boys called young gentlemen.
August 13, 2011 at 4:14 pm
I left Catholic school in the 8th grade mainly because my two older sisters were complaining so much it was like a Teamsters strike. My Dad finally said to hell wit it. It was difficult to get him to say that so I yearned for public school all through 7th grade. And in public school I don’t remember a dress code for boys or girls. Anyone could use the basketball courts, tennis courts, track, you name it. If it was there, it was shared by all. I did give up on getting bussed to school. It was shorter to walk the hill through the woods. The bus took 45 minutes. My senior year was when girls wore multi colored frocks like the Hippies on TV. Everything was Haight-Ashbury. Styles were like that in College too and everyone wore jeans to class. My sisters, one married, both in the business world were shocked. Or they envied the liberal take over of students in schools across the country.
August 13, 2011 at 4:38 pm
Z&Me,
Even the public schools didn’t have girls in pants when I was young, and my friend Clare, a year older than I, went to a state college in NJ and they never relaxed the no pants rule for young ladies. It must be the difference in our ages.
I did wear uniforms in school, but I didn’t really mind. It meant not worrying about what to wear, and it meant a great deal to my mother and father who wouldn’t have had the money to outfit all of us enough.
I graduated from college in 1969 when everything had just started changing: the frocks, tie-dyes and hair bands.
August 13, 2011 at 8:03 pm
Hi Kat,
I’s good to know that I am not the only one who tolerates spiders in the house. My place is also full of baby spiders which I ignore or scoot aside. I don’t care for the random threads hanging down from the ceiling and catching me in the face as I walk through a room.
All through school and for the first few years of my career it was expected that females would wear skirts or dresses. I still remember when the dress code at work changed so that we could wear pant suits. Not too long afterwards the dress code went out the door and all sorts of interesting attire waltzed in. 🙂
The day was lovely. I walked the dog, peeled some wallpaper, read a bit and then the dog and I had a nap. Definitely a fine day.
Have a good evening.
August 13, 2011 at 10:33 pm
Hi Caryn
I just don’t like the webs, especially the ones connecting every frond the plants. I saw the tiniest spider this morning. I figured there’s a proud mommy somewhere.
I know exactly what you mean. I did like the days when men wore ties. I never thought suits were big, but I always thought a tie garnered more respect than a pair of jeans. The women teachers had only issues with where their skirts ended. These were high school boys ogling the younger teachers. An occasional word helped.
I was outside all morning on the deck, came in and took a nap with Gracie and Fern then read a while. The only thing which dampened my day was grocery shopping, but i played my iPod and it went quickly to the likes of James Taylor, Gordon Lightfoot and Mary Travers.
August 13, 2011 at 10:28 pm
Bob,
That is far too big a movement to try and stuff back into a small bottle!