“A girl should be two things: who and what she wants.”
Last night’s movie, The Man with Two Heads, was hysterically funny. Some people would have hated it for the same reasons we loved it. We laughed many times at the action, especially the chase scenes, and laughed the loudest at the ending. I won’t give it away in case the B-movie lovers among you haven’t seen it yet.
When I was in the seventh grade, I played CYO basketball. We traveled to other towns. My coach, a woman, had been a marine. She was a no-nonsense sort of coach who made us wear white high top sneakers to protect our ankles. Basketball for girls in those days meant three dribbles then pass, and you couldn’t cross the center line so I was stuck on one side of the court. I was a guard so I couldn’t shoot. It was frustrating.
On our schoolyard were two baskets. Every recess the boys played a sort of half court basketball at each of the baskets. It was an unspoken rule that the baskets were for the boys. The younger girls could jump rope while we older girls stood in groups and talked mostly about the boys. My fellow basketball players and I decided that we girls should have one of the baskets. I asked and was refused. It was a strange conversation between my teacher and me. I didn’t have a nun as there weren’t enough for every class so we had nuns every other year. Mrs. Corcoran was my teacher. She was the poster woman for teachers in the 1950’s with her modest clothes, mostly suits, and her old lady hair-dos from her once a week trip to the hairdressers. She came to my desk to explain, quietly, why I was refused. She asked if I had my friend yet. That was parlance in those days for having your period. I told her no and she went on to say that soon enough I would and probably wouldn’t want to play sports anymore after that. I was totally confused at the connection between the two. When I asked, she said it was because I wouldn’t be a little girl anymore. I’d be a woman. I was even more confused, and that’s where she left me.
Explore posts in the same categories: Musings
August 24, 2014 at 1:11 pm
Woman’s athletics was light years away from the mind’s of educators or administrators in the 1950s. When I was in college all the woman who were not living with their husbands in town had to live in a dormitory. Woman living in the dorms had a ten o’clock curfew during the week and eleven o’clock on Friday and Saturday nights. The men didn’t have any curfew. We protested that inequality and I will never forget the response we received from the dean of woman. She explained to us, using that condescending teacher voice, that woman can become pregnant. I responded that they could get pregnant before ten or eleven o’clock at night. She looked at me as if I had three heads. I assume that she had never thought about having sex during the day. I wondered if she had ever thought about having sex at all. She was probably in her early 50s and dressed like your teacher. In those days the University worked on the principle of in loco parentis. When you were in school they substituted for your parents. That was in 1965 and the birth control pill was still a new phenomenon along with campus protests. The idea of coed dorms and equal spending on woman’s athletics was also alien in those days. Woman enrolled in college were either there to get a degree in elementary education, music or an Mrs degree. They were discouraged from enrolling in business, math, science or engineering classes. Cheerleaders, or majorettes were the proper place for woman in either high school or college athletics. BTW all woman in those days were virgins on their wedding nights. 🙂
August 24, 2014 at 1:32 pm
Bob,
Luckily my college wasn’t like that. The curfew was the same for men and women. You could sign out for the weekend, and we did that often and stayed with friends in off-campus apartments. I had an illegal junior year off-campus apartment and a legal one my senior year. There were no co-ed dorms. They were in the future. My college didn’t even have an elementary education or music degree. My roommate was a chemistry major.
Equal spending on sports was also in the future when Title IX was passed. We had girls’ sports but far fewer than the men had.
I’m glad I went to my college, not yours.
August 24, 2014 at 2:45 pm
You must remember that I went to a state supported school in the buckle of the Bible Belt. Texas was the home to fundamentalist churches before there was a name for that. Every town has a First Babtist Church. I always wondered why there are no Second Baptist churches. In Texas going to church on Sunday to pray for the Cowboys to win in the afternoon is a time honored tradition. Praying for world peace or brotherly love is optional. 😉
Ques:
Why aren’t baptists allowed to dance?
Ans:
People might think they are having sex. 🙂
August 24, 2014 at 4:22 pm
Bob,
I knew you went to school in Texas but I forgot the implications of that. I was growing up in Massachusetts which ended up the liberal state.
August 24, 2014 at 1:59 pm
Eesh. Mrs. C. sounds like something out of “The Bad Seed.”
August 24, 2014 at 2:11 pm
Rowen,
She was a product of an older, more buttoned up time. The poor woman had no idea what would be coming in the late 60’s, a mere 8 or 9 years away.
August 24, 2014 at 2:41 pm
The game You describe as basketball sounds much like something called Netball and another we call korgboll which in English should be basket ball but it isn’t 🙂 Very confusing Korgboll and netball is very similar in many ways and Korgboll was semi popular here until the 1930’s but it still exists. It was also called women basketball later on 🙂
It turns out that when we thought we were playing basketball in school we actually played Korgboll, It took quite some time for me to figure out that they hadn’t changed the rules a lot when I watched basketball for the first time on tv 🙂 🙂 🙂
A new season of the Amazing Race started here today and I wonder if it is the same You watch now but some episodes ahead of us? They fly to Borabora I think it was and there’s a newly wed couple that I already dislike and a twin couple, two brothers both doctors and of course lots of others too.
Have a great day!
Christer.
August 24, 2014 at 4:26 pm
Christer,
I know netball as my students in Ghana played it. It was different in many ways. They played on what looked liked cinders and a fall meant a scraped knee.
I haven’t ever heard of korgboll.
Yes, it is one of the seasons I have already seen, and I think you’re still another season behind us as they have had The Amazing Race All Stars with the cowboys and the father and son team who had to quit when the father got injured.
Have a wonderful day!
August 25, 2014 at 1:07 pm
I forgot the sport Korfball, a Dutch variation of Korgboll with slightly different rules and every team has four women and four men playing in each team. It’s a rather interesting game becaose everyone in the team changes place after two goal I think it is.
August 25, 2014 at 1:28 pm
Christer,
I like a co-ed team. It gives the game more interest. Changing places also keeps the game interesting.
August 24, 2014 at 7:28 pm
Hi Kat,
I had grown up playing with boys because there were no girls in my neighborhood. We played tackle toss up foot ball. You threw the football up in the air and whoever caught it had to run until the rest of us dragged him down. The only rule was that the person who threw the ball up couldn’t catch it on that turn. Now that I am an adult and in my right mind, I can’t think why we would have wanted to but apparently we did so there had to be a rule. 🙂
When I got to school and had to play by girls rules, it was really boring. Girls basketball was especially dull for all the reasons you gave. It was as if “They” had decided that females were never going to be serious about sport so why bother investing in them. The only game that was anywhere near like playing with the boys was Field Hockey. Girls with sticks are evil. 🙂
The goldfinches are hard at work on the thistles again. Thistledown floating everywhere on the street. There will be a fine crop of thistles in the lawns next year, I think.
Enjoy the evening.
August 24, 2014 at 8:37 pm
Hi Caryn,
Football wasn’t ever popular in my neighborhood. We were basketball and baseball or softball players. I figure the thrower had the advantage as it could be tossed where only she could catch it so the rule makes doe sense.
We ever played basketball in school just at the armory in Stoneham on weekends where the CYO team practiced and played games. I hated girls’ basketball as it was so boring. I wanted to be Bob Cousy and dribble it down the court with one hand then the other while the crowds cheered. Nope, three dribs and pass.
I too noticed the goldfinches are back. Lots of birds are at the feeders now so and they’ll have to be filled tomorrow.
Have a great evening!
August 26, 2014 at 2:28 pm
Catching up om your posts here…this one made me laugh hysterically…
I went to grade/high school in the mid sixties until 1976…I remember playing touch football in gym class, probably as some form of compliance with Title XI…I must say I am grateful that I did not have to do what you did. I also remember wearing those ridiculous one piece gym outfits…
Waving on a lovely day…
Coleen
August 26, 2014 at 4:15 pm
Hi Coleen,
I had those totally ugly one piece gym suits in high school. The elementary schools back then didn’t have PE so we were spared looking ugly. I played softball and basketball through the CYO, and I really enjoyed playing.
I wish I had run into Mrs. Corcoran so she’d know I always played sports in high school even after my friend and I had met!
Waving back!