blue streak

    In seventh grade the girls had gym class in the gym with the boys. We played dodge ball and did some minor calisthenics- toe touching jumping jacks and some running. It was before title IX and females were were not invited into competitive sports. 

      In 1968 girls were still required to wear dresses to school and in order to preserve our modesty and insure that we we not too attractive, we wore gym shorts under our dresses. Mind you, the idea of gym shorts conjures up a whole different image in ones current frame of reference. In 7th grade they looked like bloomers.

from noble savage vintage dot com

They were constructed of a heavy cobalt blue twill and had elastic at the waist and elastic where they ended somewhere above the knees. Yes you read that right. And we had to wear them under our dresses, so our panties would not show when we lined up in the yard and touched our toes on Tuesdays. Gym Day.

     I'll give you a moment to let that sink in.

     There were also days when we were encouraged to run laps around the school yard. This would not have been all bad but we were in South Phili. Not exactly bucolic paradise. Basically it was the equivalent of being told to go play in traffic. In any case, this is when I began to find my legs and earned the nickname "the blue streak", for the short of time that I participated in this urban prehistoric version of gym.

    Seventh grade ended, and I took up smoking having been introduced to Tarrytons by Diana Gable during sometime earlier during our visit to her family home in Virginia. We stole cigs from her mom's pack and puffed away in the dark by the near by lake, feeling oh so sophisticated. Thus began a lifelong addiction: the seeds of chronic lung problems landing in the fertile soil of my young respiratory system. 

    I have long since given up smoking and over the years practiced running occasionally, usually with an inhaler involved, and as a way to try to stay in shape as I aged. (Round is a shape.) I still like to visit the tread mill when the bones allow.  Sometimes, as I walk or run on the treadmill, the noise of the gym fades into the background a and there is a faint sound of footsteps on pavement and I remember the girl who donned her blue bloomers on Tuesdays and ran for a while, at the front of the pack, trying to find her way home.