Adolescence
I was planning to skip this segment altogether. I mean, really, who among us has anything positive to say about school after Grade 6? Pain and loneliness come to mind, mainly emotional, but physical as well. That period of pudginess, aching bones from growth spurts, teeth-straightening braces, awkwardness, girls who made fun of your gawkiness, best friends turning away from you as they became cool and you didn’t, trying desperately to fit in, somewhere, anywhere. And heaven help the truly lost ones who don’t find some place to land even if it’s with a group they had to keep secret from their mothers. Of promises kept and broken, of secrets leaked out by those you thought you could trust. If there’s one thing I do know, Beethoven didn’t have adolescence in mind when he wrote Ode to Joy.
I think for me, the teenage angst driven by the conflict of wanting to conform and wanting to be different, tossed with a dash of raging hormones, is most vividly illustrated by a pair of red corduroy pants.
It was Grade 8 and I was 14 and was obsessively mesmerized by Diane Olsen (or more specifically her breasts) and who, by dint of an unimaginative homeroom teacher’s solution to student seating, sat directly behind me in perfect alphabetical order. Sometimes I wished she sat in front of me so I could stare at her unabashed, but then I wouldn’t be able to see those perfect aforementioned objects of my desire, which were compellingly prominent whenever I turned around. I say prominent, but they weren’t particularly large, for despite stereotypical profiling of teenage boys, size was not my preoccupation. No, it was a conviction hers were round and soft and hinted of sensual delights behind the fortress of her bra. She must have thought me a squirmy little thing, for turn around I did. A lot. With the slightest pretense. A dropped pencil that would strategically bounce off my foot in a well-practiced arc that caused it to skitter into the aisle behind my desk. Or a student at the back of the class answering teacher’s question and I would twist in my seat as if to politely show my interest in my classmate’s wisdom, when actually I was impolitely celebrating the heady victory of yet another lingering glimpse at those perfect puppies. (Making a glimpse linger is no mean feat, by the way, perfected perhaps only by teenage boys.)
Those were the days, too, when my Mom was loosening the parental strings, giving me added responsibilities which included buying my own clothes. This freedom was commensurate with the dawning – echoed years later by ZZ Top -- that the sharp-dressed guys seemed to have much better luck in gaining the attention of the girls. (I think it also helped that they were good-looking jocks while I was a geeky-looking klutz, but I preferred to think it was the threads, and I began to become more conscious of the need to look a bit cooler.)
I began shopping, looking for ways to be noticed by the lust of my life; she of the heavenly orbs, sweet Diane Olsen. This obsession was at a time, of course, when I’d yet to lay a hand on any breast, let alone those special treasures that graced my classmate. Nonetheless, my imagination told me how soft and sensuous they would be in my palm were I ever to be granted tactile access to that holy grail.
I had an Eaton’s card in my name, and became an ardent shopper for the first time in my life. The mall was only a few blocks from my junior high school, and noon hours soon found me in the men’s department, looking for the new duds that would make me a hit with the lovely Miss Olsen. Early purchases were fairly conservative… a shirt with a button-down collar, a super-thin black tie, pleated slacks, leather shoes rather than tenny-runners. Undoubtedly I looked significantly more acceptable to my mother, but it wasn’t my mother I was trying to impress.
Then one day I saw them. A pair of red corduroy pants. They beckoned to me from the rack, and told me this was the hot ticket to paradise. Now this red wasn’t a rich Cordovan red, or port-wine-dark red, or a red muted in any other way. No, these were crimson. Bright red. Fire-engine red. A leap-out-and-bite-you red. I hesitated. This wasn’t my style. This was a bit too close to the edge. But nothing else had worked. I didn’t stand out in a crowd and was never invited to hang out with the cool kids. Maybe with these red-hot numbers girding my loins as I swashbuckled down the corridors of the musty old school, things would be different.
My older brother’s histrionics were easy to discount. He thought I was a nerd and that everything I did was nerdy. Dad grunted behind a puff of pipe smoke; his indifference another unreliable signpost. But when the ever-supportive Mom inquired gingerly if I was sure I wanted to keep them, the red corduroy pants became a red flag. Had I gone overboard?
Nonetheless, the next morning with a contradictory mix of excitement and anxiety, I dressed – pale-blue button-down shirt, brand spanking new red corduroy pants, polished penny loafers. Nervous but determined, the chrysalis had gelled and the new and colourful me had emerged and was winging his way to brighten the dark, gloomy hallways of Junior High.
Sometimes bold adventures have happy endings. Mine was more like the Franklin expedition, doomed to failure from the start. Bad judgment, total unfamiliarity with the terrain, complete naivety of just how hostile the environment was. First a couple of raised eyebrows while waiting at the bus stop. Then as I climbed on board, the bus for one brief moment was frozen like one of Franklin’s ships in the northern ice. Spring break-up came in a matter of seconds -- snickers building to finger-pointing and then to outright guffaws and belly holding ridicule.
The homeroom teacher, a drab, homely creature, undoubtedly jealous of my sartorial courage, made some mocking reference to the Elizabethan court which delighted the entire class, though I’m convinced not a single one of those vacuous dullards had the slightest inkling what the allusion meant. For once I kept still in my seat, staring straight ahead in hopes that Diane couldn’t see the rising crimson in my face like a mirrored reflection of my new corduroy pants.
I somehow survived the day. With much grimacing, Mom managed to stifle the I-tried-to-warn-you-and-we-can’t-take-them-back-now-you’ve-worn-them, and she tried dying the pants navy but they turned purple.
this was in the days before the Beatles and psychedelics and Carnaby Street, so purple was just as bad, if not worse, as bright red. I found as many excuses not to wear them as I did to spin around in my seat to make sure Diane Olsen still packed the perfect pair. But even that sport had faded. The light of my life had not only laughed along with the others, but she began dating a Grade 10 with a driver’s licence. The following September, we were put into different classes, and our paths seldom crossed after that. Eventually I got a girlfriend and I do remember the first time I unhooked a bra… but that’s another story (although one with a somewhat more gratifying ending).
