Junior High Farewell Dance -- 1959

Cross-posted from the other thread:
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I remember this one. I was there. "April Love" on the...wait for it...AV Record Player." Boys on one side of the room, girls on the other.

Now, we had ballroom dance instruction one day a week in our PE classes, but that was not enough to get the boys away from the wall to ask the girls to dance. We could dance, but we didn't want to very much. We had no choice in PE class, but here at the dance, we did have a choice, and most of us chose to keep our distance from the strange creatures on the opposite wall. We were fascinated, but unsure of what to do with them.

I was still about 5'3" tall. I would grow a great deal in the next six months. The girls had boobs. The boys, for the most part, were either pre-pubertal or at the beginning of that transition. Most of the girls were taller than most of the boys. The girls were in church clothing. Nobody bought a dress for this dance.

The girls' PE teacher was making the circuit of the room, grabbing 13-14 year old boys more or less by the ear and draging them across the room and selecting a 13-14 year old girl for them. The boys' PE teacher just looked uncomfortable with the whole thing.

The cotillion kids were dancing, though. They were the kids whose parents had enough money to force them to take dancing classes and learn about that etiquette crap and so on. In the next few years, they'd become the cheerleaders and the basketball players and the student government wonks.

Me? I was a band geek...

I finally did dance with a couple of girls...awkwardly...but I did dance. It wasn't so bad. The girls smelled pretty good and they didn't feel too bad, either. No close-dancing, of course. That could prove embarassing for the boys.

All of this worked out OK over the next few years, once we caught up with the girls in height and hormones. But the 8th grade farewell dance? Not so much.

forced by my parents. I hated every minute of it being the baby dyke that I was.

Not in 1959 for me; this was quite a bit later and I hated those stupid dances too.

I was never a cheerleader either.:P

lots of girls were dancing with each other. If they didn't, they didn't dance much. It was a pretty common thing, even at later high school dances.

So...it's clear that you were born too late. :bounce:

Perhaps so. I can't remember dancing with any girls until much MUCH later and that was at no school dance.:P

and it was, mostly, I guess. But...a later girlfriend in high school told me about her earlier making out experience with another girl. I remember shrugging...couldn't see how that affected me all that much.