If you're of a certain age, you may remember finding a copy of this magazine in the beauty parlor (if you were allowed to accompany your mother/grandmother there) or maybe in the back of a closet somewhere.
People behaving badly have been the subject of public interest and scrutiny for generations. And some of those people behaving badly have been us.
My old friend/always friend, Tom Kerrins, recently posted this on Facebook:
I know everybody was different in high school and college. But it was OUR usual MO to make preparations for Friday/Saturday nights. In South OP that meant stopping by Wilks or Wrobles for our beverage of choice. Most friends had fake ID's. Going to the Blue Village and finishing our 6 Pk was the norm. A few trees on Austin can attest.And that was during high school. Only got worse from 18-21. brett Don't try saying it didn't happen to you.
The following is my truth. It belongs to no one else. It informs my opinions and who I am.
Like my friend Tom, I, too, know boys and girls who, in high school and college, earned their reputation as a Slime Bag or Dirt Ball or Slut or Tramp.
Boys earned the moniker of Slime Bag or Dirt Ball by behaving badly around girls. They called girls dirty names. More than once I was referred to as a PT. I was so naive I thought it was an abbreviation for pretty--until one of my friends filled me in. PT meant Prick Teaser. And I had no idea what that meant, that I was a Prick Teaser until yet another friend informed me it meant that I flirted enough to arouse a guy but then shut him down.
Well, of course I did! Shut them down, I mean. No first base, God forbid second, still not sure what third was and never, ever making it home. Please remember I was raised a Catholic and also had a mother who told me if I ever came home pregnant, I should just back my bags and leave. I took that shit to heart!
Slime Bags and Dirt Balls tried to get you into a dark corner and grope you. Or slam their tongue into your mouth when you kissed with Super Glue shut lips. Tell you, when you wore a mini-skirt, that you should bend over. Or that you were asking for it.
What I remember was how confusing this all was in high school, because some of these guys were pretty popular and belonged to the "In Crowd" and usually no one told them to knock it off. They did end up being serial daters because once girls got a whiff of their slimey or dirt ball-ness, the girls moved on.
It changed somewhat in college as the women's liberation movement was forming and gaining steam. Girls growing into women gained confidence to tell the dirt balls and slime bags to knock it off. The guys growing into men with slowly maturing brains were shunned by women and gradually, the guys they hung around with began spending less and less time with them.
And if the Dirt Bag/Slime Ball didn't knock it off, you told him to go to hell and left. At least I did.
And I still got called a PT. Only this time I knew what it meant and if I remember correctly, I believe I called the guy an asshole.
Yes, I know that was not every woman's experience.
Tramps and Sluts were girls who, by definition, went from first to third, if not home, with little encouragement. They were girls who "jumped a guy's bones." They tended not to be selective about which guys bones they jumped. One of the girls I graduated high school with was pregnant at graduation--as in showing pregnant--and that was scandalous.
There existed a certain degree of scandal around the Sluts and Tramps when I was in college. I'm going to go out on a limb and say they were looked at with less than a degree of respect. They were girls who 'slept around.' When they left on a date and said they'd be home tonight, the sorority sisters threw knowing glances at each other that said, "As if." There were girls who were formally attached to guys at home or at other schools or studying abroad who carried on with guys at school as if the others didn't exist, yet would coo sweet nothings into the phone when their Home Town Honey (HTH) called and lie as smooth as silk that they were studying on the weekends while being heartsick over their absence.
I don't know about the guys but I do have first hand knowledge that some of the Tramps and Sluts grew out of those behaviors. They became very productive members of society, went on to long term, monogamous marriages, became mothers whose children appear to are becoming productive members of society as well.
I'd like to believe that people learn from their mistakes and move on. When our children were adolescents, the Dan-o, my spousal unit, was often heard to say that good people make bad choices. Bad choices that sometimes bring the police to your door or call at midnight. Are we permanently defined by those bad choices? Or are we defined by what we learn from them and how we conduct ourselves afterward?
You can't tell me, you just cannot tell me, that everyone who is in public service doesn't have a story or two or twenty in their background.
Does it excuse those behaviors? Should they have known better? Should I have known better because, in True Confessions, I did wake up, once in college, next a guy and wondered how the hell I got there? My truth: it scared the shit out of me and once was enough.
Would that disqualify me from public service?
I have come to think that people who were once upon a time Dirt Balls and Slime Bags and Tramps and Sluts lose their basic human dignity when they feel so backed into a corner that they cannot or will not admit that they, like so many others, were Dirt Balls and Slime Bags and Tramps and Sluts who learned from their mistakes and moved on to become better people.
Isn't what that's supposed to happen when, a good person who makes a bad choice, grows into the good person they always were and want to continue to be?
I'm certain I am missing something here.
Man Up is a phrase that's been used when someone is being strongly encouraged to just admit they did something they shouldn't have done.
I'm thinking that's what I want to see happen. I want those who have Dirt Ball-ness or Tramp-ness in their history just Person Up. Admit it. Stop with the denials. I don't believe them. Does anyone? You're a Human Being. You make mistakes. Admit it.
Personally, again my truth, I have no tolerance for adults who behave like Slime Balls and Dirt Bags and Tramps and Sluts. Enough said there.
Now the next question is...and one for which I have no answer...is there a statute of limitations on accountability for poor choices that did not continue past adolescence? And if not, how do we ever get to learn from our mistakes?
And, ps, this is non-partisan. I have no doubt that people with mistakes in their past, including those of a sexual nature, sit on both sides of the aisle. History repeatedly documents this truth.