When I was a kid I was rather shy and I didn't have many friends. To stay busy, I participated in as many school activities possible. I was in the spelling bee. I sang in the chorus. I wrote for the team magazine. I participated in speech contests. I took piano lessons. I did plays. I was always busy. My middle school years, 5th through 8th grade, were particularly difficult because I was bullied mercilessly for being fat. I wasn't horribly obese but I was a it chubby, and worse, I looked several years older than my peers. I had boobs before anyone else. It was a time filled with anxiety.
For the Social Studies Fair in 6th grade I made a poster and called it City of the Future. I wish I had taken a photo of that poster, but back then photos were not easily taken. Dad controlled the camera and film and as he often said, picture developing cost money. Back then, kids, you took a bunch of photos, rewound the film, popped it out and took it to the drugstore or camera store, and waited a week or two. Then, the shots might be great or they might all be blurry. Nobody could make a photo with a phone -- to suggest such a thing would have provoked snickers or derisive laughter. Photography was mysterious and it required patience.
I digressed.
The City of the Future, as suggested by my poster, was basically a shopping mall with apartments on the top floor. In 6th grade the cool kids went to the mall all the time.
I was not a cool kid. I rarely went to the mall.
In Knoxville, Tennessee, in the late 1970's the cool kids hung out at West Town Mall. I can close my eyes right now and tell you where every store was located in that mall. My mom liked shopping at JCPenneys, where she had a charge account. There was also a department store called Millers, where the merchandise was a bit more expensive than Penneys. I knew when I found empty Millers bags around the house before Christmas that I was getting some nice stuff and my heart leapt with excitement.
Now, if you really had some money you bought stuff at Proffitts. We rarely ever bought anything there because my dad was tight-fisted when it came to money.
In my daydreams [remember those? they were how we entertained ourselves before smartphones, kids] we lived in a fabulous apartment just above the mall, which was awesome because:
- We could leave home and walk downstairs and be in the mall, the mecca to every middle-schooler in Knoxville. There, we could get snacks at Orange Julius, and giggle at all the naughty merchandise at Spencer's, and if we needed anything from the drugstore, Walgreens was right there.
- We could roller skate everywhere in the mall! Roller skating was a very important social ritual. If you didn't roller skate on Saturday you were a social nobody. Skatetown USA was one of my favorite places, and I could do the hokey pokey all day long and not fall, which was important. I could also skate backwards. Unfortunately, I never got to skate with a boyfriend, in semidarkness, under the great twinkling disco ball, while the sound system boomed out a classic tune like the Bee Gees How Deep Is Your Love? [I can still sing all the words to that one]
- No more yard work!! No more pulling weeds, or getting green feet from walking in newly-mown grass, or cleaning out the garage. I hated yard work with a passion. There were no "lawn services" back then, there were dads and kids.
- In my fabulous City of the Future the mall roof would be our playground and garden where we could all shoot hoops, play tennis, maybe even swim, in an egalitarian space where we could dash home and use the bathroom very easily. There could even be concerts there, and we could hang out with friends, unsupervised!
- We could have dance parties on the roof and dance to great tunes like September, by Earth Wind and Fire.
In thinking about my adolescent dream of the future, I realize that I was chasing a dream of nobody judging me for the size of my house or the neighborhood, or even my clothes. I would be able to check out all the sales at the coolest store ever, Merry Go Round, and dress cool.
I only ever achieved cool in my shoes and clothing a few times, as a child. Dad took me shoe shopping once when Mom was sick, and we bought shoes at Baker's Shoes. We came home with brown suede platform shoes that made me 3 glorious inches taller. I was beside myself with 1970's joy. I wore them to school, fell and sprained my ankle. My mother said I could never wear them again. Great anguish! I put them in the closet where they remained for years. Below, a photo I made a couple of years ago when I cleaned out a closet preparing to move. When you never wear shoes they stay pretty nice.
Below right, me in 8th grade. I was starting to worry less about being a cool kid.
Ironically, I have now lived for years a very short distance from what was once a very nice mall here in Atlanta, Northlake Mall. I went there many times, over the years. I haven't been there recently, though, because now I buy pretty much everything online. The mall is being converted to office space for Emory. I don't want to live in an apartment at the mall any more. I don't worry about being cool.
I know I am getting old, though, because in my mind, I see those kids just like they were back in middle school -- and a lot of those kids are now my friends on Facebook. The cool kids have grandchildren, many of them. I like music like D-35 by Mary Chapin Carpenter.
Maybe one day I will have a grandchild to love and spoil -- and that's the epitome of cool, to me, now...
