Conference turris::womannotes-v3

    Jeans.  That's it.  Just jeans.

    In our school in Michigan, it was green also, I thought it was the same
    color all over, I have never heard of yellow!
    
    "j"  :-)
    

    In Lamar, Colorado, in the early '60s it was green on Thursdays.
    
    Also had to beware of wearing those circle pins that were so popular. 
    Male or female -- and yes, males wore them, to make a
    statement, not for style -- they signified you were/were not a virgin,
    depending on whether you wore them on the right side or left side. 
    Only problem is, I could never remember which side signified which
    condition, so never wore my circle pin!
    
    Karen                                 

    Gee, times must have changed...
    
    When I was in jr. high wearing the wrong colors/clothes made you an 
    outcast.  If you did it enough you got beat up.
    
    Luckily, some people grow up.
    
    Lisa
    

    This is an interesting idea, to talk about colors or ways of dress
    that made people 'out of it' in high school esp back in the 60s.
    I recall most of the things that have been mentioned already.
    
    In at least one school I went to there were different colors
    for different days..
    
    purple and brown for example, but I don't remember what days,
    but I do remember 'green on thursday'.
    
    Bonnie

    Red. On Friday. (Winston-Salem, North Carolina)

    Yellow on Thursday at Alvirne High in Hudson. Also the little loops on
    the back of button down shirts. If you had one, chances are it would be
    ripped of your shirt by the person sitting in back of you. If it was
    sewn on well, you might choke before it came loose.
    
    Phil

Green on Thursdays, or white socks on Thursdays.  (Southern California,
mostly Oxnard and Camarillo)

        Carol

    It was *either* red OR yellow and definitely on Thursday.  (central
    Mass. 1960's)  But, I can't remember if it was yellow or red!  Good
    thing it doesn't matter anymore.  I think it was red.  Obviously,
    I never could figure out how to be in.
    
    Lorna
    

    Green on Thursday in Clifton High school, NJ 1966-69
    
    RE:  .7
    
    No guy was caught dead wearing a shirt with what was called a "fariy
    loop."  Custom was, the first day the guy wore the shirt to school, his
    girlfriend pulled it off.  She then wore the loop all day.
    
    Talk about symbolism!!
    
       Margaret

    ya, i remember...green on thursdays

    
    
    	Well, it seems like all of the 12 previous noters understand
    	why you got picked on!  For the sake of the 'youngster' in
    	the crowd, could someone please explain why?  Thanks.
    
    	(And as my mother would say, "You're dating yourselves!!!")
    
    				;^)  et

    Welll,  I guess I was such a social outcast that I didn't even KNOW
    what color not to wear.
    
    ;)
    
    -Jody
    

    It was green on Thursday in Indiana in the 60s. We also pulled off
    "fruit loops" from the backs of shirts.

    How do these biazrre traditions start? liesl

    yet another cry of ignorance in the darkness.
    
    i never heard of such a thing as "<color> on thursdays".
    about the only thing that mattered to me was occasionally
    dressing up (or down) the day of a soccer game.
    
    

The reference to a particular color or mode of dress on a particular
day is from the social custom of children to pick on a person not
conforming by calling them negative slang names associated with 
lesbians and gays.  This also perpetuates the feeling that being 
gay is a horrible thing to be.  It is how I grew up (see my previous note)
and how many of the other people here grew up as well.  The original base
note indicated this, but it was rephrased, apparently to keep from
offending some of us (and I am truly grateful).

         Carol

This sort of thing never reached Spokane, Washington, or else I was too 
goofy to understand such social pressures.  Some things never change, I 
guess!

Carla

    Carol
    
    I was the one to ask the basenote writer to remove references
    to what was then called 'q**'s' day.
    
    I was uncomfortable with it, and she agreed to a change for
    which I thank her..
    
    and yes it was a perjorative to be told one was wearing the
    "wrong" color. 
    
    But that still doesn't mean we can't explore all the weird things
    kids do in high school to each other.
    
    Bonnie
    
    �p.s.s one name that got thrown around a lot when I was in hs
    and teaching jr college, was 'retard'....now I quietly say that
    I'm the mother of a retarded child, *and* since he as been mainstreamed
    my son has gained lots of friends among the high school kids.
    
    several asked him to sign their year books!
    
    

This whole topic makes me very uncomfortable.  It seems to be making
light and nostalgic of the oppressive hell high schoolers put eachother
through.

I was never in the "in crowd", I was always the one wearing green on
Thursdays, or whatever the "out" thing to do was, and getting picked
on for it.  I didn't know till years had passed what the "in joke" that
I was being picked on for was.  Not that it mattered, high school 
hellions needed no excuse for tormenting their peers.

It also seemed to me (even at the time) to be perpetuating homophobia -
it made being "queer" out to be the worst of all possible sins.
Everytime someone called me "queer" it hurt twice: once, because they
were teasing me yet *again* and showing how much they didn't like me,
and twice, because I was of the suspicion that it might be *true*, and
the mocking laughter went right to my heart.

I am not the slightest bit nostalgic for high school.

D!

PS: It was green on Thursday.  Also, starting in 2nd grade, if you were 
ticklish on the knees it meant you liked boys (or, rather, the opposite
sex.)  When liking boys became a good thing, the meaning reversed.  Either
way, I was screwed, since I have always been ticklish on my knees.

    I barely remember high school, for which I'm thankful.  How many would
    go back?  Not me!
    
    One of the interesting things about the UDD class I took was the X/Y
    division and discussion.  If I recall correctly, Xs were arbitrarily
    named minority and Ys majority.  In any case, I was in the X group,
    and we retreated to our area where each of us was asked to share a time
    when we were in the minority.  Funny, no matter what race, religion, 
    gender, age, job code, edu level, most of us had no trouble coming up 
    with *at least* one such instance, usually negative - and the 
    circumstances were varied. 
    
    My example was a conversation in a Digital staff suite during a trade
    show, a conversation in which my input seemed welcome and valued until
    I responded to the question, "What do you do at Digital?"  I replied
    that I provided admin sec support to my [then] group, and was then
    asked, "How did *you* get to come to this show?"  (Sigh.)  But I
    digress.
    
    When we rejoined the Ys, we found that they had been asked to share
    examples of times they had felt themselves part of the majority.  I was
    dumbfounded to hear almost all of those folks agree they had to return to
    adolescence to find a time when they felt like part of the group, the
    majority...  I really can't relate to that at all.  Talk about the time
    I felt least like a valid member of a group (this includes my own
    family - not that they didn't try! - and, at times, the human race). 
    
    I'm glad those years are over.  
    
    aq
    

    re .21, Ann, I can definitely relate to your note.  I felt more
    "out-of-it" during jr. and high school than I ever have any time
    before or since.  I never once felt part of the majority during
    those years.  Some of the cruelties I can remember from those days
    appall me now.  I, also, can't help but wonder what was wrong with
    some of the teachers back then when I think of some of the behavior
    that went on right under their noses and didn't seem to bother them
    in the least!!!  Many of the teachers seemed as ignorant as the
    kids as far as understanding and compassion go.  Nobody seemed to
    ask why, they just pointed fingers.
    
    Bonnie's reply brought up the fact that there was such a lack of
    understanding back in the 50's and 60's for kids who were different
    in *any* way.  When I was in grade school in the late 50's there
    were two kids in my class who had had polio and walked with crutches.
     I can remember all of the rest of us standing in lines waiting
    to go in from recess (boys in one line, girls in another-make sure
    we realize we're different!), and watching the two with crutches
    slowly making their way up to the door, while we waited.  I can
    remember hearing kids yelling, "Let the cripples go first!  We gotta
    wait for the cripples!"  And, the teachers standing there and ignoring
    it, not even questioning it.  Nobody ever wanted to play with the
    kids who had crutches, or the one black girl in the entire school,
    or the fattest kids, or the shyist.  (That's what I got picked on
    for-being shy-and that's why I know how it feels.)  I used to pretend
    I was sick whenever we had oral book reports and half the time to
    get out of gym class and *nobody* *ever* even asked me *why.*  But,
    the teachers didn't like me because of it.  Yes, our schools were
    filled with compassion in the 50's and 60's.  Maybe it's actually
    better now?  I think it is.
    
    Lorna
    

    I always just kept a low profile in school, so I avoided all the
    controversy.
    
     In NJ, we didn't have problems with people ganging up on the physically
    handicapped, or those of a different race, as I think harder the ones
    who were always getting beat on were either in the tough group, or were
    trying to be in the tough group but just ending up being totally
    obnoxious.  Also, we had a kid who was mentally handicapped in some way
    but not bad enough to be dysfunctional.  His handicap came out in weird
    behavioral problems, and as I remember he was picked on unmercifully.
    Problem was that no one liked him, not even the teachers, so when there
    was a standoff, the teachers would just separate the kid from his
    tormenters, tell he tormenters to go away, and then tell this kid to 
    chill out and go somewhere else.  Not alot of mercy.  This was in
    elementary school in the mid-70's.  By high school, I had learned to
    hate most of the "popular" people (cheerleaders, football players, etc)
    and just avoided them like the plague.
    
    In NH, it was a totally different situation (moved there my sophomore
    year, this was early 80's).  Whereas in NJ, most people had been middle
    class, there was a real difference between those who had money and
    those who lived in poverty in NH.  That split the school right there,
    between the "rednecks" and everyone else.  The two groups pretty much
    ignored each other.  Also there were far less students (about 450 total
    for the whole high school), spread far apart, and all of us quite
    isolated.  As I remember, most cliques disliked the others, but
    everyone left each other alone (ie. you could look weird and people
    might stare, but you weren't going to get beat up).  As much as I hated
    NH, and living there, I would have to say that there was room to be 
    an individual during that period. (Of course you didn't want to do 
    anything you might be ashamed of later, with only 400 people in the
    entire school, gossip spread like wild fire.  You knew everyone's
    business, who was sleeping with whom, etc.)  I was one of the ones
    who dressed weird, and listened to weird music (as weird as you could
    get in central NH at the time).  Most people knew who I was but left
    me alone, probably because I had the reputaion as "a smart one".  Also,
    I didn't get too invloved with any one social group, I had aquaintences
    I saw in school, but I did NOTHING after school for 3 years.  I didn't
    feel like I had a lot in common with anyone.  My brother graduated
    after me and he said the school was going downhill towards conformity
    real fast.  Oh well.....
    
    I'm not sure which was better.  I liked the atmosphere in NH where
    everyone just kind of left you alone, but I'm also one who enjoys being
    near large urban areas where there's lots of diversity, where I can
    find people who are more like me.  I guess I could ponder this forever,
    but I'd rather not spend my energy grovelling over the past.  (I
    already do it too much).
    
    Lisa

 
.20> This whole topic makes me very uncomfortable.  It seems to be making
.20> light and nostalgic of the oppressive hell high schoolers put eachother
.20> through.

Hi D!

I think this topic does a good job of pointing out the absolute
silliness of conformity. It also reminds me how very early the
"rules" started, and how very well they were enforced (I remember
this stuff from my early years of elementary school!).

I don't think it makes "light and nostalgic" of this stuff. Instead, I
think it gives us all an opportunity to laugh at how stupid we
all were for not wearing green on Thursdays just to be different!

It's amazing to me that this kidslore was so prevalent in different
parts of the country! How in the world did it get started? And how far back
does it go? (I remember it from the early 60s.)

What other ridiculous sayings do people remember that promoted
conformity? Can anyone think of cultural taunts in adulthood that
parallel the green on Thursdays phenomena? Let's laugh 'em all outta
the water!

Kathy

    High school wasn't my favorite time of life, either, being another
    one of the "out-crowd". [Who, I believe, in later life, become the
    most interesting people, and the ones who *really* do things in life.
    IMHO, natch.]
    
    Anyhoo, there are still memories that I find some fun in (this being
    a "lite" topic).
    
    Like the time my best friend went down into the gym during lunch and
    threw all the basketballs (we were playing bball in gym that day) up
    into the balcony over the gym. The locked balcony. The one the teachers
    didn't have the key to. So when they came back from lunch to teach
    class... [well, you can imagine].  Unfortunately, my friend had a rep
    as quite a practical joker, so within *seconds* she was pulled out
    of her math class and escorted personally to the gym....
    
    The teachers Were Not Amused.
    
    
    
    But the kids certainly were!
    
    

    Sorry about .21 - not very light, was it?  Let me clarify:  I'm not
    sorry for anything I said there, just for my belated realization that
    it would have been better placed elsewhere.  Moderators, I invite you
    to do so.
    
    Since I came to this conclusion, I'be been trying to think of something
    on the lighter side from that era.  Hmmmm.  How about:  To this day I
    don't care for mushrooms.  The taste is excellent, but I can't stand
    the texture.  Why?  
    
    In 10th grade Biology class, when the preserved worm was slapped into 
    my paraffin pan I regarded it with disfavor.  I then brandished my 
    T-pin and thrust it - well, my intent was to fasten the worm to the 
    paraffin, see?  And my previous, admittedly limited experience with 
    worms (alive or dead, but preservative-free) led me to believe that 
    they were (ick) soft. 
    
    Not this nematode!  It was resilient.  In fact, you could have used
    that worm for a bumper.  (This is, I find, also true of most supermarket
    tomatoes.)  I was totally unprepared for the bounce and still feel my
    stomach do a slow roll upon entertaining the memory.  Some years
    later I encountered mushrooms as edible substances (can't prove it by
    me) but upon first bite...  I found myself (mentally) standing in Bio,
    faced with the worm, I could practically smell the preserving fluid.
    
    They're just not worth it to me.   :)
    
    aq

    RE: .26
    
    Oh gawd, yes. The worms in Biology class. I could not believe how
    big they were! Eeesh.
    
    Then there was the French teacher who had you stand up to recite. She
    shuffled her 3x5 card deck and pulled out a name. She then hollered it
    at the top of her voice (in French, if there was a translation). You
    were expected to shoot immediately to your feet and begin reciting the
    day's lesson in French (en Fran�ais) [see?  - some of it stuck]. 
    
    As soon as you made a mistake, she hollered "Goose egg! Goose egg!" and
    you got a zero and had to sit down. 
    
    She wore nylons, saddle shoes, and a smock over her dress. We called
    her  "Rock Around the Smock".  
    
    This class was one of the most terrifying I ever attended, and her
    teaching methods were outdated, even then. I learned a lot about how
    *not* to teach from this woman. But I also learned that, the more you
    expect from students, the better they perform. I couldn't have been
    sorrier at the time, but now I'm glad I knew her. What a character!
    [And I'm constantly surprised at the amount of French I remember, 27
    years later.]
    
    Then there was the teacher who said "actually" about a million times
    per class. We decided to count how many times he said it one day, and
    never *did* find out, since we all collapsed in giggles after looking
    at each other counting every time he said it. Not regular giggles, but
    the Don't Laugh in Church kind of giggles that make everything a
    million times funnier because you can't laugh out loud. Gawd, we
    were exhausted after that class...
    
    

    
    one of my few lasting accomplishments from the 9th grade was taking
    the tongue from the frog we'd just dissected and proceeding to lick
    every person i knew (and a few i didn't know) with it in the cafeteria.
    my biology teacher reprimanded me, but she was laughing while doing it.
    

    re .28, you were obviously a nasty child.  I'm glad I didn't meet
    you til later in life. :-)
    
    I refused to dissect a frog.  I think I pretended to be sick.  I
    must've spent 1/4 of my school life pretending to be sick when I
    wasn't!!
    
    Lorna
    

    
    au contraire
    i was quite the nerd and extremely harmless
    

    We did the frog.
    
    The idea of dissection was supposed to be that you could put the frog
    back together when you were done.  My main goal was to get to the 
    intestines so I could stretch it out and see how long it really was.
    
    But I liked chemistry better  because at the end of lab you could
    mix all the chemicals together and see what happened.
    
    When I got to college chem/orgo/microelectronic labs I couldn't
    mess around anymore tho.  The equipment was too expensive and difficult
    to operate, and the chemicals actually started to be very dangerous.
    
    Lisa

    I had to dissect a worm in high school biology class.  Okay, so maybe
    worms are not very high on the evolutionary chain, but I sure had a
    hell of a time just keeping my breakfast down.  Actually, I had fun
    most of the time in that class, thanks to the fact that I had a great
    teacher.  The rest of my high school experience, though, was another
    story.

    I am curious if anyone else ever had anything similar to a phenomenon
    in my home town, which we called the Beep Line.  To participate, you
    had to get a busy signal on the telephone, which you could easily
    obtain on that phone system by simply dialing your own number.  Once
    you had the busy signal, you could shout out words between the beeps;
    others, who were participating at the same time, could hear you and
    also shout words that you could hear, although depending on where they
    were in the city some were fainter than others.  The idea was to meet
    other teenagers of the opposite sex.

    The standard opening line was,

    	"Are--there--any--girls (or boys)--on--this--line?"

    If someone shouted back "Yes!", then you said,

    	"What's--your--number?"

    A lot of people claimed that they had unlisted numbers, and wouldn't
    give theirs out, but it was sometimes possible to actually get a phone
    number and call them.

    This was apparently a short-lived fad, and I'm not sure if all phone
    systems can even support this kind of thing, but it definitely did take
    place sometime around 1971.  I was, alas, a bit younger (at age eleven)
    than most participants, and so didn't participate very much.  When I
    got older the phenomenon had apparently died out.

    -- Mike

    Mikes, we had the beep line. It was part of an old AM radio stations
    request line. At night there was this 3 hour radio show and request
    line. It was so heavily used that the circuits were overloaded and
    people could talk to each other over the busy signal. This is how I met
    my now ex wife. We just pulled names and numbers out of the air and
    called them and talked. She and I arrainged a date and proceded to go
    on and get married before it was all over. The silly things kids do,
    huh?
    
    Phil

    
    	re: a few back..
    
    	Yeah we did the worm and frog thing in biology.
    
    	The really horrible thing was that if you took the 
    	second year of biology at the highest capacity the
    	dissecting was done on cats.  I wasn't that interested
    	in biology anyway so I didn't take it....but if I had
    	and they told me I had to dissect a cat, I would have
    	refused.
    
    

    We dissected things like giant locusts (yechh!) and fetal pigs - not
    cats, that would have been awful!  My lab partner (male) fainted we did
    the piglet, as it was.  I had trouble with locust; it was pretty gross,
    a sort of giant ugly grasshopper.
    
    /Charlotte

    I took Physiology in hs and had to dissect a cat.  The hardest part was
    the first step, skinning it.  After that it got easier.  Of course, in
    the beginning we all wore these clear plastic gloves, and if I so much
    as put the tiniest nick in the glove, I'd get a new one!
    Eeeeyyyyeeewww!  But by the end of the year, the gloves were gone. 
    Guess you can get used to anything, and it was interesting.
    
    This is from a woman who loves animals, and would have a menagerie if
    her more practical husband didn't object.  I still won't put the worm
    on the hook when fishing...
    
    Anyhow, we didn't have significant colors/days in hs, just the standard
    groups:  hippies (me), jocks, sorority brats (they liked to brag about
    how well they could make pledgees cry), the tough crew, musicians...
    We all had our 'uniforms' to wear.

    re .37, etc, I do not believe in using cats or dogs in science.
     I have told my daughter this from the time she was a little kid.
     Despite the fact that she is an A student (even in biology) she
    has promised me that she would walk out of a class that expected
    her to dissect a cat.  I value the lives of cats almost as much
    as I do those of other humans maybe as much, and would much rather
    have to dissect or kill a strange human than a strange cat, although
    the thought of either sickens me.
    
    I never said I wasn't eccentric.
    
    Lorna
    

    re last few, I know this is *supposed* to be a lite topic but anything
    that has to do with violence against animals is not lite to me.
    
    Lorna
    

    Although if people didn't dissect cats (or humans for that matter),
    we would not have as much medical knowledge as we do today.
    
    Lisa 

    re .40, what I object to in the case of the cats and dogs, Lisa,
    is that people kill dogs and cats deliberately just in order to
    dissect them.  It's illegal for people to kill other people just
    to dissect them.  It's a person's choice whether they decide to
    leave their bodies to science after death.  
    
    I do not believe that human beings have the right to ruthlessly
    exploit all other life forms to serve their own ends, even if it does mean 
    more scientific knowledge.  I realize this is not a popular belief
    since most people assume that everything else on this planet was
    put here for their use.  (not you specifically Lisa, just most people
    in general seem to think that)
    
  Lorna
    
    
    

    Shoot the dog!
    
    REK
    
    aka Life-long dog hater

    Actually when I was teaching biology and A&P in college I was
    informed that the cats that are used for disections are lab
    animals bred specifically for that purpose and never were anyone's
    pet.
    
    I don't know if this makes it better or worse for Lorna.
    
    It is necessary, however, if you are going to reallly *learn* the
    muscles and body structures to do a disection. They  can't  be
    learned just from looking at pictures in  books.
    
    I'd sure hate to go to a doctor or a nurse, for example that had
    never done a disection.
    
    Bonnie

    re .44, two things, first, please don't start a new topic on my
    account, Bonnie, since I don't have time to discuss this in depth,
    and, second, it does make it worse that the cats are bred for this
    purpose.  They're still cats.  I guess I just don't understand why
    they have to use either cats or dogs, for such a cruel purpose,
    after they given human beings such affection and companionship for
    so long.  Can't they use other, less intelligent, less popular-as-pets,
    animals to learn the same things?
    
    Re, Mark, don't tell me I have nothing to object to.  I'll object
    to whatever the f**k I feel like objecting to, okay?  
    
    Lorna
    

    .41
    
    Well Lorna I totally agree with you, and yes, we are in the minority
    unfortunately.  Another example of "mankind's" (kind?) arrogance--
    that the more evolved species feel they are more important and
    therefore, can destroy lesser species.  Arrgh...don't let me
    get on to this subject.
    Maia
    

    Maia
    
    It isn't a case of thinking we are more important than lower species
    but that we have to learn from real things not books. If we are
    going to have doctors and nurses and health care workers and research
    biologist, they have to see and touch and explore and learn to
    understand.
    
    Lorna,
    
    You know I'm a pet freak! I've had up to 5 cats at one time and
    unending stray dogs and cats.  The point of using lab bred animals
    is that they are *not* pets, and never were pets. I'd get far
    more upset if I thought animals from pounds were going into
    research labs and being used for disection. That would be using
    unfairly an animal that had given love and affection to people.
    
    For alternates there are white rats, rabbits and fetal pigs. Each
    however has problems as a model for teaching human biology. Fetal
    pigs have the wrong sort of circulation (fetal not adult) rabbits
    have muscle structure that is quite different (while cat's is more
    similar) from human, and white rats are too small for a lot of
    work such has heart structure (for one).
    
    I understand how this really upsets people, and so generally stay
    quiet on the subject.
    
    How about if anyone wants to go on further we start a note on animal
    rights or some such?
    
    Bonnie

    Just a small nit...this note is talking about high school activities.
    
    There is no real need for dissecting anything in high school, and maybe
    even college.
    
    

    <--(.48)
    
    Spot on, Joyce!!!!

<    There is no real need for dissecting anything in high school, and maybe
<    even college.

Exactly.  There are much better ways that this can be done, too, even in 
college.

In my high school, I was a straight A student (only got 1 B in 4 years, and
that was in Typing), and my mother was the Vice Principal.  When I took 
Biology the teacher said that we each had to catch and kill insects for
an insect collection.  I absolutely refused.  I said that I would work
with someone else toward a collection, but that having each of us do one
just to learn the types of bugs was a waste of life.  One afternoon my mother,
one of the other science teachers (who was also a friend), and the school nurse
all tried to convince me to go against my principles and kill the bugs. My
mother kept pleading with me to do it, saying that if I didn't that I would get
a B in the class (a horrible thing). 

Finally the nurse asked about what my actual objections were, and suggested
to me a way that would please everyone.  Since I didn't want to kill for "no
reason", then I could donate my collection to the local Jr High school.
I did, and the Jr. High science teacher was *very* pleased.

I still hated killing the bugs.

         Carol