Before I can start talking about PE, I need to explain a couple of things. When I was in elementary school (fifth grade, I think), I came down with pneumonia. I believe I missed an entire month of school. The teacher had all the kids in my class send me get well cards, which I saved for many years. I’m sure she got some blowback from the boys, but bless their hearts–they all made cards. This was during the bake-and-freeze-ahead sessions my mother held in our tiny kitchen in preparation for my sister’s Bat Mitzvah. So locked together in my memory are my ghastly endless coughing fits and the tantalizing smell of freshly-baked rugelach.

I had a bad run with pneumonia, but then I got back to school and all was well.

Junior high, as we called it then, required all the girls to wear crisp white blouses and blue shorts. The uniforms would be inspected each week, and we were obliged to respond to roll call with “Clean and complete!”  (Those of us who had started our periods were also obliged to announce when we were “observing” so we got excused from anything strenuous and didn’t have to put on our uniforms either.) For whatever reason (body shaming?), my mother insisted that I get the baggiest possible gym shorts they sold at Penny’s. Big, baggy Bermuda shorts that only drew attention to what they were  meant to conceal. A popular television ad at the time urged homemakers: “don’t wrap it, bag it” with Baggies. My so-called friends thought it was hilarious to sing this as I took the walk of shame from the locker room. We also had to embroider our names on our shirts (which had to be starched and ironed!) and shorts. Embroidery!

My family moved after my seventh grade year, so I changed schools. This new school had a much more rigorous PE program, with hard-nosed, no nonsense, whistle blowing dictators in charge of our physical fitness. We were required to run. A lot. Fifty-yard dash, hundred yard dash, relay races, etc. I was terrible at it, and felt terrible afterward. I may have mentioned this to my mother, or maybe she got wind of it somehow. But she took it upon herself to get me into “Special PE” which was a horror unto itself. Why was I, an able-bodied kid, forced to be in this class? Oh, right. I ‘d had pneumonia three years prior. One teacher in particular gave me a hard time. I guess she thought I wheedled my way out of regular PE for some bogus reason. My mother must have been quite convincing. Maybe you’ve heard of Munchausen’s Syndrome by proxy? I’ve always suspected there was a little of that going on.

An unintended consequence of being in this PE gulag was that I made a really good friend. She had a legitimate basis for being in special PE, and showed me how we could leverage our position to do some serious goofing off while making a good show of doing the busy work we were assigned. Without her, I might have remained bitter and defensive all year.

I apologize in advance for this, but if you took PE in the 1960s or ’70s, this will ring a bell. Now, up out of that chair!

 

 

 

I was hot and heavy with Bob my sophomore year, but he had a bad habit of wandering off with other girls. This did not make me happy at all! I was really into him, but would entertain offers from other guys when he misbehaved.

I loved going to our school basketball games and particularly loved watching our star ball handler; my classmate, John P. Several of my suite mates were cheerleaders and I’d sit behind them on the bleachers, cheering loudly.

One day I received a note via intra-campus mail from John. I didn’t realize he noticed me and thought his communication was quite clever, if a bit forward. The note read, “If the watch dog ever lets down his guard, look me up.”  John clearly had no idea what was going on between Bob and me; how deeply I loved him, or how much he pissed me off when he’d take up with other girls. I confess, the note got my attention.

So after dinner on the night of Sunday, January 9, 1972, I wandered over to John’s dorm room in North Quad and knocked on his door. His roommate Bill answered, gobsmacked. He couldn’t believe I was there. John was not. He was home in Arlington. Bill politely invited me in and called John. “You’ll never believe who’s in our room: Betsy Sarason!”  There was silence for a moment, then a bit of conversation; I could only hear part. Bill hung up, assured me that John would be back on campus shortly and proceeded to pleasantly entertain me until John showed up. Bill was good at conversation, a charming fellow. John showed up within the half hour, very pleased that I had taken him up on his offer.

The next night we had dinner together in one of the cafeterias. I went for a swim and he stopped by my dorm room later. I guess that was our first date, or perhaps it was the night before in his dorm room when I answered his summons. Dates at Brandeis could be difficult to define.

Tuesday, I watched John lead the charge as Brandeis lost to Harvard (125-117). I stopped by his dorm room after the game to console him. I caught the last 10 minutes of the game on Thursday night when we beat Suffolk (86-111). John took me to a party in his dorm, North C. I felt special to be there after a winning game with the star of the team.

Friday night was date night at Brandeis and John took me to dinner at The Chateau, an Italian restaurant in Waltham. After, we saw “East of Eden” on campus. He was always a gentleman with me, no pressure. Very friendly and pleasant. The next night I went to the basketball game. We lost to Tufts in a close one (82-80). But after, I went to a dance in the student union with Bob. He was back from his wanderings and I was happy to be back with him. My interlude with John was over.

I continued to go to basketball games, on and off. John and I paid little attention to one another. By senior year, I was busy student teaching first semester, then stage managed a complicated show. By this point, I was engaged to Dan, who had already graduated, worked in Waltham, technically lived with his parents in Newton, but came to my dorm room every night. I didn’t go to a single game. John was in the rear view mirror.

I started working on reunions and calling my classmates with my 15th reunion in 1989. I have worked on every one since. I always put my basketball buddies on my list of classmates to contact, so through the years, we’d talk. I learned about John’s family and his career, but five years ago, things changed. Email was the preferred way to contact and he never returned the emails I sent in February for our June reunion. Bill did, we immediately set a lunch date, laughed and talked non-stop and became fast friends after 40 years. I continued to contact John, but he didn’t return my emails or phone calls, which really bothered me after all this time. I didn’t understand the cold-shoulder. Finally, in May he said he couldn’t attend the reunion. Bill did, along with another one of the basketball buddies and both enjoyed it. We all stayed in touch.

It continued to bother me that John had blown me off. I didn’t get it. I don’t like to lose people I once considered friends. So I started a campaign for us to get together. He rebuffed my efforts. There was always some excuse. Finally, my emails became less frequent. I offered him congratulations when I learned one of his daughters had married and he sent a video of his toast. It was surprisingly nice to hear his voice after more than 40 years. I wished him birthday greetings a few years ago, but my emails tapered off.

Out of the blue, one day in December of 2017, he called me on my cellphone. I was surprised and pleased. We chatted a long time and set a lunch date for later that month. He called just before the date to postpone due to illness.

We finally met at the Chestnut Hill Seasons 52, on the afternoon of January 9, 2018; 46 years to the day since that night I’d shown up at his dorm room our sophomore year. It was wonderful to reconnect. 

We sat and chatted for hours. We had a lot of catching up to do; family, health, careers. John had no memory of our five day “romance”. As perhaps one might surmise, I keep a date book going back to college, so could provide the written account with his name in it, much to his delight. He wanted to be sure he had been a gentleman. I assured him that he had been. He is now a very sweet, kind person with an abiding love for his family and real friendship has blossomed between us. We can’t really see each other, but we can talk or text as a way to stay in touch and keep up with each other.

Both he and Bill had planned to come to our 45th reunion, but circumstances changed and neither did. It was John who called a few weeks ago when a classmate, another one of the basketball crew, was found dead in his bed at the age of 66. It stunned and grieved us all. It makes me cherish these friendships even more.  We are not getting younger and must hold these dear people close.

 

Physical Education, or Gym as we called it, was by far my least favorite class in high school. First of all, we had to wear these horrible gymsuits, one-piece numbers that snapped up the front. They were hideous looking things, as you can see from the Featured Image. No girl looked good in them, no matter how she was built. And woe unto anyone who had to go to the bathroom while wearing one, because she would have to take the whole thing off! We changed into and out of our gymsuits in the Girls’ Locker Room, which had a few individual stalls for privacy, but if those were occupied, you had to change in the main area, right in front of everybody. Oh yes, there were showers there too, but nobody would have dreamed of using them! I don’t even know if they worked, because they were never tested. If gym wasn’t your last class of the day, and if you happened to work up a sweat (rare for me, since I tried to do as little as possible), you just changed back into your regular clothes anyway and maybe put on some perfume to cover the odor. I heard that the boys actually did take showers, but I don’t ‘know if that was true.

Then there were the sports we were forced to play. The main ones were field hockey in the fall, and softball in the spring. We played both of these out on the same field, which was near the railroad tracks. When a freight train went by, I would watch the train and count the cars –often a hundred or more — totally ignoring the game I was supposed to be playing. I hated both of these sports, as well as soccer (not quite as bad as field hockey, because at least you wouldn’t get clobbered by a stick) and volleyball (which had the benefit of being indoors). The one sport I somewhat enjoyed was basketball, because I was tall and could occasionally make a basket. It wasn’t too taxing because under the rules of girls’ basketball at that time you only played on half of the court. The forwards stayed near their own basket and the guards stayed near the other team’s basket. One person was designated as a rover, and she was the only one who was allowed to cross the center line. If anyone else crossed the line, she was out of bounds. Also, we were only allowed to dribble the ball 3 times before passing. If there was a 4th bounce, that constituted traveling. So I would mainly just stand near the basket waiting for someone to pass me the ball, catch it, and then shoot. I wouldn’t say it was all that much fun, but it was okay. Once I caught a basketball the wrong way and jammed my finger, which didn’t heal right and as a result is a little misshapen and doesn’t bend properly even now. But I was happy about it, because it got me excused from gym for about two months while it mended. (I later learned to love basketball, as described here, when I played because I wanted to, not because I had to.)

Senior year, we suddenly had swimming too. My high school was on a college campus, and either they built a new pool or just decided to give us access to the one that had been there all along. We had to wear these awful tank suits that were made of thin nylon and, while they weren’t sheer, they pretty much left nothing to the imagination. Even more so after they were wet. It was hugely embarrassing to have the boys see us in those suits. And there was also the problem of making one’s hair look presentable after it got wet in the pool. Not so bad for the straight-haired girls, but for us curlylocks it was excruciating. One of my friends often missed half or all of the next class because it took her so long to dry her hair and make it look acceptable. I wasn’t brave enough to do that, so I often just brought a scarf to wear after gym class.

We had the same gym teacher, Miss Shiposh, all six years at that school, and I could not stand her. The best conversation I ever had with her was at the end of senior year, when I told her that I was going to Radcliffe because they had no physical education requirement! And while that obviously wasn’t the reason I chose Radcliffe, it was definitely one of its pluses.

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*with apologies to Jim Croce