funny, isn't it?
by jeanne charters

Once upon a time, dear reader, there was a time when little girls didn’t need to have a thought in their pretty heads about the type of job they would have someday.
It was assumed that if the girl was sweet and popular and nice as she could be, she would magically graduate from high school, perhaps go to college (in hopes of catching a better husband), marry her prince and have 2.3 children, all of whom would be born perfect, though how that .3 child could be perfect is confusing to me. The first child would be born not less than 10 months after the nuptial day, of course. In due time, she would join the Junior Service League and spend her days doing good deeds…or whatever it was that the Junior Service League did in those days.
I’m not talking vintage Cinderella here…I’m talking 1956!

However, during those years of preparation for the “big day” when she would marry the prince and be taken care of for the rest of her life, it was seemly that the girl do a few “pretend” jobs, just to show everyone that she could work if she had to, God forbid.

My first pretend job was at age 16. It was between my junior and senior year of high school. I manned the counter at the American Automobile Association, passing out forms and smiling vapidly. That was where I met Ruby and Selma, two large African-American women who explained life to me. Part of my study with them included the first real sex education I’d had since Monsignor Varley had told all the girls in 7th grade about the little teacups inside each of us that tipped each month and let out a tiny seed. That was the period of my life when I walked around terrified of falling, lest I break my teacups.

After a time, Ruby and Selma decided it was time for me to learn about childbirth.

“Oh, honey, it feels like your spine is gonna come out of your putata, I swear,” Ruby said.

“Not just that…but then the doctor takes this big sharp knife and cuts your putata stem to stern to let the baby come out,” Selma chimed in. “There ain’t no drugs on earth that can help you then.”

When I asked them if labor was sort of like extreme cramps, as I had read, they nearly fell on the floor in hysterics.

Hmmm, maybe it was time I reconsider my decision to not be a nun.

Well, anyway, I passed that summer at A.A.A. without doing much damage to local travelers. That’s because when they asked me about doing routing, I explained that my geography book had never come in the 4th grade and that, therefore, I was directionally challenged to a degree that nearly qualified me as a subject for a telethon.

The next summer, after my graduation and before I started college at Ohio University, I got a job at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. The newspaper had been full of articles about the dire need in the federal government for excellent stenographers. At my mother’s insistence, I had taken 3 years of shorthand and typing, hating every minute of it. However, Sister Mary Annina’s persistence had won out; and, in my senior year, I broke every school record for taking shorthand and typing it up at a breakneck speed. Yessirree, I was a bona fide whiz kid!

My Aunt Mimi had worked at Wright Pat as a secretary since about the time that Wilbur and Orville flew the Kitty Hawk, so she arranged for me to meet with the Personnel Department there. I wore my very best navy blue suit for the interview and, loaded with my diploma and awards, off I went to knock ‘em dead with my flying fingers on the keyboard.

I got the job! How excellent! I was to be a secretary at Wright Patterson Air Force Base! Except I never took a letter and never typed that entire summer. My job actually consisted of carrying piles of classified documents to a furnace and burning them. Day after day, I carried those huge bundles and threw them into an incinerator. How could this be? The Federal Government had been saying for months how much they needed my skills. Could they possibly be so inefficient that they would waste the talents of the best little typist in Ohio? Hmmm.

The only good thing about that summer was the fact that I had lots dates with 2nd lieutenants fresh from R.O.T.C. One of them was named Oley Olsen.

“I’m from Minnesota,” Oley would say, “land of a thousand lakes”. Oley said that a lot!
He was very tall, very blonde and looked really gorgeous in his 2nd lieutenant’s uniform. I was smitten. This looked like one swell summer romance to me. Even rivaled the one in “The Summer Place” between Sandra Dee and Troy Donahue. If I squinted and cocked my head just so, Oley sort of looked like Troy, truth be told.

He asked me to go swimming at Muzzy’s Lake. I said, “of course”, of course, thinking of my new blue-checked swimsuit that matched my eyes along with the cute little skirt that did wonders for my legs.

He picked me up the following Saturday at 11 a.m. My mother wasn’t happy about me going out with an older man; but after she met him, she could tell that he was a gentleman and would take good care of her little girl. All was going along swimmingly between us until Oley took off his shirt. He had a head and a neck and a very long body, but no shoulders at all. His thick neck sort of flowed down and melded right into his thin arms. The physique I had admired at work was all uniform and shoulder pads.
I never saw Oley again. I know it’s not politically correct to be so hung up on a person’s physicality; but remember, I was only 18 years old and a girl of that age and time did not want to be with a man whose shoulders were smaller than hers.
My career of burning classified files and stalking 2nd lieutenants lasted only one summer. Then, I went off to college, where I did all the stuff considered cool for co-eds back then. I joined a sorority, dated the quarterback of the football team (he had shoulders but was dumb as a stump) and fell in love with Bob, the handsome, moody boy who was elected our class President, based solely on the fact that he looked like James Dean.

After graduation, I took a job as a secretary to the Chief Engineer of a manufacturing firm in my town and, then, right on schedule, I got proposed to, got a ring and got married.

In the movies of the 50’s, that would be the end of my story. As the tale ended, it would fade to black and The End would scroll across the screen while the music swelled under the credits. Funny, isn’t it? I honestly didn’t know back then that my life hadn’t even begun yet.

 

Jeanne Charters is a former V.P. of Marketing for Viacom Television. She started her own award-winning broadcast advertising agency in 1990. Jeanne lives in Fairview with her husband, Matt Restivo. [ charmkt@juno.com; 828-628-0023 ]