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Pittsburgh, 1966. (All names have been changed to protect the not-so-innocent.)

When I was sixteen — still young enough to be silly, but old enough to have my first boyfriend – I had an eclectic group of friends from the neighborhood. We were the oddballs. The ones who didn’t quite fit in with the “popular” girls. So in the way that oddballs do, we decided that we were the “rebels”, the nonconformists. Our particular brand of nonconformism conformed to certain conventions. We smoked “ciggy-poohs” and they had to be Marlboros. (This was pre-marijuana). We wore jeans, exclusively when we weren’t at school. We teased our hair. We swore. We wore lipstick and eyeliner. We experimented with beer, but admittedly, I was never any good at that particular skill. We thought we knew all about boys and we shared what little we did know. All of this made us a rather tight-knit gaggle of girls.

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I was 15, going on 16 – just like the song says in The Sound of Music.

I was invited to my first party at a friend’s house without parental supervision. Of course, this was unbeknownst to my parents, who would never have let me go if they had known that the Hendersons were off somewhere for the weekend, leaving my friend, Catherine, alone with her ten year-old sister. Obviously, the Hendersons had much more faith in their daughter’s good judgment and moral compass than my parents had in mine – a fact which I deeply resented, and I thought to myself, “Sure! Might as well fulfill their worst fears, since it’s clear that being a nice, compliant, goody two-shoes – which I have always been – doesn’t get me any respect!” I don’t remember anymore how I got to the party. Probably, my father drove me there. He probably gave me the “third degree” all the way over. I probably lied through my teeth, swearing up and down that the party would be duly chaperoned and there would only be girls and absolutely NO alcohol.
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Everyone has one song that seems to embody the essence of their high school days. Mine is California Dreamin’ by the Mamas and the Papas. The big, fat harmonies, the sweet, plaintive melody, the freedom that the song implies lives somewhere in the future and of course, the images of a dreary, Eastern winter contrasted with the warm, sunny, care-free atmosphere of California in the ‘60s – at least, the idealized California I longed to experience. I finally did get to go to California for the first time at 17, and it did not disappoint. I was mesmerized by the gorgeous Pacific Ocean, the beaches, the trip to Disneyland, the big, blue skies, and the feeling that anything was possible. I returned to live in California some ten years later, and as the Mamas and Papas sang in another song, “California Dreamin’ was becoming a reality!”.

Imagine. Summer, 1967. Saturday night. Four gals crammed into a beat-up Ford Falcon with the top down. No one’s got a date tonight, but no one cares. Just as the sun is setting, we pull into the drive-in window and order four Big Boy cheeseburgers, two orders of fries, and four large vanilla Cokes. We turn the dial to KDKA, Pittsburgh and sing along with Martha and the Vandellas – “Everybody’s Dancin’ in the Street”. The wind rushes through our hair as we cruise down Baum Boulevard, and we laugh. It’s a perfect moment.