Secret Girls' Stuff (6 page)
Read Secret Girls' Stuff Online
Authors: Margaret Clark
If you love playing tennis, you’ll be good at it. If you love doing stuff on computers, you’ll be good at it. I’m not saying you’ll be the
best
, I’m saying you’ll be
good
.
And your brother or sister might enjoy the same thing and be better at it than you are. It doesn’t matter! Like I said, it’s not supposed to be
a competition! Lax up and enjoy life.
Sure, Margaret, like, I’m supposed to enjoy life when I’ve got this craphead of a brother whose main mission in life is to make my life a misery.
Dear Diary
,
Ally’s brother Menzel stole her diary and said he was going to tell the whole school what was in it. She had to pay him ten shillings to get it back. Then he said, ‘ha ha, I couldn’t read your writing anyway.’ He is a real little brat
.
Most families hide their house key under the doormat or the pot plant but Ally’s gets hidden under the drainpipe on a bit of Blu Tack. And Menzel told the whole world it was there because six boys were in Ally’s lounge room drinking coke and eating chips and watching TV when she got home. They said Menzel said they could come in any time. And she got the blame for it. And now they’ve hidden the key and she’s not allowed to tell anyone not even ME, her best friend!
Dear Diary
Ally said that her piggybank is feeling lighter and she thinks Menzel is stealing her money but she doesn’t know how because her piggybank’s locked and she wears the key (and her house key because I saw it with the other key) round her neck on a thin chain. This afternoon when I rang Ally up after school Menzel answered and yelled, ‘It’s for you’ and when Ally finally came and put the phone to her ear it stuck because he’d put glue on it and she thought she’d have to go round for the rest of her life with a phone stuck on her ear, but her dad got it off with solvent. Menzel’s in deep trouble. Ha. Serves him right the little creep
.
Maybe you’re one of those girls whose little brother gives you grief on a date.
Dear Diary
,
Poor Ally. She wants to leave home. I said she could sleep top to toe in my bed. She said she’d sleep under it so no one can find her. I looked under my bed. There’s an old training bra, bits of a jigsaw puzzle, the dog’s lead, fifteen odd socks, three pairs of unwashed undies, two earrings, a heap of Pop magazines, my red top, my home eco homework from three weeks ago that I couldn’t find (it must have slid down the side of the bed), and a torch that doesn’t work. I chucked it all in my wardrobe. So I’m ready for Ally
.
See, what happened was that she asked David Hampton to her place on Saturday to watch Bandstand. He’s got the most gorgeous dimple in his chin. So sexy. And Menzel said, ‘How come you’ve got a hole in your chin? Are you an alien?’ She was so embarrassed
.
Well, Ally didn’t move in under my bed because Menzel went off to school camp and things calmed down. But worse. Parents can be an embarrassment too:
This is part of an email from Katie age fifteen:
>From: Katie
>To: Margaret
>Date:
hi margaret, this email will be quick, i love ur books especially the studleys and how the mother is sooooo i know that scene. like, it was sooooo bad last saturday. dad was making me help in the garden and i dropped this HUGE rock on my foot, i swear it was a BOULDER, and when i looked at my foot it had this massive indent in it as it was flat AS. and i was in so much pain and i started crying because it hurt.
bad move. dad said ‘get in the car’ and he was in his old shorts and singlet and these massive boots, looking like something out of The Castle, u know, the movie, so we drove to the dandenong medical centre.
i reckon we should have some sort of lifelong membership or bonus points like frequent flyers or something there because we go there
so often as i’m always getting injured, not seriously, but dad or mum drag me there for just a splinter. only this time it WAS an emergency because my foot was, like, agony. anyway we waited the usual three hours till some lady wheeled me off to a tiny room and mum and my sister turned up. mum was in her old red trakky daks and her hair standing on end and my sister jessie was in her ballet gear, u know, the tutu. we looked like the family from hell. we sat there for another half hour playing … get this … i spy. i won most of the time, like they couldn’t guess my weird words like ‘ceiling sprinklers’ and ‘i need help’ button and ‘doctor’s thingo’. then finally this really fat irish dude came up and said to me, with ice on my foot, ‘so what seems to be the problem?’ i don’t get it.
doctors always say that. last time i went there when i ate something off. i looked like absolute shit, vomit on my t-shirt, bags under my eyes and a plastic container just in case, and the doctor goes, ‘ how are you today?’ – are doctors BLIND?
anyway this irish dude started poking at my foot going ‘does this hurt?’ and i yelled, ‘yesssss’, so this granny rolled up and wheeled me off for xrays and by then dad, mum and
jessie had gone to stuff themselves at the canteen. eventually i was finished with xrays and she wheeled me back to the cubicle. mum and dad came back with jessie eating all eating icecreams and dad had slopped tomato sauce all down his front. i swear he looked like he’d had a date with a vampire. then the dude came back and said, ‘nothing’s broken in ur foot, put ice on it’ then pissed off. jessie started doing ballet stuff in the passage and i was like, ‘oh NO!’ when this creepy guy came in. he was like a full-on ferret … shudder … looked at me then came back with a pair of crutches, went away again and didn’t come back. so we assumed we could leave. crutches were dangerous. on the way i nearly killed some grandpa walking along with one of those drip things and got a massive greasy from the crutches guy back in reception because mum was filling out the forms and eating an apple slice at the same time and putting crumbs and bits of apple on it. jessie was doing handstands and dad was scratching his belly and sighing and i wished i’d crawled under that rock when i dropped it. it was sooooo bad. and then finally we went home.
Yes, parents can be embarrassing. I can remember
holding hands with my husband when our kids were teenagers and they’d yell, ‘Stop that. It’s disgusting!’ And also driving the car when my kids were teenagers and they’d be lying on the back seat or the floor so people couldn’t see them with me because it was so uncool. I felt a bit hurt about it but then I dragged out one of my diaries and read this:
Dear Diary
Why have I got such OFF parents? They made me go away with them for the weekend in this dumb caravan to Lake Tyers. Jill was on the bottom bunk and every time I climbed down to go to the loo she yelled that I trod on her face. And Mum and Dad kept whispering and making funny noises. God
.
Maybe they were doing IT. Oh, GOD. I’d never thought it was them having sex. I’d kept hissing, ‘Be QUIET will you!’ Oh God
.
That’s disgusting. They’re so old!
But worse even than that. While we were away the fuses blew or something and the electricity was off for three days and my orchids went mouldy in the fridge. I was so mad. My first ever flowers from a boy and I wanted to press them in a book and keep them forever. Maybe I’ll press them anyway and keep the orchid stems
.
I’ve still got one of those orchid stems! I’ve also got letters from boyfriends, the lover’s knot brooch that Anton Bowler gave me, the friendship ring that Anton Bowler gave me, one of my tulle petticoats, a pair of winklepicker shoes, an address book with all my boyfriends’ addresses (half of them are probably dead of old age by now), my teen diary, my old autograph book, old jewellery and coins, my old stamp album, pressed flowers, birthday, Valentine’s Day and postcards from boyfriends, theatre programs, and empty perfume bottles. I kept everything on top of my wardrobe in shoe boxes. My family thought they were shoes.
It’s important to have your own secret place for
important and private things. I had my wardrobe booby-trapped just in case someone decided to check the boxes. I was pretty sure Mum wouldn’t get up to look because she was short and chunky but I knew my sister could pull out my drawers and use them as steps to get up there. So I had a mouse-trap set to go off and a whopping big bag of marbles balanced on the wardrobe door so that if she tried it, they’d fall on her head and kill her.
Luckily that didn’t happen, and my secret stuff stayed private and confidential till I moved out of home to get married and took it all with me.
Boys
Whenever I read my old diary most of the entries have something to do with boys. And my friends. And secrets.
Dear Diary
,
I have just realised something. There’s not a lot of time between a nice yellow banana you pack for lunch and a forgotten rotten banana in the bottom of your school bag. But sometimes there is a lot of time between someone nice turning out rotten in
your life. Yesterday Sandra Weymouth stole Stanley Hooper. I forgot to write that Stanley Hooper is the most fab guy on this entire planet and I was going to the movies with him on Saturday afternoon. He chose ME. But now I’m NOT going because Sandra Weymouth told him (because Ally was listening and she told ME) that Sandra said that I was going to stand him up, so he’d be better to take her because she wouldn’t stand him up. Sandra is no friend of mine now and forever more amen
.
You know, I really should never have trusted Sandra Weymouth. She became my best friend briefly when Ally went on holidays.
Dear Diary
,
Sandra told me to wear my new white pedal-pushers down the street. I didn’t want to because my sister told me they made my bum look big and my stomach look fat. Sandra said, ‘Oh, no. You look
fab.’ We went to the milk bar and in front of two guys Sandra managed to spill a whole Cherry Cola Float on me so I looked like I had my period and also that I’d caked myself
.
Now that’s when I should have known she wasn’t trustworthy even when she said it was an accident.
Dear Diary
,
Sandra Weymouth got dumped by Stanley Hooper after he’d gone out with her for two whole Saturdays, so now we’re friends again, and she’s been crying every night for a week on the phone, in my bedroom, in the school dunnies, behind the sheltersheds and in science class behind the bunsen burners. I didn’t know someone could have so much water inside them
.
True
.
Then:
Dear Diary
,
Yes, yes YES. I’m going out with Stanley Hooper. He asked me to the movies. At last. What will I wear? What will I do if he puts his hand in my bra? There’s a rumour he did it to Minnie Martin in the back row. Only he UNDID her bra. I don’t care if he does put his hand in my bra because I have two boobs the same size now. Oh, thank you God
.
Then:
He’s a rotten two-timing bastard. I HATE Stanley Hooper. He went round to Sandra Weymouth’s place and climbed in her bedroom window and tried to put his hand in her knickers. She’s told everyone and now girls won’t go out with him including ME. We have to be virgins till we get married. It’s the rule. So it’s too risky to go out with
Stanley Hooper. Sandra Weymouth is now going with Emile (who’s six foot something and she’s five foot nothing) and she told me her neck is KILLING her. She said he kisses on average every three minutes. My granny put some ointment on it for her and said, ‘If you’re an ant don’t go out with a giraffe.’ I was so embarrassed
.
I don’t know whether girls today talk about boys, how they kiss, the moves they make, and give them a point score.
We had a
no sex
rule. If you did
it
, it was called ‘going the whole way’, and you were a total slut. We had to be virgins when we got married because, as my granny always said, ‘Boys don’t want shopsoiled goods.’
The girls ran the courting process and we had a big turnover of boys, because when things started getting too hot we usually got scared and dumped them. Or sometimes they got scared and dumped us.
My girlfriends and I had a numbered code (later I found out that practically every group of girls in Australia had the same code, and even in the UK,
because Val and her friends had a similar code too).
And when I do author talks to girls in schools and mention the old code they nudge each other and giggle so I guess a lot of you still have these codes.
Our code went 1 to 10 only we never usually went further than five, because once the boy got excited it wasn’t fair to go further than that without doing it. Stanley Hooper told Sandra Weymouth that if she didn’t let him do
it
, his balls would blow up. We never found out if they did or not. This was the code:
- Hold hands. (no mouth-kissing on the first date)
- The boy could put his arm round you.
- Kissing on the mouth, lips open.
- Boy could touch your boobs on the outside of your clothes.
- Boy could touch your boobs on the inside of your bra. (this was called petting)
- Boy could put his tongue in your mouth.
- Boy could touch you on the inside of your thighs.
- Boy could put his hand in your knickers. (this was called heavy petting and by this stage of your life you were practically engaged)
- Boy could put fingers inside you. (you were practically married)
- You did it. (honeymoon)
So you can see that when Stanley Hooper broke the rule he was an outcast!
And girls fell in and out of love very quickly at age fifteen.
Dear Diary
,
The fewer promises you make the more you can keep. I think. I promised Johnnie Samotini I’d go out with him. Why did I do this? I know. Because I felt sorry for him. It was a spur of the moment thing. Then Ally, Janice, Yvonne and of course big mouth Sandra Weymouth said ‘You’re not going out with HIM, are you? He’s in the Mafia.’ Johnnie Samotini’s breath
stinks of garlic because he’s Italian. And Italians are supposed to have hot Mediterranean blood different to other boys and Sandra Weymouth said they have Roman fingers
.
Sorry, everyone, but I don’t know whether I went out with John Samotini or not, and I think he was supposed to have roaming fingers, not Roman ones. I vaguely think that I squibbed out and stayed over at Ally’s place and listened to records. In other words, I stood him up. Have you ever stood anyone up or had them stand you up? I don’t know what you call it now. It means you don’t turn up for the date.
Have you ever been on a blind date? I went on a couple and some turned out okay and some were a disaster:
Dear Diary
,
I’ll never go on a blind date again. It was so embarrassing. It was with Yvonne’s cousin and we were double-dating to the
movies. First I couldn’t see a thing because I didn’t want to be a square and wear my glasses. Well, I was going to put them on in the dark but I was too busy controlling my date called Kenny Toogood and he wasn’t. He was a human octopus. I couldn’t see him properly so I whispered to Ally who was sitting in front of us, ‘What’s he look like?’ and she said, ‘He’s got sticky-out teeth.’ I found that out when he kissed me. Double ERK
Somewhere in this world there is a fifty-year-old male called Kenny Toogood. I wonder if he’s still groping and sleazing, or if his brain was sued when he was dragged into a courtroom case for sexual harassment! Maybe he respects women now.
Girls can cause trouble too. Not usually by sexual harassment but by being jealous.
Dear Diary
,
Does Helen Hornby have a headache from wearing a halo? She told John our youth
club leader that Ollie Watson put his hand up my jumper. First of all I can’t stand Ollie Watson. Second of all he’s a square and religious and wouldn’t do it. And third of all she is busting for Ollie Watson to put his hand up HER jumper. Now I’m banned from youth club for two weeks. The way I feel I mightn’t ever bother going back!