The Gina Experience

Adventures with Gina

I love that girl. Gina and I met in 2nd grade at Ramtown Elementary. I was fresh out of St. Mary's Acadamy. We bonded on the playground, I think. Gina and I were the girls wearing really odd clothing. I remember my mother not allowing me to wear pants (or slacks as she called them)
She dressed me in a variation of the St. Mary's uniform. I remember Nita Peterson, who I sat next to on the school bus and who I admired (she drew the most wonderful flowers on her notebooks) told me one day in 4th grade that my clothes were weird and ugly...and well, finally probably after much broken-hearted crying my mother bought me a pair of tattersale tweed "slacks". Looking back, I know I was the best dressed kid, it was just that everyone else wore cheap clothes. ANYWAY.

Gina's mom dressed her in funky stuff. She'd wear a lot of Red, White and Blue. Hip-huggers and lots of costume jewerly necklaces. She often featured a side pony tail. HOWEVER she was just as different in appearance as I was. I think the style of the day was Sears & Roebuck catalog couture. Later in 8th grade, Gina and I kept a schedule of Jimmy Steinberg's
Toughskins
color frequency. He had toughskins in every color offered by Sears, with the matching polyester striped shirt to go with. We loved Jimmy. He had a great sense of humor about the whole thing or not. As an adult, Jimmy died of a drug over-dose.

In 6th grade, we were subjected to the disection of frogs in science class. Neither Gina or I could bear the thought, budding buddist/hippies as we were. We managed to hide in the janitors closet until it was over.

Later in High School, I went a bit off the deep end with my weed smoking, but Gina hung in there. We created a subversive organization named, "The Underground Social Reform". We were against all things "normal" about the high school experience. We shunned jocks and cheerleaders, and any other person with a so-called closed mind. (in retrospect of course, we were the ones with the closed minds...but whatever.) The school newspaper wanted to know who were were, the Vice Principal Albert Jacklis wanted our heads on a platter, He may have offered a reward for any information leading to our capture. Why all this you say? Well. We are all artistic. We created many fantastic anti-social norm posters and plastered them around the school... We were relentless. And why? I have no idea.
Anyway, our finest hour was the Homecoming football game in 1978. We took a few white bedsheets and sewed them together. We emptied 4 or 5 Sharpie markers on our banner:
"The Underground Social Reform" blazen across the span. There were maybe 10 of us in this little subversive clique. We ran out on the grid iron in front of the marching band. It was great! everyone cheered. A photo of our coup even made the yearbook that year. I can't remember if we were ever discovered. I don't think we were. We did hide our identies with sunglasses and ski masks.

In any event, if we tried anything like that in today's society we would have been jailed as terrorists. I remember staging a walkout for some crazy new policies....we were always up to something.

As adults, Gina and I go on adventures. We jump in my or her car (usually mine, she's a terrible driver...gets distracted) and just go without an agenda. One time, we pulled into a farmhouse way out in the middle of nowhere. The owner of the home, a lonely old man came out and we complimented him on his lovely home. He gave us a tour of his now defunct apple production operation. He was saddened that his sons did not care to carry on the family business. We took photographs of the man and listened earnestly to his stories. It was a lovely afternoon.

I have many many stories of my adventures with Gina. I could fill volumes.

I'm excited. Today I'm meeting up with Gina. Who knows what we'll do, who we'll meet or where we'll go. I love that about us.