Читать книгу Miss Boo Is Sixteen - Margaret Lee Runbeck - Страница 10

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If there’s any apple polishing these days, nobody could accuse the teen-agers of doing it. Sometimes parents are guilty, however. Me, for instance. You see, I like teachers, and I can’t get over a feeling of respect persisting from my own childhood. I think teachers probably know everything. When they talk to me as an equal, I feel positively giddy.

So when my friend Miss Getterson casually said I could attend the Student Government assembly meeting if I wanted to, I was pretty set up about it.

But Boo was appalled at the idea.

“I hope nobody would suspect you belonged in my family,” she said bluntly.

“I don’t expect to disgrace either you or myself,” I couldn’t help sounding haughty.

“Sit somewhere in the back where people won’t wonder how you happened to be there.”

“You needn’t feel any responsibility. I’m Miss Getterson’s guest.”

“And if we should run into each other,” she said truculently, “I hope you don’t try to speak to me or anything.”

“Perish the perish,” I said. “If I see you, I’ll duck under a seat.”

“The meeting’s not for outsiders, anyway,” she said gruffly. “I can’t imagine what you’ll find interesting.”

“Not the welcome, certainly,” I said, cheerfully offended.

“And for pity’s sake, don’t try to dress up,” she said, gazing into a new depth of horror. “Wear something inconspicuous.”

“I was thinking of wearing a sheet, with two holes cut in it for eyes.” This, naturally, she ignored.

“Thank goodness, you’re an un-celebrity. We have some poor kids whose parents are celebrities,” she said. “Everybody feels awfully sorry for them when their parents insist on showing up.”

“How do they dress?”

“The really important ones try to look unimportant. Usually they wear old sports clothes. But sometimes the ones who aren’t important enough to try to look unimportant dress the same way. That’s very offensive.”

I could see that no parent could possibly do the right thing at Beverly Hills High, so I just went as I was. There was one other parent present, and I guess she was pretty important, because she had on a beauty operator’s white uniform. But she gave herself away completely, for she had the uniform under her nice mink coat. She and I tried not to meet each other’s eye, so I knew we’d had the same briefing, and we both were trying to be invisible.

The meeting was conducted by a tall toothsome lad who was the President of the Student Council. His Board also sat on the platform, nice-looking youngsters full of confidence. They all spoke without frills, using a kind of basic English without too much regard for the hair-splitting meanings of words. The idea was what mattered, and the words lay wherever they fell.

The President, a bland staccato youngster ... a Rotarian in the bud, if I ever saw one, began by saying, “Once a week we more or less sit down and think things over. Good idea sometimes.”

Since nobody contradicted that startling discovery, he said, “So we decided to let you all attend our regular weekly meeting. Thought we’d discuss some common problems. Any question, you can ask at the five minutes after what we have to say is finished. Anything we haven’t covered, that is.”

You could see he had perfect confidence that they would cover all the common problems so adequately that nothing would be left to question. Now he called on one of his colleagues, a redheaded giant who stood up and jammed his knuckles in his Levi pockets. He explained what public opinion is, and what kind of weapon it can be.

“If everybody thinks a thing is so, then you’d better get on the beam and agree,” he said menacingly.

When something real difficult faced the Board, they handled it in a radical way. “When we’ve got something real serious to discuss, we ask the faculty to please leave the room. That way we can be democratic.”

A girl, tall and smooth, was then called upon. Without preamble, she touched on what was evidently a controversial subject.

“Clothes are a private matter,” she said. “But they shouldn’t be inconspicuous. Real personality can rise above clothes. But the right clothes give you confidence. If people don’t see your clothes, you feel insecure.”

In the twenty minutes allotted to the entire discussion, these subjects were tossed into the air, to land wherever they might take root: going steady; owning a car; getting your family to let you have a telephone listed in your name; being decent to kids from other schools when their teams clashed with ours in our gymnasium; not throwing Good Humor sticks all over the parking lot; nobody booing next week when the annual Faculty Talent Show was going to be given. “Remember they’re human, too,” a serious-faced boy said. “Maybe that could be our motto in regard to teachers.”

Nobody mentioned study in any form. They seemed to have banished that idea from the curriculum; anyway it wasn’t a common problem.

During the five-minute discussion period, a bright-eyed lad stood up on the front row. “I’m innerested in getting some of you guys to volunteer as lunchroom waiters,” he shouted belligerently.

“The pay depends on how big you can make it. You get your lunch ... as much as you can eat.”

A wave of nose-holding swept over the audience, but the recruiting officer went on valiantly. “Seriously now,” he said quite fiercely. “About the best thing I’ve learned at good ole Beverly Hills High is how to carry seven bowls of soup on one tray. All a matter of confidence.”

If I picked up one gem from the meeting, it was the need for confidence. I crept out as invisibly as possible, knowing my own education had been cripplingly deficient. For you never saw anybody slink out with less confidence.