Grease is the Word - Part 1

We’ve got, in our house, what can best be described as two Kenickies and a Sandy. 

I’m the Sandy and my brothers Richie and Tinker are the Kenickies. When my parents loaded us in the back of our station wagon for a special night at the drive in during the summer of 1978, I thought Grease was the greatest piece of cinematography I’d ever seen. As Jeff Conaway sauntered across the big screen guffawing, kicking those black boots around, and combing his hair back with a sort of devil may care/hotly aware flair, I felt like I was watching my brothers. I hooted with a little too much gusto when Kenickie had a strawberry milkshake thrown his way as payback for his obnoxiousness. Tinker punched me and told me to settle down. 

Along with Kenickie, I watched Sandy with great interest. She was all innocent and choking on cigarettes while the other Pink Ladies sat enraptured at Rizzo’s feet listening to her warble about Elvis’s pelvis. I felt, quite mindfully rubbing my non-pierced earlobes, that this was me…destined for a life of tan pantyhose, a G.I. pen pal turned husband, pink swan shaped guest soaps and the normalcy of a commonplace four door sedan; but then, a miracle happened! Frenchy, who can’t even wash and set old lady hair in beauty school is mysteriously able to transform Sandy into a tramptastic goddess who makes all jaws drop and no one even remembers that a few scenes ago she was crying and attempting to soak up a puddle with a single piece of blue flowered stationery in the driveway. I just knew that I was destined for this sort of transformation, but would need to wait a few years. 

We all enjoyed the music of Grease. My brothers liked "Greased Lightening", my parents swooned in their seats to "Blue Moon", I bounced around to "We Go Together". My mother, after days of me pleading, whining and promising to do the dishes every night for the rest of my life, kindly bought me the double album. She also surprised me with the Fotonovel which I devoured on summer mornings while I waited for my friends to come out and play. When the street awoke and the kids came 'round, the neighborhood got treated to front yard Grease skits. I'd lug out my Donny and Marie record player, extension corded from the living room through the window, and we'd dance on the porch. Our nearby residents didn't seem to mind; that soundtrack really had something for everyone. 

When the summer waned, I listened to Grease in my bedroom, creating complex routines to all the fast songs. HBO made it so my friends and I were able to watch and enjoy the movie several more times that winter. My mother would sigh loudly when we dashed through the house whooping and hollering that it was on, suggesting we please watch it in the den, with the door closed. She knew the dialogue of nearly every scene would be run through, loudly, word for word; all the while jumping to our feet so we could twist and shimmy during the musical scenes.

With that much immersion and repetition, Grease came to color my life. I walked through the halls in school mentally labeling the funny chubby girls as Jans, the girls who got their periods early and mooned after male teachers as Martys, the girls who swore and sported short haircuts as Rizzos. My friends were the Patty Simcoxs: overachievers, pep rally participants, and ponytailed band geeks. As the year passed by, and boys were starting to populate my radar, I longingly dreamt of a different world where guys who looked like John Travolta would ask me to hand jive and try to give me their class rings while surreptitiously brushing across my chest.  

Our first day of Junior High School, after a long hot summer, was a time of great excitement and hormonal awakening. I'd say 99 percent of us were all revved up. The boy in the seat in front of me? You know, the one who sat there all these years because our last names begin with the same letter? Well, unexpectedly, he now looks kind of muscular, a foot taller, and wait, is that a downy moustache? The lip fuzz is what makes me stare and sweat…and not just in my armpits. My, my...was Roger Benjamin this good looking last year? I studied the back of his neck, and the back of his Levis, during the pledge, planning to mention his transmutation to the girls at lunch. To me, he was definitely a Zuko. 

Lunch table mates were my sounding board for truth, opinion, and just about everything. We gossiped about teachers, homework assignments, siblings, and rules, both in school and at home which we all found so style-cramping and unfair. This year we also gossiped mightily about boys. At night we'd call each other to finish conversations that we had to suspend at the end of our lunch. It's important to be able to reach someone who is available for talking without interruption. That being the case, we regularly compare notes about who's allowed to use the phone after dinner and for how long. Karen is allowed a half hour once her homework is done. Ingrid can use the phone in her room whenever she wants and for as long as she wants; her dad is an attorney and they have two phone lines in their Tudor style home. Mary and her sister fight incessantly about who gets phone privileges, so much so that their mother uses the phone as a means of punishment between Mary and Lisa and one or both seem to be banned from phone usage every day of the week. Plus, Lisa's always listening on the extension. We can hear her breathing. My house is a challenge as far as our phone time goes, not because of a bratty sister, but because girls are always calling for Tinker. One of the girls who will be calling someday for Tinker is my friend Jenny. Jenny doesn’t fit into the Grease script. She is too complicated for it, even in the seventh grade. 

I have adored Jenny since Kindergarten but I am afraid of Jenny’s mother. We have to tiptoe around the house during the day if I am over because she sleeps a lot. I think she has a problem with drinking that is getting worse. By taking the night shift as a waitress at the local 24 hour diner, she has developed sad and bruised looking eyes, sort of like our Bassett hound, Waddles. 

Jenny’s Dad has a no-name, backfiring, Bondo'd, and grimy motorcycle with a gigantic yellow Don’t Tread On Me flag, whatever that means, flying off the back. I'm not a big fan of rattlesnakes so I don't look at it if I can help it. He also has a sleazy collection of Penthouse magazines, and a nasty girlfriend who calls and hangs up when Jenny answers the phone. Laura, Jenny’s sister, lives with her grandmother Nana across town. Jenny doesn’t live with Nana, not because the arrangement hasn’t been offered, but rather because Nana is strict and Jenny takes full advantage of being unattended. I don't blame her for not wanting to give up that perk. She's the only one of us with no curfew and no dress code. Of course, she also routinely has no dinner or school supplies but she eats with us a lot and my parents include her when we go to Schatz Stationery for Little Twin Stars notebooks and pencils with fruity smelling erasers. They know the deal.   

Jenny adores my brother Tinker. I know he thinks she's pretty because he pays attention to her in ways that make me uncomfortable. I keep telling Jenny he's way too old for her, plus he's gross. The last time she was at our house, he unfastened her skinny gold stretch belt from behind by grabbing onto the shiny disc above the button on her jeans and flipping it expertly between his fingers while she stood at our kitchen counter making a PB&J. He made it look way too easy and her giggly reaction was more invitation than reprimand. I grabbed her and dragged her and her sandwich into the den before he got any other weird ideas. 

I warned Jenny that Tinker thinks spanking is hot. I have no idea where or why he got started with all of that but I’ve overheard him and his disgusting friends more than once on our porch talking about girls who like it. I don't believe he has actually spanked anyone, but he will one day, I’m pretty sure of it. I just hope to God it's not Jenny. 

My brother Richie, although rough and tumble in his own way, is more of a lover than a spanker. He wrestles on the Varsity team for school, and arm wrestles me for the TV whenever his beloved Red Wings hockey is on. He always wins so I watch the games with him and Dad. They say the more bloody the fights, the better but I usually bury my nose in a People magazine while the fights are happening. While I read about Kristy McNichol, Richie yells at the officials on the screen and his purported disdain for any kind of authority is all puffed up and on display. He pretends to hate anyone telling him what to do but I think it's all a front because Andie tells him what to do on the regular and he loves Andie. She's his girlfriend and then his ex-girlfriend on a rotating schedule because she is a competitive swimmer and always calls their relationship (3 years strong now) quits during swim season. It's a necessary break so she doesn't miss any practices, per her parents and her coach. However, once the meets are over and her red Speedo has faded to a revealing pale pink color from all the chlorine, she will set a land speed record pedaling her Schwinn back into our driveway and she and Richie will engage in their favorite activity, lying side by side in our huge ropy backyard hammock or on the living room sofa, each with one earbud from Richie’s Walkman, listening to REO Speedwagon until she is called home because it’s getting late and almost too dark to safely ride the four streets back to her two story bungalow. I think Andie, who looks like a squeaky clean jelly bean, might be a Cha Cha DeGregorio when they are alone, but I'm not sure. 

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If you like this, let me know by commenting and I can do a few more installments of the story. I'm trying to teach myself to write from the perspective of a pre-teen girl right now. It isn't that hard, thankfully. 

Thank you for reading!

#1970s #1980s #greaseistheword #sandradee #kenickie #Rizzo #pinkladies #mushroomtumbler