The young female technician, drawing blood for my cholesterol test, was grumpy and sullen. Hoping a little conversation might lighten her mood and, ultimately, make this blood letting a little less painful for me, I asked her how she was.
“I’m tired,” she said, tying the band around my upper arm a little tighter than I was accustomed to. “I’m going to school at night,” she grumbled.
“Oh? Are you studying to be a nurse?” I asked cheerfully, hoping that needle coming at me would slide in smoothly.
“No,” she finally answered, tossing the used needle into a red container. “I’m taking pre-med - to be a doctor.”
I felt a little silly, embarrassed to think that I had dated myself. In an attempt to explain the slip and hide the generational gap, I explained that when I was growing up, girls were limited to the few “girl” professions: secretary, nurse, teacher or stewardess. “That was back in the 1950’s and 60’s,” I went on.
As I was speaking, she turned her back to me and began typing something on the computer, uninterested in my banter, she had tuned me out. The silence in the room told me the conversation was over, so I pressed down on the band aid, as I was instructed, and kept my mouth shut.
Later that day, I was still thinking about that young female technician. Her attitude bothered me and stirred a memory that I hadn’t thought about for over forty years. I wanted to go back and finish the conversation. I wanted to tell her what happened in 1970, during my senior year of high school...
...During lunch one day in January, 1970, we were discussing pants - and why we girls weren’t allowed to wear them to school. It was absurd that we had to wear skirts or dresses to school during the winter. Some girls, who had to walk to school, would wear pants under their skirts, then remove them in the girls’ room before homeroom. This, we decided, was going to end.
After weeks of hashing it out, a group of us senior girls finally decided that we were going to challenge the dress code and wear pants to school. We picked the day and crossed pinkies with each other as a solemn vow to go through with our decision. No girl had ever worn pants to school. It was strictly prohibited and we were all stirred up and, to be honest, a bit frightened about the outcome. Would we get suspended? Sent home for the day? My friend settled everyone’s fears when she said, “Hey! What are they going to do to us? Kill us?”
As we got closer to the chosen day, a few cowards dropped out of the group of rebels, but most of us - about ten in all - remained true to our vow. There were whisperings throughout the student body as the day approached. No one thought we would go through with it. You could feel the tension in the air when school let out the day before “pants day.”
In front of my mirror that night, I had a mock trial and practiced defense arguments that I would have with Attendance Officers about the unfair rules that prohibited girls from wearing pants. I would point to my fellow female students, all of us dressed in pants, and finish with my closing statement: “What are you going to do to us? Kill us?” I decided then and there that I wanted to be a lawyer. I was very good in front of my mirror.
The morning of “pants day” I awoke an hour earlier than my normal time. My stomach was in knots, my face felt feverish, adrenaline was pumping and I was ready for a fight. I dressed in a pair of navy blue hip hugger bell bottoms and a white blouse. Instead of a belt, I wove a snazzy striped sash through the belt loops, the excess hanging down to my left thigh. If I was getting expelled that day, I thought I should do it with a little flair.
My mother was a late sleeper, so she wasn’t aware of my outfit that morning, but my father noticed.
“What’s with the pants?” he asked.
“They’re letting us wear pants to school now,” I lied.
When I got to school I saw that all of my friends had chickened out; every one of them. I was furious and scared. I felt like the foolish emperor in The Emperor’s New Clothes, strutting down the hall with a spotlight on my back. I had no time to go home and change my outfit, so I walked with my head up, and pretended that everything was just as normal as could be. In my head, I kept repeating, “What are they going to do to me? Kill me?”
Despite all the practicing arguments in my mirror, my mind became jelly and I knew I would be a stammering stuttering mess if I had to defend my actions in front of a screaming Attendance Officer.
As I passed through the halls, kids jerked their heads around, giggling and pointing for others to see the girl wearing pants. Teachers stood at their classroom doors, with arms crossed, suspiciously watching the commotion in the hall. In English class that day, of all days, I was called up to the front of the classroom with another student to read the dialogue from an Ibsen play we were studying.
“Nice pants,” the teacher whispered, as I walked up to the front of the classroom.
And that was the only comment from anyone in authority that day. The school officially proclaimed “Pants Day Friday” soon after that, allowing girls to wear pants to school on Fridays only, but, before the year had ended, girls were wearing pants to school any day of the week.
And that’s how revolutions are started.
That year and the next, young women our age were amongst those taking over administration buildings on college campuses around the country, they were marching alongside men to end the Vietnam war, they were speaking out for equal opportunity for women, and for changes in admission policies to allow more women into those male dominated medical schools.
That’s what I wanted to tell that female technician. I’m not just some old lady from a lost generation. I once was a young girl who challenged the rules and wore pants to school so that your life would be filled with limitless possibilities.
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