Somewhere in amongst all of the streaks, perms, stiff-as-cardboard back-combed fringes, bum fluff and whisps, those early signs of human mating rituals hinted at in middle school continued to develop at high school. I was no stranger to romantic flutterings of the heart myself though they were almost entirely unrequited. From my very first crush on a dark-haired lad called Shane Leon Wosley who I blushed at the sight of through various people I was drawn to on TV - Stuart Leslie Goddard (future husband material), Paul Young, Sam Neill in The Omen III, Anthony Andrews in the Scarlet Pimpernel, Richard Chamberlain as Father Ralph de Briccasart in The Thorn Birds and even a cartoon character off Battle of The Planets - to my first kiss in early adolescence, totally unexpected and followed by many barren years of fruitless yearning for more lip action. I tended to hone in on one person and decide they were the absolute sun, moon and earth but didn’t have the first clue how to communicate my affection. I would either ignore them completely or make off-the-wall comments apropos of nothing. Another approach I tried while working as a volunteer at the school Tuck Shop was to give certain favoured customers an extra chocolate bar for their money and a winning smile. Takings went up but margins must have been well down during that short season of amorous BOGOFs, I didn’t last long in the job and got nowhere with my flirtations. Back then a lot of people wrote their name in books, on walls, paths and any free space they could find - Sharon, then a heart or the number 4, then a name underneath e.g. Jonesy and the vital addition of IDT INDT which meant If Destroyed True, If Not Destroyed Still True. Which made it a FACT! I wasn’t ready to commit my true feelings to paper in this way... the thought of anyone finding out my inner desires made me quite uneasy. I liked to think I was choosy but I suppose I was just emotionally immature unlike many people my age who appeared pretty well-versed in the art of dating, breaking up, making up and being gloriously in love for a few months.
Romantic, career and style role models of the time were found on TV, in films and in magazines like Just 17. They were relatively unsophisticated and attainable by today’s standards…Scott and Charlene in Neighbours with their home-tipped hairdos and clothes that looked like they were bought in instalments out of your mam’s catalogue. Bananarama sounded and looked a bit rough round the edges but this was part of their charm as we felt it could be us up there in the spotlight dancing like we would down the disco. Me and my friend Adele worked tirelessly perfecting the dance break to The Only Way Is Up! through repeated rewinding and replaying of Top Of The Pops on the video recorder in our front room. There is way more professional styling, plastic surgery, plucking, teeth-bleaching, weaving, contouring and airbrushing involved now that makes people in the limelight literally impossible to look like. Also people our own age were achieving female pop success, with teens like Tiffany and Debbie Gibson - horrific as you may find them - demonstrating that throwing a few shapes at the shopping centre in your snow-washed denims is all it takes to get a music career started. It was mighty empowering. There were more and more female voices in music writing and performing their own material. I listened to Hounds of Love, Control by Janet Jackson, Suzanne Vega’s Solitude Standing and Edie Brickell’s album Shooting Rubberbands at the Stars on repeat. Female comedians like Dawn French, Jennifer Saunders and Victoria Wood were writing and producing their own shows, not just appearing as foils for a comic chase scene or double entendre. Barriers were being broken down all over the place but there was still a hell of a long way to go in terms of equality for everyone. Access to a wider range of films was possible through the rise of video hire shops - first the independents like the local bike shop owner with a stash of films for hire and later big players like Blockbuster - and we even went from three tv channels to four! I loved Channel 4 in its early years. It was a place where you got a sense of different voices and cultures having representation and of the wider world opening up. Some of my favourite and most memorable were films like My Beautiful Launderette and Another Country, comedies The Comic Strip Presents.., The Irish RM, Cheers, Mapp and Lucia and early evening shows The Tube, Oprah Winfrey, A Different World, an American tv show called Alice and a Brazilian soap opera called Dancin’ Days.
The Breakfast Club, by John Hughes released in 1985, was a film I loved at the time even though American high school always seems full of kids in their 20s and 30s. The film shows the awkwardness of teen relationships and friendships, how we tear each other down when really we should build ourselves up. At school we had our own versions of the jock, the brainiac, the popular princess and the outcast. Some people married young and had kids, some went into training schemes and built good careers, some went to college til they figured out what to do next and others didn’t make it at all whether through illness, depression or sheer bad luck. We’re all just making it up as we go along.
On reflection a lot of my lack of confidence in relationships was down to self-esteem and fear of failure .. eventually I did find ways to work through the barriers. I don’t know about you but I find friendship, kinship and having fun to be the most important things in the world. In the words of one of the lesser quoted 80’s philosophers Sabrina Salerno (Boys, Boys, Boys - 1987) “take a chance with love romance have some fun tonight…” …wise words indeed Sabrina, wise words.
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