CHAPTER 8
All of a sudden there's a rash of clubs like this town has never seen. Patty is asked to join most of them, but she feel like she and two of her going steady friends, Jane and Phyllis, call themselves The Independent Three and think they are better than everyone else, even though "Spark plug called her 'a dope' and Tim had said she was 'pretty but stupid'." Ouch!
Well, tragedy strikes and Steve's appendix needs to come out and now Patty doesn't have a date for the hayride. (More shades of FIFTEEN! How convenient for teen fiction the appendix is.) She tries to get Ginger to find her a date, completely turning her back on the sanctity of the going steady as soon as it is inconvenient!
Doug and Mrs. Palmer have words about how spoiled Patty is wherein Douglas says to his mother, "I don't dig you." to mean he doesn't understand her. Oh Janet, you're so hip! When she tries to comfort her daughter later, Patty tells her she isn't going steady anymore. Someone should tell Steve, once he is out of the near embrace of lady death!
CHAPTER 9
We switch to Bonnie's point of view as she heads to the drugstore to meet Douglas. She meets up with a friend, Madia, who is stalking her steady Bud. Bud is secretly dating Joan. Oh, it's a mess! After she and Doug watch the standoff, they start arguing about who is in the wrong. Janet gets in some anti-going-steady propaganda. Bonnie, as usual voices it. "These years are the last ones we'll have before we get responsibilities, so perhaps they ought to be kept free and full of fun." So wise.
When the kids get home, Mrs. Palmer is on hand to pound the lesson in further. " Going steady is a shaky bridge. It isn't anchored to marriage, or even to a recognized engagement. It's so awfully hard to walk on, especially if your companion decides to turn back and you're left along. You can't turn back when you're married." Oh dear, someone had best tell her about divorce!
Doug tries to write a letter of apology for being "a heel." But when he goes to call her, she is running down the hall of the house to apologize to him. Now THESE crazy kids just might make it work.
CHAPTER 10
And now we are in Jane Palmer's head. She is bemoaning her lovestruck son and her daughter of whom she says, "If her grades weren't average, I'd swear she's a moron. And even so, I can't see where she finds time to study and. make good marks - dancing all afternoon, playing records and hanging on the telephone all evening, plus writing in her diary. That diary, by the way, is the worst piece of drivel I've ever read." Spying, Jane? Not okay!
But as the Palmer parents discuss the state of their daughter, Mr. Palmer lays down some wisdom on why teens worry about stupid stuff. "Well, those are their problems. They can't worry about taxes - they haven't any. They haven't a washing machine to break down, either, or a big deal that has to go through if they're to meet their payroll. Girls have school, boys, other girls, clothes and parents to worry about. Boys, high school boys, like Doug, have all those, plus another big one to boot - how to get enough money to take a girl out." He's right, it IS harder for boys! Except the being a second class citizen thing for the girls.
Then we shift to Bonnie and Doug who are helping Maida get over the duplicitous Bud by setting her up with the stalwart Boyd Freeman, self made man and student at Temple. There is some interesting stuff about the status difference between Maida, raised by her widowed mother and Bud's side-piece Joan, the banker's daughter. But mostly it's about mustering your wits and standing in your own defense.
CHAPTER 11
On the way to school, Patty is nervous because she is now NOT going steady and feels like she is on the outs with her friends who Ginger describes as "a bunch of goony girls you never did like and who neck right in front of everyone." Oh my heavens, so salacious!
As they leave their locker, Patty sees Tim and trues to figure out why she is so drawn to him, "He had fudgy hair, yes, and he wore slacks instead of cords, and was almost a junior. He made up nick-names like 'Ginger-cookie' and 'Merry Christmas', but he didn't know the difference between straight white teeth and ones with braces on them." So he's not...shallow?
After school, Patty and Ginger go to the treehouse which is where Ginger likes to sit when Patty is off being social. She eats cake and stalks Spark Plug. Ginger litters some wax paper, kind of going all AMERICAN BEAUTY with it. Patty realizes Ginger is warm for Spark Plug's form and tells her that he must think she's a square because she sits in a treehouse eating cake.
Patty falls down the treehouse ladder and it brings the boys running. We learn that Patty will flirt with anything and Spark Plug's real name is Elston. When Tim and Patty go off to take care of her tree wounds she learns that he was sent away because he was going steady and my goodness, going steady is bad. Tim and Patty decide to be confidential friends and he says she has a lot of common sense. But I've read BOY WANTED already and I know that is completely untrue!
CHAPTER 12
It turns out that Patty has made the gossip column of the high school paper and it's AWESOME!! "What little freshman is rolling her big blue eyes in another direction now? And why doesn't the guy know enough to carry her books like his predecessor used to? Sh! She's the little sister of a big shot, and the new fellah's a foreigner in these here parts. Give her time to train him." Doug says he wanted to scrap it, as the editor of the paper, but "other kids get razzed, why shouldn't [Patty]." He has no idea her social stock just rose a ton due to that mention.
Doug and Mrs. Palmer chat about the [minor] changes in Patty and consider it a victory over the evils of going steady. And yet the last sentence is Patty answering the phone, "Then she rolled over on her back and held her breath while she waited for Tim's answer." Same old Patty...
We will be back with these wacky teens after a trip to Haiti with the Campbells. See you there!
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