Do any of you remember school bazaars? Oh come on now, of course you do, stop pretending! For all of us who grew up in the eighties, school bazaars were the equivalent of Movietowne. A place you could go to, sanctioned by your parents, after all it was a school event, meet up with "people", and generally have a good time.
For those of you too young or foreign to remember, the school bazaar or fair is a particular ritual. There was a calendar of them, held by "prestige school" , those who were aided but not abbetted by the Government, to raise funds for various school activities. They used to raise a fair amount of money though I'm not sure who was spending their money on games, jumble and book stall. Food and the Disco were the hot ticket items.
Ah ha, now I see allyuh nodding, you know what I'm talking about. All the girls dressing up in the latest mini-skirt, lace gloves, frilly top and hat, a la Madonna. Yes, it was the 80's you know. Hair teased out to there and God help us, socks and high heels! Stacy and Clinton be damned, we all thought we looked hot! There we were playing hard to get when the purpose of all that primping was to hook up with some boy or other and dance your brains out.
We were all flailing arms, head banging to My Sharona, Rock Lobster and Cars. It was hilarious in a way, all these girls, moving like a pod of fish, all hopping up and down like Molly Ringwald in The Breakfast Club. We were stars! Of course with all the raging hormones it was expected that the object of your affections would notice you, you might even end up getting kissed furtively. Some more daring people managed to fit in a whole lot more. It was a great time though we didn't know it. We were too busy being cool and fretting about how much the latest cretinous boy lurved us. This ritual was repeated right through bazaar season, it was our only outlet.
This month my high school BFF and I got into contact with each other after 20 years. She used to be my partner in crime, I think those hair do's we affected were crimes by the way. We spent hours getting ready for these outings. She was a really gorgeous girl, fortunately she also had a great personality and was a huge amount of fun to hang with. We got into all sorts of trouble together and I thank her. She let me be me. So Lis, in case I hadn't said it, thanks girl! But you could have told me about the hair you know.
2 comments:
Yeah .... we really dressed wack in those days .... my most memorable bazaar outfit was .... black jeans ..... and a fuchsia flashdance top .... with the word "Flashdance" across the front (in black) .... yuh remember those off-de-shoulder tops?!?! :-)
Oh Gawd, yes. And you had to wear them with fitted jeans and (gack) leg warmers! How clueless were we, you'd have thought that someone had made all the mirrors disappear!
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