Whittier Christian Junior High was where I attended 7th and 8th grade, met the friends who taught me to cuss and smoke, and began writing poetry. Like most other tormented adolescents, I wrote to share my anguish with the world, to express the injustice I felt (What do you mean you're not giving me a ride to the mall? I hate you!), and to give voice to my unrequited love. Most of what I penned was scandalous in the eyes of my teachers, who would take their red pens and write "Racy," and "Inappropriate" in the margins of my typewritten poetry assignments. It was an inauspicious beginning to my writing days, the time in that school of repressed desires.

The one example I would use to sum up the atmoshpere of WCJH would be the use of the Office Skirt. If a student (a female student) wore a skirt that was deemed inappropriate, they would be asked to don one of several lovely selections more palatable to the tastes of the school faculty, also known as an Office Skirt. Inappropriate skirts included those that were too short, too tight, or too...well, whatever they felt it was too much like. While many of these measures were objective, the issue of length was one they'd found a way to resolve. They would summon the skirt in question from class (on the advice of a teacher or student who had reported the skirt, usually that fat little brunette receptionist who stood outside the gate every morning and pulled girls into the office before they'd even set foot on campus), ask her to kneel on the cold linoleum of the school office, and align a ruler with her thigh. If the skirt was more than four inches from the ground, the matter was decided.

The skirts were beyond outdated. They were usually calf length or longer, and looked as if they'd been donated by the wardrobe department after Little House on the Prairie left the airwaves. The smell was indescribable. Must and age, and junior high gym lockers, all leapt out of the skirt to breathe once again. There was a rumor circulated around the school, almost a legend, that the Office Skirts had not been washed since the school opened--but worse, that they used to belong to teachers there.

While a source of humiltiation, the skirt was also a mark of distinction. It said, "I wore something so scandalous, that I couldn't be allowed to roam the halls." For my friends and I (who regularly sported Office Clothing), the Office Skirt was even more thrilling to wear than whatever inappropriate garment we'd had on to begin with. No one knew what we'd been wearing--it could have been anything; a leather mini, a spandex number with a slit up the side and an oversized belt, or even a transparent lace creation, to match our fingerless gloves. It was left to the imaginations of the adolescent boys who tugged at our frumpy punishment, and it goes without saying that what they imagined was far more scandalous than anything I had in my closet.

They may have done their best to shelter us from the worldly pleasures and temptations that lay just around the bend...but it was a doomed effort. We all smoked our cigarettes, drank our Strawberry Hill, and lost our virginity regardless of what they had in mind for us. Sometimes it makes me kind of sad to think about Mrs. Tacas, and Miss Sharp, and Mr. Phillips, all still there, struggling to save the youth of a world where Christina Aguilera in assless chaps is idolized by growing girls, and hormone-filled young boys. But one thing's for sure. That skirt's not going to cut it.