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HEN I WAS IN HIGH SCHOOL...

First off I graduated when I was 16...I needed one English credit I took summer school between the 10th and 11th and I was out of there...so my friends and I cut the cord at Graduation.  I went to work at a horse boarding place then later at the racetrack and the rest is history...as I moved to NY and left all my friends and family behind...

I was one in a trio of friends in highschool...I won't name any names here except one, but I want to share this story.  We had a driver's ed teacher who came from California and he was in his late 20's.  All the girls were ga ga goo goo over him he had long hair drove a Corvette, and had a motor cycle, and we all knew he smoked weed and he was the coolest dude around since  he was NOT from here....this was 1969...

Me and my friends were all in families who struggled with Poverty...and we each had siblings to deal with and working parents, and we  had very little in the way of what we could offer to the world.  So there was this place everyone hung out and sometimes if one of us could get our hands on the family car we would drive to the Burger Family Inn and hang out.  We never had money for burgers...we just stood around in the parking lot with other lost soul kids and we pretended to know what the hell we were doing in life.  

WE all had plans....I intended to get hired at the racetrack asa I graduated...and I did that....One of the friends had intentions to go to Art College in Georgia...and the other wanted to go to nursing school.  We would pass little notes to each other in the hallway at school ... "Meet me after school in the bus line"....

We  all took drivers ed, and we learned to drive under the tutelage of Bill the guy from CA who was so laid back, made us all his friends! He didn't speak to us with authority, he spoke to us like he was one of the guys...and we swooned over him...his dreamy west coast accent, his long hair, this weed smoking law breaking teacher,  at the Burger Family Inn....he was MR cool on our campus...

Then things began to change...one of my friends began to meet Bill at the BFI (burger family inn) and they would leave in his little yellow corvette and she would not show back up till time for us to head home and a few times she didn't show in time and we left her...NO cell phones in those days...we would tell someone else who was there "tell her we waited as long as we could."...

Then next day in school we would be like...WTH, happened to you?  "I will tell you later..." she would repsond...

So as it turned out Driver's Ed Bill was banging my friend he took her to his apartment and she was 16 and he was 26 or something like that...and the next thing you know we are all on restrictions for coming home late, but I was never put on restriction as my mom was too busy trying to keep a roof while raising 3 kids alone to worry about such nonsense...Just go to school and graduate was her motto...

The 3 of us friends had only one class together in my final year...and that was Typing and Shorthand class...and that's about the only time we were together anymore, as the school year was dwindling along in Jan...and I would be out that May when the class of 1970 graduated, one of the friends had a steady boyfriend now and her parents had him figured for a loser, and tried to convince her to go ahead and graduate and go off to art college in the fall...and my other friend seemed to be very quiet...She took to wearing this long wool poncho and she never passed notes and she just looked sad...

As Jan turned over to April the heat was building in our NON airconditioned high school we had open windows and box fans, to keep us cool but my friend continued to wear the wool poncho and one day SHE Fainted! Feel over and looked dead!  She never came back to school that year...I found out later that my friend had given birth to a baby boy...he had been put up for adoption...and no one every spoke of it again...

I did get hired on the track and  in the Summer I did leave SC for NY to work at Belmont Race Track...I hooked up with the guy I married 4 yrs later, After I moved away I wrote to my friend...she told me that she had gotten pregnant by her boyfriend and they were getting married...She would be able to go to summer shcool and get her credits to graduate, but there would be no college in the fall, and her parents were not speaking to her.  And she told me our other friend had given birth to yet another child who was adopted out...and she did graduate..no one knew who the father of the second child was as she would never say...and another friend who we all knew was living with an older couple who took her in when her dad threw her outta the house when she ended up pregnant at 17, and she got an abortion as she threatened to kill herself, the only way one was legal in those days if the life of the mother was in danger. And a year later she continued to live with the couple until his wife found out he was banging her!! 

Eventually we all ended up back in our home town...Each of us married...so my friend had a son and she never worked she was a stay at home Mom, her husband had a small family house painting business...the other friend eventually married an older man and she had one son that she adored...and she passed away when she was in her late 40's of breast cancer...her son  who was 14 at the time, probably had no idea he has 2 step brothers (if they are still alive) one born in 1970 and  one in 1971...and eventually I had a son when I was 28 and then the  other friend had a second son when her first son was 10 yrs old...

In those days Abortion was Illegal...after it became legal all 3 of us chose to have our kids...But I have to  wonder how would those lives have been different if Abortion had been legal? The predation of young women who have not been properly informed in this country is a symptom...unwanted pregnancies are a symptom of a system, a religious system, a government system, a school system, and families that have failed female children. This a SOCIAL problem and it needs to be fixed at the beginning.