I WAS SENT TO BOARDING SCHOOL and BOOK REVIEW - "THE YONAHLOSSEE RIDING CAMP FOR GIRLS"

In 1968 (age 16 - my 11th grade year), I was sent off to a Girl's Boarding School about an hour from home. And yeah, I defiantly put a blonde streak in my hair with bleach and pierced my ears within days (maybe it was hours??) of arriving!!

In the middle of the school year I told my mother that she needed to find me a co-ed school or I'd run away from home. Not only was I stunned to regularly walk in on girls making out with each other (at the time I had no idea this ever happened), but I was particularly disturbed by a teacher who was walking me down the hall with her arm around me (that wasn't the bad part), and she then moved her arm down my back and her hand landed on my butt. OH NO YOU DON'T!! 

Prior to that she had never bothered me. In fact, I was her star student in Algebra class, consistently scoring over 100% on my tests (thank you for the bonus questions). I had always been careful to lengthen my skirt as much as possible before entering her classroom, because we all had witnessed her inappropriately "feeling" our classmates' "crotches" when she measured with a yardstick, the length of their skirts from the crotch to the knees. Skirts had to be 3/4 long as you can see from me kneeling, far right. 

Gotta love my sourpuss face, PLUS I obviously "didn't get the memo to wear black and white" that day.

GLEE CLUB

 

I can't believe how skinny I was (standing, 3rd from the right). Gotta love age 16!!

 JV FIELD HOCKEY

Anyway, I share with you that I had a Boarding School experience (highlighting some of the "dirt" to get your interest to read more......) because I just finished reading "THE YONAHLOSSEE RIDING CAMP FOR GIRLS" by Anton Disclafani, set in rural Asheville, NC in the 1930's during the Great Depression. Also "a boy" involved - the main character, Thea was sent away from home to a "Girl's Summer Riding Camp" that served as a private boarding school during the year.

I can SO relate to the feelings Thea had about:

• being "sent away"
• immediately sizing up who was in "the in-crowd"
• high school girl jealousies
• craving independence
• the need to get away - for freedom
• feeling so grownup
• having strong sexual desires
• feeling unloved and misunderstood by her parents
• retaining guilt for past actions
• sleeping together in a large dorm room together
• wandering around after "lights out"
• the importance of receiving a letter from home
• realizing that some girls come from "big money"
• misreading and misunderstanding the actions of others

I enjoyed this book and it reads very quickly. I'm anxiously waiting for our "Book Club" discussion next month to hear if those who didn't have a boarding school experience, or who didn't go to college away from home had the same sense of intimacy with this story as I had.

Joan