NAUGHTY GIRLS [Sat, 10-2-21]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life For The Years Of Winter

A writer friend recently told daughter Katie Kennedy that her son had asked her, rather hesitantly, if girls farted. [In Canada, they say “tooted” instead of farted, because they are on the metric system.] When she assured him that they do, he said, “This changes everything!”

It was heartening to me to learn that boys still believe, until their mothers spill the beans, that girls are delicate creatures who do not participate in the naughtier parts of life--like gaseous emissions, which produce about 80% of boy laughter--for that was certainly the word on the street when I was in grade school. Of course, I probably believed that girls never did anything naughty because that’s what my older sister told me.

Along about 7^th grade, I joined 4H, the equivalent of scouting for farm kids. So I knew all the words to “I’m Looking Over a Four Leaf Clover.”

It was written by Mort Dixon and Harry Woods and released in 1927, but it was having a radio-play revival of sorts 20 years later when I first started riding a school bus. Everyone went around humming, “I’m looking over, a four-leaf clover, that I overlooked before…”

The 4-H clubs, at least where I lived, had adopted the song as a sort of unofficial anthem. It was a natural, for it was rural in nature, even mentioning “…a homestead in the new-mown hay” in one verse. More importantly, though, 4H, established in 1902, already used the four-leaf clover as its symbol.

The four leaves of the 4H clover stand for head, hands, heart, and health. For Harry Woods they were “…sunshine, rain, roses that grow in the lane, and someone that I adore.” Close enough.

Then, one day on the school bus, I heard some girls, teens, a few years older than I, giggling in the back end of the bus. They were singing “Four Leaf Clover.” I perked up. My 4H song! But they were singing secretively, and laughing and shushing each other a lot. I picked up enough, though, to know they were not singing either about head and hands or sunshine and roses. The main line seemed to be “I’m looking under a two-legged wonder…” About boys!

It was embarrassing to realize that they knew all about my anatomy--rhyming, even--when I knew nothing of theirs. It only got worse. About 8^th grade, Darrel Guimond snuck a pamphlet on “human reproduction” out of the secret drawer in the school library, but it had unfathomable terms like “fallopian tubes,” and line drawings that revealed nothing. You could tell one was a girl, because it had a pair of little smiley lines on its chest, and more head hair than the other figure. Not really helpful.

To add to my continuing ignorance, because of snafus in scheduling, I had to take freshman biology with the girls, taught by the Old Maid Home Ec Teacher, Iva Jane McCrary. [I’m sure that Old Maid Home Ec Teacher was part of her official title, for no one ever referred to her without it.] Sammy Kell was the only other boy. You’d think that might be helpful, biology with the girls, but when it came time for the two-day session on human reproduction, Sammy and I were sent to the principal’s office to wait it out. I wasn’t sure I would ever get to humanly reproduce.

The worst thing, though, was the shattering of my image of girls. I thought naughtiness was the province of boys alone. Now we had nothing that was our own…

John Robert McFarland

In looking for pix to go with this column, I googled "naughty girls." Big mistake.