Like a sh1t don't stink

Coming back from Summer holidays in 1974 a new term was loose on the street. No more were girls frigid or as nervous as cats or dark horses or up tight. No, over night they were now stuck up and losing some perennial battle of the bulge and doing special exercises, the bigger the better to fill the sweater, as the schoolyard taunt went. And the girls said of each other they walked around like a s-h-one-t don't stink. It is difficult to understand why they were hating on each other so much. But like good little trolls and girls, we followed along, hair ratted up, belly buttons showing--whether innie our outie be. Monkey see monkey do.

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Sweaters were in, too, even thought it was just past Labour Day. Sweaters were cool unless they were made from a pattern and therefore looked too ethnic. Style from the Fifties was unforgivable in the age of white platform boots.

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Somehow life settled down that Fall, and we all got through. Perhaps Indian Summer made us whole, with or without Duffy Bucks.

Dirty Old Mitchell hadn't published his How I Spent My Summer Holidays, even though he had probably written in long since--such was the white rabbit. Dare to follow him down that rabbit hole. And some of us did, but it was Who Has Seen the Wind we were reading, and we all grew up in a CPR blueprint town, with a grain elevator and a Main Street and spring water on tap somewhere close to the highway.

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We were all in need of a great deal of forgiveness then. Christina Rossetti was right to ask on our bald headed prairie or in our foothills nest,

Who has seen the wind?

Neither I nor you:
But what the leaves hang trembling,
The Wind is passing through.

Who has seen the wind?
Neither you nor I:
But when the trees bow down their heads,
The wind is passing by.

Say a little prayer for I indeed.

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Danusia and the brickworks

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