John Travolta didn't go to Fenger High but his character Danny Zuko from Grease would have blended in perfectly there in the late 1960s.

As in Grease there were two distinct and opposite camps; the crew-cut Jocks in letter-jackets with their cheerleaders who hung out at Strattons eating burgers washed down with cherry Cokes, and the Greasers wearing t-shirts with a pack Camels folded into the sleeve and blonde with big hair decorating the front seat of the Ford or Chevy they paraded endlessly around our four-block high school universe with a Budweiser hidden in a paper sack under the seat.

The only place the two groups would be seen together was Saturday night at the the drive-in movie where '57 Chevy and dad's station wagon would be seen parked side-by-side with both drivers trying to score a touchdown in the back seat. The Greasers had the edge because their girl friends constantly chewed and popped gum and as result had great jaw muscles and tongue dexterity, talents which when applied with a bit of female guile kept more than one from joining the ranks of unwed motherhood. The Jocks had a tougher time because the cheerleaders had reputations to uphold. They might have been chanting "Give me an F" on the football field that afternoon but all that cheering and high kicking had given them vice-like leg muscles capable of cracking walnuts between their knees. They might let their favorite player get to the 50-yard line, but progress would be halted there quicker than the Taft front line by that impervious pelvic protector known as the girdle which any mother with a clue in the '60s would still insist their daughter wear on a date.

Along with the majority of the student population I fell somewhere in the middle between those two extremes of the social strata. We guys in the vast middle ground shared the same goal - getting laid at some point in high school - but lacking a hot car or a letter jacket that goal seemed unattainable. It's not that there was a shortage of girls in the vast middle ground, but they didn't wear a girdle because momma wanted to keep the quarterback out of their panties, they wore one because they needed it.

Rationalizing that being an athlete of some sort might increase the odds of getting laid at some point in my high school career I decided to join the Fenger wrestling team, a sport a skinny 145 lb. uncoordinated kid could manage. When that proved to be more pain than gain and I abandoned that gambit for a better one, joining the student council which did the planning for the homecoming and prom dances. That provided the opportunity to interact with the jocks and cheerleaders and increase my stock by proxy, but it paid few dividends.

I never did get laid in high school, but it wasn't for to a lack of opportunity. A few times I came close to plowing the furrow, but the vision of planting seed and becoming an 18-year-old father flashed across my pheromone fueled brain and withered my resolve. In retrospect I thank the good Lord he had the wisdom to design man in a way that makes it impossible to think and get a hard-on at the same time. That and the fact my girlfriend?s father made it a point of showing me his gun collection kept her virtue intact for the guy she wound up marrying. So if your wife says, "Oh I dated him in high school" please don't come after me with yours.