Coming of Age: Girls High and Dylan

The winter of '77 might have been totally bleak and desolate, except that a whole new world had exploded open for me—in more ways than one. I'd started Girls High the previous fall—my Mother had allowed me to attend, albeit under duress: I told her flat-out that if she made me attend the all-girls St. Maria Goretti--where it was a prerequisite for students to be pregnant by junior year, engaged by senior year, and in hairdressing school upon graduation—that I would run away, or kill myself, I hadn't yet decided which.

It was the first time that I'd blatantly rebelled against my parents. They had my best interests at heart, as they always did, but this time—for the first time ever—I knew they were wrong. They just didn't understand that Girls High was the best school in Philadelphia--it was a magnet school for serious students, for college-bound girls; you had to apply and take a test to be considered, and I had been one of only three girls selected out of my entire eighth-grade class to attend.

In my parents' minds, Goretti was a better—and safer—choice: it was a Catholic school—which, I knew even then, meant nothing more than that you had to pay to attend and you'd get easier penance for saying "fuck you" to your brother than you would otherwise. But it was also close by, and safe—"safe" in the sense of "the devil that you know is better than the devil that you don't." Really, they were just worried about my taking the subway from one end of the city to the other—a valid concern, no doubt. But I was sure I could take care of myself. Even though I was innocent as a lamb, I could have an attitude when I wanted to, and even feign street toughness when needed.

So with tears, pleads, and half-hearted threats, I convinced my parents that if I had any chance of going to college and following my dreams, of getting out of the 'hood once and for all, Girls High was my ticket. Plus, there were lots of things more dangerous than taking the Broad Street Subway. And my sitting in a classroom full of brainless gum-cracking Goretti guidos for four years was one of them.

Within a week of starting Girls High, I realized that I wasn't crazy—there really was more to life than watching my brothers' friends drink beer on 7th and Porter. There were other people—Girls! Teenage girls! Pretty, popular, smart teenage girls who weren't nerds!—who read books—for enjoyment. Girls who contemplated the meaning of life, who wanted more out of life than a hairdresser's certificate from the Helena Rubenstein Beauty School and a cloudy quarter-carat diamond from Penney's jewelry department. There was a different kind of existence, a life that I'd had since I was four years old—and other people had it too: a life of the mind. Maybe I wasn't nuts; maybe I was just smart.

My 10th grade Italian class at GHS (I'm
in the back row, with the black/striped
sweater, making "devil horns" over Mary
Martucci).

At Girls High, though, everyone was smart. All the girls who attended were there because a) they wanted to be and b) they were allowed to be. It was a college prep school that drew the best students from all over the city. I had some tough competition—but I never competed. I had no desire to be valedictorian. I just wanted to learn. To learn and to be—to be me.

Also within that first week, I'd developed my first high-school crush. Since it was an all-girls school, I had no choice but to fall in love with Mr. Kauriga, my music teacher. He was tall, dark, handsome—and Russian. He had a goatee and looked vaguely bohemian. And he had a cute name: Dimitri. But most important, he was a musician—he spoke my language.

Mr. Kauriga took a liking to me and was impressed by my knowledge of sixties music—a bit of an anomaly for teenage girls in the disco era. He gave me full access to the music room after school, and suggested that I use my knowledge and fascination with the music and culture of the sixties to create something. He said I could use the music department's soundproof studios to write, practice, record—whatever I wanted to do. I decided that I was going to write a play. It would be set in the sixties and the music of the British Invasion would be the soundtrack. I would need to record some songs. Actually, I just wanted to use Mr. Kauriga's studio-quality reel-to-reel, and thread the big Teac spools of tape, so that I could pretend I was in a real recording studio, like Abbey Road, or Electric Ladyland, or the Hit Factory—a little bit of training for what, at that time, I thought my future career would be: a recording engineer.

I took vocal music as an elective that year, taught by Mr. Murphy. Half of our grade would be based upon a book report of a vocalist of our choice. This is a shoo-in, I thought: easy "A." I'll just do The Beatles Authorized Biography by Hunter Davies—which I knew word-for-word, fact-by-fact. But when Mr. Murphy announced the criteria and the parameters in class, he was clear: "You may write about any singer or singers of the twentieth century for whom a full-length, written biography exists. Except Carol—you may not write about The Beatles. That would be cheating." Everybody laughed, I blushed and my heart sank.

Mr. Murphy then proceeded to hand out a list of suggested biographies, which included such names as Mario Lanza, John McCormick, Barbara Streisand, Maria Callas, and lots of other people who sounded as boring as their names. About two-thirds down the list, one name and three syllables that would change my life: Bob Dylan.