Kids Back When

The movie Grease was on TV last night.  At risk to the world's view of my masculinity, I actually kinda like Grease.  And even a few other musicals.  I don't however, care for Barbra Streisand all that much, which puts me well over the line into heterosexuality.  Babs is in the DNA of gay men for some reason.  If you could examine the genetic code of a gay male from one end to the other, somewhere in the middle you'd find:

G C C A C G U A U U C A C G U C C C A C G U F U N N Y G I R L C U A A C G U C A A C

That's pretty solid proof that being gay is genetic, and not a choice, if you ask me.

But back to Grease, the thing I notice that is so interesting is that Grease was written in the '70s, and it was a musical about the '50s, and it's fascinating to see how different things were in another, even recent, era.  Most surprising is that people attended high school well into their forties back then.  I mean, a couple of the Pink Ladies would be considered Cougars if the T-bird guys they were chasing weren't already using PolyGrip.

I used to see High Schoolers as adults until I became one.  Then I was like, "Really?  We're high school seniors now?  Why aren't we like the ones I remember from my childhood.  As we move on, high schoolers look more and more like Junior High Schoolers - Middle Schoolers for you more hip, modern people - they don't look anything like they're nearing adulthood yet.  Seniors look to be about 13 these days.  If our 13-year-olds are seniors today, and I was a senior at age 17, then it stands to reason that in the 1950s, people went to high school until they were near middle age.  For proof, just look at the kids in Grease.

(c) 2010 Scott Teel.  All rights reserved.