ROYAL TREATMENT

I’m not sure what brought up the subject, but a while back Big Bore asked me this hilarious question: “Were you ever the queen of something in high school?

“Good grief, no!” I laughed. “I wasn’t cute enough or popular enough or petite enough.” Being a cerebral, glasses-wearing type with size 10 feet didn’t quite fit the bill in the world of queenly qualifications back in the 1960s.

But I take all that back. There WAS one queen contest we had that broke all the usual rules--Homecoming Queen. Any senior girl could try out; being pretty and popular didn’t really figure in the equation because the judges were from out of town. There was just one hitch--the contestants had to present a talent number. Oh, woe is me.

When the invitation letters from the sponsoring civic group were passed around to all the girls in my senior class in September, 1966, I thought, “Here’s my one and only chance to be a queen.” The problem was, I had no talent to speak of. Oh, I could sing second soprano okay in a girls trio, but going solo was out of the question. My stage-frightened voice would shake and crack like an earthquake. Not a little one, but one that was maybe an 8.8 on the Richter scale. Like the highest number ever recorded in geological history. Forget singing.

At one time in high school, I had played a hand-me-down flute in the band and even entered a solo at Spring Music Festival, but the instrument had crashed and burned my junior year and the funds to replace it were nil, so that was out. And although I’d once taken piano lessons in my pre-pubescent youth, I quit after I was told to start playing with both hands.

I could give a dramatic reading, like half the girls would do, but that meant having to work with our speech teacher, who totally disliked me for dropping out of debate my junior year after I fainted when delivering a rebuttal speech during a tournament because I had anorexia nervosa, although at the time the condition was just known as, “Why the hell aren’t you eating anything?” (My goodness, Flaming Bore, what long sentences you have today!) I figured she’d sabotage me by giving me something ridiculous to memorize, like, War and Peace.

I tried to brainstorm what other so-called talents I might have, and about all I came up with were spelling and ping-pong. Original, but not quite feasible for a solo performance, so, surprise, surprise,---I didn’t try out for Homecoming Queen. Let’s face it. I just wasn’t queen material. On the plus side, though, the girl who ended up winning had never before experienced the joys of high school royalty, so it was sort of a moral victory for all of us average gals. Her talent was twirling the baton dressed as an Indian princess, accompanied by some Indian-sounding song. This, of course, was long before the term “politically correct” came into fashion, so it was okay for a white girl to pretend to be an Indian. At least no one filed any formal protest.

So, that’s my queen story. No, Big Bore, sorry to disappoint you but I was never the queen of anything in high school. Nor have I ever been a queen of anything in the 40+ years since. Not every gal is meant to be a queen. But I did win a spelling bee and a ping pong tournament in junior high, and that should count for something. Not much, but something.