Neither a Borrower
Christina Hamlett
October 10, 2006
Back in her first year of college, one of my associates learned a valuable lesson about the importance of never loaning anything to friends no matter how nicely they asked or, in the case of the opposite sex, how cute they were. The proud new owner of her very first car, she decided to drive it to a neighborhood swim party. Rumor had it that there’d be varsity lads and beer but Simone’s parents weren’t particularly concerned. She had always been mature for her age and exercised good judgment. “Just don’t let anybody else drive the car,” they warned.
Three hours into the party, the beer started to run out. “I’d go get some,” one of the lads volunteered, “but it’d be kinda hard to bring it back on my bike.”
Why don’t you take Simone’s Beetle?” someone piped up.
Well, you can appreciate the dilemma she found herself in. On the one hand, she’d promised her parents she wouldn’t give anyone the keys. On the other hand, she was staring an opportunity in the face to become the heroine of the hour by slaking her companions’ juvenile thirst. Did I also mention that the guy in question was really cute?
Why she didn’t go with him, of course, remains one of life’s great unsolved mysteries. Had she been along on this junket, he might not have opted for the spontaneity of not only relieving the liquor store of a keg of Budweiser but also the contents of its cash register. “Thanks for letting me borrow your wheels,” he said, nonchalantly picking up where he’d left off.
An hour later, as Simone pulled up to her parents’ house (proud of herself for making curfew), she was startled to see two patrol cars there. Having her Miranda rights read to her and being taken downtown for questioning probably wasn’t the way she expected to wrap up the weekend.
To this day and at almost 52 years old, she doesn’t even let her husband borrow the car to go put gas in it for her.
As products of the Depression, I think our parents had a different take on the concept of borrowing than was subsequently imparted to the next generation. The “haves” were encouraged to share their lot with the “have nots,” for the prior years of economic devastation and world war had aptly illustrated that reversals of fortune could indeed strike in a heartbeat. The television shows of the 50’s were further enforcement that being a good neighbor and liberally sharing one’s personal possessions such as Craftsman tools or tea cozies would curb the burgeoning threat of Communism, an odd notion given the fact that the latter was predicated on a socialist structure.
By the time I was old enough to start wandering off on my own to play with friends, I was sent forth with two edicts resounding in my head. The first was that virtually anything you wanted to do that was fun or involved water would result in polio. The second was that if you gave a friend something of yours to take home with them, you would never see it again. It didn’t matter what it was. A book, Barbie doll clothes, pick-up sticks. They suddenly weren’t Yours anymore. They were Theirs by virtue of physical possession.
This no doubt was what inevitably led to the 60’s frenzy of putting an ID on everything to establish its proper ownership. I had personalized bookplates in all of my Nancy Drews. I had pencils for school with my full name “engraved” on the side. When I went to Girl Scout camp, I had to painstakingly sew green and white labels on every item of clothing including underwear. (What kind of scary camp-mates would be conspiring to steal my underwear, I wondered.) I think this was also around the time that a remarkable home device called the Dymo Label Maker came into vogue, a trendy and “professional looking” way to affix colorful plastic label strips to anything that wasn’t moving. My Girl Scout regulation thermos, camp kit, and compass were all duly “Dymoed” before I boarded the bus for camp.
From a parental point of view, of course, all of this labeling made sense, for no culprit in their right mind would go to the trouble of pasting over someone else’s bookplate, removing a hand-sewn tag, or clicking out a new strip of lettered plastic just to steal something. The Western Hemisphere could sleep peacefully at night, knowing that those pesky Communists would have way too much work cut out for them trying to appropriate anything that American consumers had gotten their hands (and their labels) on first.
As an art form, borrowing took on an especially personal meaning when I entered my teens. Maybe it was my generation’s quirky form of rebellion to disavow all connection to our own personas and embrace whatever “coolness” belonged to our best friends if only for the time slot between homeroom and fifth period. Either that or we were just bored.
My mother would have been nothing less than mortified if she’d known I was borrowing lip-liner, allowing my hairbrush to make the rounds in gym class, letting cute boys copy my homework, and trading lockers for the purpose of establishing proximity with even cuter boys who’d had the misfortune of not being born into the same alphabetical quadrant to which our original lockers were all assigned. Only by accident, in fact, did she find out that my friend Janice and I routinely exchanged outfits 3 days a week to not only confuse the teachers but to add some variety to our respective wardrobes.
Suffice it to say, this practice was discovered one morning when Janice got sick about 10:30 and was sent home. Unable to retrieve my original ensemble by day’s end, I tried to sneak into the house before my mother noticed. Apparently she didn’t think as highly of Janice’s sense of fashion as I did and warned me never, ever to do that again.
I’m sure she only had my best interests at heart, of course. Continued exchanges of mini-skirts and go-go boots would surely have caused polio.
Three hours into the party, the beer started to run out. “I’d go get some,” one of the lads volunteered, “but it’d be kinda hard to bring it back on my bike.”
Why don’t you take Simone’s Beetle?” someone piped up.
Well, you can appreciate the dilemma she found herself in. On the one hand, she’d promised her parents she wouldn’t give anyone the keys. On the other hand, she was staring an opportunity in the face to become the heroine of the hour by slaking her companions’ juvenile thirst. Did I also mention that the guy in question was really cute?
Why she didn’t go with him, of course, remains one of life’s great unsolved mysteries. Had she been along on this junket, he might not have opted for the spontaneity of not only relieving the liquor store of a keg of Budweiser but also the contents of its cash register. “Thanks for letting me borrow your wheels,” he said, nonchalantly picking up where he’d left off.
An hour later, as Simone pulled up to her parents’ house (proud of herself for making curfew), she was startled to see two patrol cars there. Having her Miranda rights read to her and being taken downtown for questioning probably wasn’t the way she expected to wrap up the weekend.
To this day and at almost 52 years old, she doesn’t even let her husband borrow the car to go put gas in it for her.
As products of the Depression, I think our parents had a different take on the concept of borrowing than was subsequently imparted to the next generation. The “haves” were encouraged to share their lot with the “have nots,” for the prior years of economic devastation and world war had aptly illustrated that reversals of fortune could indeed strike in a heartbeat. The television shows of the 50’s were further enforcement that being a good neighbor and liberally sharing one’s personal possessions such as Craftsman tools or tea cozies would curb the burgeoning threat of Communism, an odd notion given the fact that the latter was predicated on a socialist structure.
By the time I was old enough to start wandering off on my own to play with friends, I was sent forth with two edicts resounding in my head. The first was that virtually anything you wanted to do that was fun or involved water would result in polio. The second was that if you gave a friend something of yours to take home with them, you would never see it again. It didn’t matter what it was. A book, Barbie doll clothes, pick-up sticks. They suddenly weren’t Yours anymore. They were Theirs by virtue of physical possession.
This no doubt was what inevitably led to the 60’s frenzy of putting an ID on everything to establish its proper ownership. I had personalized bookplates in all of my Nancy Drews. I had pencils for school with my full name “engraved” on the side. When I went to Girl Scout camp, I had to painstakingly sew green and white labels on every item of clothing including underwear. (What kind of scary camp-mates would be conspiring to steal my underwear, I wondered.) I think this was also around the time that a remarkable home device called the Dymo Label Maker came into vogue, a trendy and “professional looking” way to affix colorful plastic label strips to anything that wasn’t moving. My Girl Scout regulation thermos, camp kit, and compass were all duly “Dymoed” before I boarded the bus for camp.
From a parental point of view, of course, all of this labeling made sense, for no culprit in their right mind would go to the trouble of pasting over someone else’s bookplate, removing a hand-sewn tag, or clicking out a new strip of lettered plastic just to steal something. The Western Hemisphere could sleep peacefully at night, knowing that those pesky Communists would have way too much work cut out for them trying to appropriate anything that American consumers had gotten their hands (and their labels) on first.
As an art form, borrowing took on an especially personal meaning when I entered my teens. Maybe it was my generation’s quirky form of rebellion to disavow all connection to our own personas and embrace whatever “coolness” belonged to our best friends if only for the time slot between homeroom and fifth period. Either that or we were just bored.
My mother would have been nothing less than mortified if she’d known I was borrowing lip-liner, allowing my hairbrush to make the rounds in gym class, letting cute boys copy my homework, and trading lockers for the purpose of establishing proximity with even cuter boys who’d had the misfortune of not being born into the same alphabetical quadrant to which our original lockers were all assigned. Only by accident, in fact, did she find out that my friend Janice and I routinely exchanged outfits 3 days a week to not only confuse the teachers but to add some variety to our respective wardrobes.
Suffice it to say, this practice was discovered one morning when Janice got sick about 10:30 and was sent home. Unable to retrieve my original ensemble by day’s end, I tried to sneak into the house before my mother noticed. Apparently she didn’t think as highly of Janice’s sense of fashion as I did and warned me never, ever to do that again.
I’m sure she only had my best interests at heart, of course. Continued exchanges of mini-skirts and go-go boots would surely have caused polio.
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