Cook
In 1972, I was hungry. Very hungry. After all, I was a 14-year-old boy. I played sports and was constantly working out. I could eat every hour. My mother packed my lunch in a grocery bag.
I was into eating and sports, but there were other manly pursuits I wanted nothing to do with. For example, I had no interest in tools. I could build a sandwich but not a birdhouse. Or a beer-can lamp. Which is exactly what I would be doing in shop class, which all boys had to take in ninth grade at my junior high school.
Girls took home economics. Boys took shop. Girls learned to cook lasagna and bake chocolate cake. I would be learning to use a lathe. I preferred lasagna. So I did the sensible thing: I signed up for home economics.
The school counselor called me into her office to tell me that boys weren’t allowed to take home ec. I asked to see her boss, the vice principal. Same story. “Well,” I announced, “we have a problem because I’m not taking shop. These rules are discriminatory.” This was 1972; discrimination was everywhere you looked. If you weren’t protesting something, what were you doing? My parents wrote a letter expressing their support for my decision.
My mother was called to school. The problem, it turned out, was that shop and home ec were same-sex classes, and they were worried that a boy would be disruptive in an all-girls class. As much as I wanted to be in an all-girls class — I liked girls as much as lasagna — I saw an opening.
The next day I circulated a petition at school, demanding that the administration establish an all-boys home ec class for the undersigned: some two dozen hungry males whose parents were willing to let them out of shop to learn to cook.
The democratic process worked, the administration backed down, and within a few days, we boys began our experiment in domesticity. It’s true that we spent most of our time throwing hot, wet spaghetti at one another and eating so much raw muffin batter that our muffins came out stunted,
I was into eating and sports, but there were other manly pursuits I wanted nothing to do with. For example, I had no interest in tools. I could build a sandwich but not a birdhouse. Or a beer-can lamp. Which is exactly what I would be doing in shop class, which all boys had to take in ninth grade at my junior high school.
Girls took home economics. Boys took shop. Girls learned to cook lasagna and bake chocolate cake. I would be learning to use a lathe. I preferred lasagna. So I did the sensible thing: I signed up for home economics.
The school counselor called me into her office to tell me that boys weren’t allowed to take home ec. I asked to see her boss, the vice principal. Same story. “Well,” I announced, “we have a problem because I’m not taking shop. These rules are discriminatory.” This was 1972; discrimination was everywhere you looked. If you weren’t protesting something, what were you doing? My parents wrote a letter expressing their support for my decision.
My mother was called to school. The problem, it turned out, was that shop and home ec were same-sex classes, and they were worried that a boy would be disruptive in an all-girls class. As much as I wanted to be in an all-girls class — I liked girls as much as lasagna — I saw an opening.
The next day I circulated a petition at school, demanding that the administration establish an all-boys home ec class for the undersigned: some two dozen hungry males whose parents were willing to let them out of shop to learn to cook.
The democratic process worked, the administration backed down, and within a few days, we boys began our experiment in domesticity. It’s true that we spent most of our time throwing hot, wet spaghetti at one another and eating so much raw muffin batter that our muffins came out stunted,