Tough Girls Do Cry!

It was a cold and dreary September morning and I was on my way to school.  The radio had been playing Michael Jackson so much; one would have thought that he was going to quit the music biz the next day! Well my first class of the day was Drama 1B, and we were preparing for our big production, "Thriller".  I was so excited about this show because it would be the first time in my life I could get away with wearing black fishnet stockings, tons of makeup and ratted out hair! Let's not forget the fact that my mom was going to have to let me listen to the "Devil's music" now, yes folks that is what she called it!

My girlfriends and I brainstormed this idea of starting a "gang" of sorts.  The idea would be very similar to "The Pink Ladies" from the movie grease, but we would be better, we would be "The Thriller Girls"!  Don't ask me what we were thinking, we were teenagers, we were not supposed to think!  One thing I will say is that we had it all figured out like a dream. We were going to all have matching red jackets (instead of pink) to pay tribute to Michael Jackson of course.  We would wear those fingerless gloves and studded belts.

Oh boy was I getting excited about this! While sweeping the floors and painting sets, I could hardly wait for the bell to ring at the end of the day.  We were going to head over to a costume thrift store in town called "Perry's" The store is no longer there, but back in the day, this was the store to get just about anything!

3:00 came like a flash and off we all went.  We walked to the store with the allowance we had saved up, or in Janelle's case, the money she took from her mother's wallet!  The store was so cool!  It had costumes, wigs, makeup galore.  There it was, the jackets! Just as the night is black, right in front of me was a rack with several red jackets!  Yeah, I know who could imagine that there would actually be matching red jackets to compliment our pea-brain idea of "The Thriller Girls"? I was waiting for pearly gates to open up and I would then hear angels singing, "Halleighluah".  Instead, the counter boy just rang up our $12.50 cent jackets that smelled like a well lived in mouse hole.

There were five of us girls; I was the quiet but mischievous one and most likely the most excited one about this whole idea, solely for being able to wear makeup and fishnets! YES! Janelle was the real tough one of the bunch; she had a knack for intimidating people with her look. Wearing her hair ratted out to Venus was her normal style anyway.  Donna was the loud Italian girl, who in reality was a clone to "Rizzo" in Grease.  Stephie was the flirt, and wearing fishnet anything was going to be second nature for her, then there was the "Debster".  Debbie was this bookworm that we somehow adopted into our circle of friends, quite possibly to help us with homework.  The only thing more frightening than the thought of Debbie being in a gang was Debbie's MOTHER!

Well it happened, the big day! We all met at our lockers the next morning dolled up in our "Thriller" outfits and our minds set to the tune of "Beat It". We looked like a bad scene from Westside Story! We had been rehearsing our walk, talk and look all night, not to mention, we had real rehearsals of "Thriller" in Drama class.  So we were ready, we thought.

At lunch, we picked out "our" table, sat down and looked at everyone as if a single glare or stare from any of them would cause a riot among us.  That is until "they" showed up.  They were the girls from Wilmington that were bused in.  They were not very nice girls and did not need red jackets, torn gloves or even ratted hair to scare the living daylights out of someone! They had tattooed eyebrows and fists made of iron! One of them was even missing a tooth, a TOOTH!

For some strange reason, Donna (the Italian) figured we could take them, no problem. We had the walk remember? We could dance to "Beat It", Billy Jean or any other Michael Jackson debut thrown at us! We were the "Thriller girls"!  So I sat there trembling inside, thinking of which way I would run, if needed. I kept singing "Beat It" inside my head for what seemed to be an eternity until my lyrical thoughts was scratched to a halt like a warped record from the sound of BEAT IT NOW! Hey, this wasn't in the song, nope it was the toothless girl telling us to beat it, get lost or she would beat us.

If you have never seen what happens to eyeliner when a girl is crying uncontrollably, consider yourself lucky! My nerves got the best of me and I broke down into tears, I had hoped that the loud crying for scare these girls away. Poor Debbie already was heading north; she had been through this sort of thing numerous times throughout her school years.  Donna just blurted "fungu's" which I believe is a word Italians use to say I love you, yeah that's it, I love you. She kept muttering this under her breath, conveniently quiet enough for no one except her to hear. Janelle found some boy to stand behind and I was left there crying like a fool in my tight blue jeans, red jacket, fingerless gloves and fishnet stockings with a river of black eyeliner streaming down my face. I truly looked like one of the ghouls in Michael jackson's "Thriller" video. 

Our gang days were short lived, but the memory of Michael Jackson's "Beat It" will forever be in my head! The show went on with huge success and we made sure to have our mom's right outside waiting to pick us up. I soon joined the Tall Flags Team.