Golden Oldies

If I could design heaven, I'm sure it would look a lot like the fifties—the 1950s, that is. The older I get the more perfect the fifties become in my memory. In fact, they have taken on a glow that can only be achieved by the passing of decades.

I went to high school and college in the fifties. Reason tells me they must have been turbulent. After all, I was a teenager, and a moody one at that. Those were the years of puberty, first dates, first kisses, girls who were best friends one day and worst enemies the next, sorority rush, frightening final exams ... in short, the angst only adolescents can know.

Yet, I can barely conjure up such scenes. It would appear that I never cried myself to sleep, lost the boy of my dreams, had cramps, or experienced anything remotely negative. As I recreate that period of my life, I see myself endlessly jitterbugging, doing the cha cha, or swaying romantically to Nat King Cole's "When I fall In Love." I wear Jonathan Logan dresses, crinoline slips, and wrist corsages. My datebook is packed; my grades are excellent; and my Saturdays are filled with football games and Chief Illiniwik bursting out of the marching band and doing a war dance down the field.

There were meaningful milestones, of course: grammar school, high school and college graduations; falling in love; getting engaged and married and having my first baby; moving away from my family. Those were big moments; but they are often eclipsed by of Johnny Mathis, Kay Star, Frank Sinatra, Harry Belafonte, and Elvis Presley. It was as if every moment had its own sound track.

The fifties weren't splashy or rebellious. They were innocent, predictable, and mostly fun, or so it seems in retrospect. Could I be wrong? Undoubtedly. Do I care? No, not really. If they were flawed, which they must have been, they were "the good old days." Everyone has her own definition of that phrase. This is mine.