As I eluded in the previous post, I grew up with a lot of gay bullying during my school years and it wasn't always easy. However, I do still have some very fond memories of high school. One of my fondest memories was being the only guy in the home economics class. There also was a class called I believe "family" which was a co-ed version of home ec...I guess you could call it, home ec light. The first week of my senior year, I was the only guy enrolled in the family class and a bunch of the guys starting razzing me about being gay and being in that class. I quickly pointed out that I was the only dude in a room full of girls!!! Great pickins as we say in the south! Suddenly, five or six guys changed their class schedules and joined me in the class. Having both the family class as well as home economics on my class schedule, they were exactly the same class.
I was voted Mr. FHA (Future Homemakers of America) my senior year and enrolled in the class immediately. I mean honestly, I had been cooking / baking since I was 8 years old and had spent countless hours making and designing clothes for my sister's barbie doll. How hard could this class be?
My teacher, Mrs. Heatley, often giggled at me as she watched me assist the other girls in the class on how to properly lay out a dress pattern or when I argued that not all meal plans revolved around chicken fried steak and mashed potatoes. Now being from the south, I will never debate the importance of chicken fried anything. They are staples at any southern dinner table and I have eaten my fair share. If you pair that with mashed potatoes, creamed gravy and biscuits...well any husband, gay or straight, will be a very happy man, but i digress. (I promise to do a post soon regarding a southern dinner table) I believe I had to explain to the class exactly what a baked alaskan actually was. Come Christmas time, our class cooked a traditional holiday lunch for the school faculty. I was there very early in the morning to get the turkey in the oven baking I got permission from the teachers of my morning classes to skip so that I could work in the kitchen to make sure that everything was prepared on time. When the school bell rang noon, the spread was prepared, one that rivaled any southern housewife's. These are but a few of the wonderful home economics memories that I have. Perhaps someday i will also post about the day that Darla and I taught Mrs. Heatley how to do the dance, the bird, from Morris Day and the Time, which was in the movie "Purple Rain". Oh my, I do believe that I just aged myself.
Publish Post
Thinking back, I often wonder if those giggles from my teacher were simply an unspoken "look at the gay boy go".
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