When I was in high school, I was sent to an exclusive all-girls preparatory academy.Most of the teachers were women but there were a good number of men who taught there as well.The school had a strict dress code with uniforms as you can imagine.Knee-length plaid skirts in the school colors, white or blue blouses, pantyhose, black shoes and optional navy pull over sweaters with the school crest, right. on. my. left. breast. We had specific days to wear the blue or white blouse.
The uniform was really the only throwback to the stereotypical girls’ school.It wasn’t this big musty brick building covered in ivy, but a much more modern glass and steel building with lots of windows, A/C and terrazzo flooring.There was a strong emphasis on the sciences.
One notable male instructor was our physics teacher.He had won many awards and was a pretty well-known person in the science circles.He also had a particular interest in the girls slips and pantyhose.This was discovered early on when we would catch him staring at our legs while we did bookwork in the classroom.Now slips weren’t spelled out as being mandatory but in the early 80s girls all wore them anyway.Before going to the academy, I wore them under all of the dresses and skirts I had.They were still a fashion ‘must have’.
Just before the Thanksgiving break several of my friends and I were having trouble with some of the math and our grades were starting to suffer.No, we weren’t going to flunk out, that is too cliché, but our GPAs were definitely going to be affected.We asked Dr Benning, if we could stay after class for some help to which he said he had a meeting but after his NEXT class was his prep and we could come in then.OUR next class was a rather mundane Literature class but the teacher was a pretty young lady.We speculated she was the youngest staffer at school but she had already accumulated close to 10 years’ time.While she didn’t wear the school uniform, she always dressed in very similar fashion.Skirt or dress in dark colors, white blouse with the skirts, and usually with a cardigan sweater.She would just glide across the room when she taught.I don’t think I was the only girl in school who wanted to be just like her, she was so pretty.
After clearing our next class with the teacher, we went back to Dr Benning’s room.He had us sit in front of him and he then started in with some remedial instruction.As was part of our expected behavior, we either had our ankles crossed and tucked under our chairs or we had crossed our legs.Dr Benning stopped mid-stream and said to one of my friends “Miss Allen, your slip is really showing, if you would like to be excused to adjust it, you may”.Elisa seemed shocked because she was always quite impeccably dressed with nothing out of place or crooked.She got up and excused herself and as she left the room, we saw Dr Benning staring quite intently at what was really no more than just a whisp of white satin beneath the hem of her skirt.After dinner that night we all discussed how he could have possibly seen that.The next day, we asked if we could get some more tutoring and it was granted.
