Little Roof Jumpers

Chapter 20 Algebra Sorority And lost Dreams

In our little city junior high schools consisted of grades seventh, eighth and ninth. Even though freshman, were housed in junior high we received high school credits.

There were three junior high schools that fed into our city high school. We were rivals for three years and on the same team for the next three. The summer after our freshman year, girls from all three schools waited to see if their sorority invitation came in the mail. When or if your invitation came, you immediately called your friends to see if they got one too. There were two sororities PHI THETA and SIG DEL. PHI THETA was the most prestigious and the one invitation all of us hoped for.

Mattie, Catty and I all three got invited to PHI THETA. We had invitations that summer to afternoon tea's to which an invitee wore a pretty dress or nice slacks and used our best manners. We had luncheons that were formal as well and towards the end of summer we had a luncheon at one of the girl's lake cottages. That is where Mattie made her mistake. While all of us were in the water goofing off and hanging out with the other pledges and members, Mattie was on the dock flirting with the boys.

When it was time to go up to the cottage for lunch Mattie wouldn't leave the dock and come with us. Catty and I both tried to convince her and even went back to the dock but she was too busy in her one-piece blue speedo doing flips off the dock with the boys. From the terrace I could see her on the dock and knew at the time she was having fun but she would regret it later. That was Mattie. In the last year the Roof Jumpers were growing up and growing apart. Mattie was boy crazy. Catty and I just wanted to have fun.

A few days later Mattie was mailed a card saying she was blackballed and there wasn't anything Catty or I could do about it. After that when we went to Mattie's for our usual pool outing she wouldn't come with us. We would see her at the baseball field with her new boyfriend, presumably one of the boys from the dock. We lost track of each other.

I don't remember seeing Mattie again until spring break our senior year of High School. Well her senior year of High School I had already dropped out. Mattie was vacationing with a few other girls on the same Island that I went to with my parents. When Mattie learned I was going to be vacationing with my parents on Fort Meyers Beach she got a hold of me and told me where she was staying and asked me to stop by their apartment. We did see each other but I couldn't get away to party with her and the other girls. I would see Mattie one more time before she moved away for good. Thirty years later I found Mattie on Facebook and she was married to a very wealthy man and was living her dream. I was happy for Mattie at least one Roof Jumper was living our childhood dream.

Pledging a sorority was goofy. We had candy lines before every home football game. They were held in one of the member's back yards. The pledges had decorated boxes of candy. The members would come through the line for candy and then ask us to do silly things like sing, dance, bark like a dog or do magic tricks, all kinds of crazy stuff. As pledges we dressed up in different themes for each candy line and were required to go to the football games in our costumes and sit together at the mercy of the members. Each pledge had a sorority mom. She was responsible for picking up her pledge and bringing her to candy lines and meetings.

After football season was over we had what was called Rough Night. The pledges put all their clothes on backwards and were blind folded standing in the front yard of a pledges home waiting on a member to take them to who knows where and scare the daylights out of you. The members would grab a couple of the girls and put them in their car without a word being spoken. This way they had no idea who they were with.

It was really kind of thrilling. Most pledges were taken to a graveyard where some of the member friends would jump out from behind the gravestones while we were blindfolded. Everyone would then meet at the president's house for the last part of the initiations.