The Late Great Me

"You've got to be somebody, Geri. You can't be nobody. You don't want to be president of a lot of leftover people." That's my mother talking. She's always bugging me about "all-round popularity" which was important stuff back in the fifties--which, if you ask me, is where my mother is still living. Whatever "all-round popularity" is, I didn't have it--until I started going out with Dave Townsend. He was new my junior year and very good looking. With Dave I could do anything--talk to anyone, be funny, even dance--as soon as he handed me my first bottle of wine. And my mother didn't have to worry about her daughter being nobody: I was on my way to becoming Queen of the Juicers, the biggest lush at Walt Whitman High.