There is a fine line between being a slut and being a really friendly person. The problem for women is that number for men is much higher than women. The problem for men is that there just aren't enough really friendly girls and far too few sluts.
Of course, there are girls who are neither really friendly or a slut, but get credit for both.
Case in point: Briana Cherry. Being stuck throughout your childhood with a name like 'Cherry' certainly dooms you from the start. One of the most memorable things about Briana was her progressive puberty at age 11. She was taller than most of the kids in sixth grade. She was also physically endowed with large breasts. For an 11-year-old girl, that must be one of the worst traumas. As teenaged boys discover their hormones, the first thing they also discover is their interest in the female breast.
Briana had moved to Reynoldsburg only a few years earlier and already had things to deal with: namely being child of a single parent family in 1979. Her dad always seemed to be at every school event. Her mother was conspicuously absent. It was something I'd heard several of my friend's parents gossip about more often than not. Beyond being Mr. Cherry's daughter, Briana was very quiet and shy.
The other thing most of guys remember about Briana was her pink turtleneck sweaters. Those sweaters haunted her in several ways throughout sixth grade. Since she was taller, it only accentuated the size of her breasts. Several of the older boys noticed it, too. When she was older, she dated several of the wrong boys. She was a good Catholic girl and never let boys "cross the line", but she did let them kiss her neck and give her the occasional hickey.
Poor Briana. Boys bragged about those hickeys to anyone who would listen. Since her last name was Cherry, she quickly got the nickname "Easy Cherry". A lot of the boys began talking about who did what (most were lies). And where they did it.
Worse than that was one of the older boys Briana dated for a short while. His name was David Lane. He was a notorious slut. She did let him do things she shouldn't have. She let him get to third base. She also let him take Polaroid pictures of her in just her undies. She also let him take her underwear as a souvenir. She paid the price for that.
Most of the boys in the neighborhood paid the price for that, too. David invited a bunch of us over to his house one afternoon. Unluckily, I was grounded. They all parked our BMX bikes on the front lawn and went inside. A group of six or seven boys sat in the living room while he let each of them go back to his bedroom one at a time. He charged each of 50 cents to look through the Polaroid pictures and hold her underwear for a few moments. A few guys, like Billy Barrett, even paid twice.
News traveled fast as we all gossiped about it at school. What was worse was that David brought the underwear to school. I think we were in Mr. Leamy's Science class when he started passing the underwear around. Before they got to me, they got to Steve McDonald. He shouted "Eew!", flung the underwear towards the front of class and Mr. Leamy used a pencil to pick them up and display them for the class.
Briana immediately ran from the classroom. Mr. Leamy followed close behind.
He was gone for the rest of the period. When we returned the next day, nothing more was said about it. Briana wasn't there, either. She'd been transferred to another class. After a few weeks, she just disappeared from our school altogether.
The thing was, if it wasn't for the underwear incidents, it was unlikely anybody in our graduating class would've ever remembered her name. Like I said, she was a very quiet girl. I cannot imagine how much the thought of her underwear flying through the air at school accompanied by all the rumors must have changed her life.
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Obviously, it did changer her life enough that she never wanted to return. Really, its both sad and funny how the smallest of decisions can have the biggest impact on our lives.
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