Hades No!

       Latin III my junior year of high school was more of the same from Latin II – more Roman and Greek mythology, more subjunctive, more crossing the Rubicon to Germany and England.

       At some point during this school year, Miss Collins announced a toga party! This was going to be in the evening at school. So of course it was going to be very tame. We would dress in togas and have food and drink of the gods! The room would be decorated – I don't remember if we were going for a forum look or the Senate or perhaps just anything Roman.

       I did not know how to wrap a toga. So I asked my mother for help. She was such a great seamstress and also creative – I thought a toga would be so easy for her. Instead Mom began to stress – she needed a pattern. Today I guess it would be so simple to just google “toga pattern” - actually, I just did, and ebay has Simplicity toga patterns! But Mom went to her drawer full of patterns from past projects hoping something toga-like would jump out at her.

        Couldn't she just do it free-hand, I asked? Mom began to stress more – she needed a pattern. Finally she settled upon a bathrobe pattern. Oh my gosh how totally lame was that? A bathrobe to a toga party!

        Yes, I wore the newly hand-sewn bathrobe to a high school toga party. I should have been grateful, and as Mom's Mom used to say, “It's warm.”

         For decorations at the party, Miss Collins asked if I could draw my flowers on posters? Back then, in the midst of the hippie era – flower power – and everything, I would put a little daisy after my name on all my homework and tests – this was in every class. 

         But a freehand daisy on a great big poster? No! I needed a stencil, some thing I could trace – like a pattern!

        I discovered that a compass – the kind you used in math class to make arcs and circles – would make six perfect daisy petals around a point. I started putting my perfect daisies on a poster while Miss Collins was trying to discourage me. She said that my signature daisies were easier. And now I realize that what she really meant was that she preferred the freehand daisies – they went along with the flower power spirit.

        The compass flowers, I guess went well with the bathrobe toga.

        Another poster I made, and one I was so proud of – and it is the first thing I think of even today when someone mentions toga party – was my war protest poster. Along with the hippie era and flower power, those days were the time of the Viet Nam War – and protests across the land and the media were becoming bigger, louder, more dangerous every day.   One of the popular expressions of the anti-draft movement was Hell No! We Won't Go!

        So my poster said, Hades No! We Won't Go!

        Miss Collins and Mom liked the poster. Sarah and Amanda liked the story of the poster.

        For such an innocuous, non-Animal House, party – this high school toga party story has yielded an interesting snapshot of the times – and a wince-making realization of a certain similarity between mother and daughter.

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