Linda threw us for a loop with her prompt this week.
Check out Linda’s blog if you want to join in – just check out the rules and the contribution of other bloggers.
Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “oop.” Find a word with the “oop” sound in it and use it in your post. Enjoy!
The first thing that came to mind when I read the prompt yesterday was the song Alley Oop, but I saw Melanie wrote about it, so I am mentally moving on,
Since my brain seems to be in nostalgia mode 75% of the time, I did a little time travel back to the 60s. The fashion trends for young guys in high school were moving from the 50s jeans/t-shirt vibe to a little more tailored look. Button down shirts became the rage.
In the backs of the shirts above the center pleat, was a loop. This loop known as a “locker loop” was designed to allow the shirts to be hung on a hook in say, a locker.
There was a practice of girls tugging on the loops to get a boy’s attention, but it did not stop there. Young girls figured out they could rip those loops off the backs of the shirts. It became a ‘thing’ to collect these loops – especially of your own boyfriend’s shirt. I’m not sure if manufacturers changed the construction to make it more difficult to tear the loops off, but this practice could rip a small hole in the back of the shirt.
The local mothers were not too pleased. Especially when a particularly enthusiastic girl yanked so hard she ripped a huge hole in the back of a shirt. The principal put a stop to the practice. (Or at least he thought he did.)
I remember girls who had small scrap books with pages filled with the tiny loops torn from button down shirts. Isn’t popular culture strange?
very interesting, Maggie. 🙂
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It is amazing what adolescents will come up with, Wilma.
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Yes it’s most odd!!
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The things kids do!
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Yes indeed, the things we do for Love.
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I love that song. 🤩
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It’s a beauty 💜
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I had some of those shirts with the loops, but I don’t remember anyone yanking on them and I guess I was just not popular enough to have any girls trying to yank at my clothes.
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Might have been a regional thing, Jim. Or maybe it was a country thing.
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One of my neighbours as telling me about their new chicken coop. I asked her if it made her feel ‘cock-a-hoop’. She didn’t get it.
I used to wear those Ben Sherman shirts with the loop, but no girl ever tore off one of my loops. I missed out! 🙂
Best wishes, Pete.
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I confess I had to look cock-a-hoop up, but I did well guessing what it meant. Maybe you didn’t miss much if your shirt stayed intact, Pete.
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It’s a very familiar saying in England, Maggie. I was surprised the ‘egg lady’ didn’t know it at all. 🙂
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When I was in my final years at school, the rap artists arrived with the car hood ornaments hanging around their neck. I can still remember there being several meetings at school, where the faculty tried to put the fear of god into us should we ever be caught damaging a car, or wearing any kind of stolen hood ornament 🙂 We never saw the shirt loop craziness…
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Wow, that’s a new one for me. Of course I grew up in small town America and no one had fancy cars (or any cars for that matter). That would have been some heavy adornments, Jonathan.
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I remember that practice. I remember my mother not wanting to buy shirts that had the loops.
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See? Moms were the driving force of keeping children at bay, Dan.
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Interesting post well written. My boys weren’t old enough yet and it was far past my teen years. I missed knowing about that.
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It could have been a regional thing, but I remember it well.
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Oh that’s funny! I’ve never heard of that!
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We did the strangest things.
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My hubby and I had to do some research on it last night. Both of us found it so odd that people used to do that. Lol
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Well, the adolescent brain still has growing to do!
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I’m just wondering why they ever stopped! Lol
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I had vague memories about the shirt loop and asked my husband who clearly remembered being 6 or 7 when I boy tore the loop off his new shirt and got him in big trouble at home. Maybe that’s why we went back to jeans and T shirts in the 70s.
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Maybe you’re right, JoAnna. Where I grew up, money was tight, so having clothes ruined was not well received.
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Hi Maggie, how interesting. Kids do strange thi us, don’t they but it sounds like fun 😁🙋♀️🐝
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Bee, it certainly was the rage at the time.
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