Jill, Brenda, and I went everywhere together. And we had style, or, at least we had a style. Even if we were just walking to the candy store, we teased our hair and attached tiny satin bows to the point where our puffy bangs started because you never knew who might be on the corner. As soon as we turned 11, we started saying, “We’re almost 12.”

Our big problem was our mothers and their ridiculous 1940s ideas about how we should be spending our summer. They said things like, “Why don’t you girls go outside and play?” They told us how lucky we were that we could just walk out the front door and find exciting things to do.

“Like what?” That would be us, impatiently waiting for an answer we knew our mothers didn’t have. How sad they hadn’t noticed that living in Massapequa in 1961 was devoid of anything fun.

“Well,” one of them would say, “You could have races with each other. How about getting the little kids together and playing school? You could be the teachers. . . Oh, I don’t know . . . just do something for God’s sake.” They all had ideas about how we should be loving life.

Jill’s mother could speak French. Well, I think looking back, Jill’s mother had a few phrases under her belt, but in my mind she could have walked right into the UN and immediately been asked to translate into the headphones of Charles de Gaulle. She wanted us to practice with her since we’d started taking it in school that year.

“Bonjour, mès amis!” she would say as we came through the back door. She did it with such optimism, such hope that we would all chirp in unison, “Très bien, et vous?” What came out of us was a mumbled answer in a language so unrecognizable that she gave up by the Fourth of July.

Brenda’s mother had a plan to get us to lay our eyes on at least one book that summer. She thought it might be fun to take turns reading aloud from Little Women. When she took the book out of the bookcase, all I could think was, That book must have more than 100 pages.

“If we read for an hour every day, we could be finished by September.” Again, optimism in the face of total resistance. Brenda’s mom didn’t give up easily, though she did come to her senses, page-wise.

“How ‘bout if you walk down to the library so you can get caught up on your summer reading?” Hey, we were almost 12. We knew a fun-killing oxymoron when we heard one. And for good measure Brenda shot her mother a look as if she had just suggested selling the family dog. We were two for three.

My mother was a fan of Jack LaLanne in the morning. As a teenager, my mother had excelled at sports. Evidently, she could bowl perfect games and swim without ever coming up for air.

“I can’t believe what this man can do with a simple kitchen chair!” she’d say as she huffed and puffed all over the living room, following his instructions for an exercise that would give her beautiful ankles.

“How about we go jump rope and I’ll teach you some of the songs we used to sing?” We couldn’t decide which was more illogical. Girls our age jumping rope, or a woman my mother’s age taking the chance of falling and being paralyzed for the rest of her life. She was 33. For her own safety, we left her in the dust, too.

“Well, what are you going to do then?” our mothers would say as the screen door squeaked closed behind us, “You girls need something to show for your summer.”

It would be decades before cottage industries sprang up to keep kids competitive during the ten weeks of summer vacation, so here’s what we did instead. We sat in the living room and talked. It might have looked like we were idling, but we were planning for our futures with boys, sort of our own little fantasy league.

As far as we could tell, no boy had ever looked in our direction, even accidentally, thinking we were someone else. But we spent hours choosing which boys we liked the most and deciding that we needed to be smart, funny, and beautiful — like Tuesday Weld. We had a vague notion that big breasts somehow entered into this equation, but for obvious reasons we didn’t linger there.

We quizzed each other in current events. We retold jokes we’d heard on television, which gave a sort of Milton Berle quality to our sex appeal that we realized later wasn’t quite what we were looking for. The beautiful part was much more of an uphill climb for me, especially when it came to hair because mine had the texture of Brillo. As soon as the humidity index raised a percent, everything on my head puffed up like a blow fish. This caused me to sweat, which caused my face to become bright red, and knowing that my face was red made me nervous, which meant I was likely to trip over my Size 10 feet. I was a tragic chain reaction.

Tuesday Weld inspired us, yes, but it was from afar, either in movie magazines, or watching her drive Dobie Gillis crazy. Lucky for us, we also had a local role model. And Donna Goldsmith, wherever you are today, thank you. Thank you for maturing early and going with it full force. Without selfies, sexting, or a push-up bra, you were decades ahead of the pack.

Donna Goldsmith was as breezy around boys as we were clammy. When she giggled, a tiny breathy sound came from her lips, which always looked like they were ready to kiss someone. We paused near her whenever we got the chance, hoping some of her magic elixir would rub off.

Kids had basement parties that summer. We danced to records, drank soda, ate potato chips, and went home to bed, which, I know, sounds a lot like 1927. I was happy to join the arc of girls loosely surrounding Donna and her boyfriend, moving slowly to music, as if we were her backup dancers. She rested her head on his shoulder. He whispered something in her ear that made her laugh. How did she keep from sweating? Or blushing? How did she decide how close his hand could be to her bra strap? I was in awe of the way she mouthed  the words of “Town without Pity,” and looked into her boyfriend’s eyes.

I gave up being Donna in the summer of 1961. And honestly, it speaks to my resilience, in the face of bad hair and feet the size of small watercraft, because somehow Tuesday Weld and all her charms were still in the running.