Grumpa Joe's Place

1950’s Panty Raid

A Very Large Panty-Raid

In the nineteen fifties when I went to college things were a bit different between the sexes. Men lived in male dorms on one side of campus and women in ladies dorms on the opposite side. Fraternities and sororities were pretty much the same. We spent our time going to bars to meet girls; clubs were another avenue. Study time at libraries was also a popular venue, as was our student center with the coffee shop. My classes in engineering were void of women. They just didn’t want to become engineers yet. If they did they faced a very biased male teaching staff that believed a women’s place belonged in home economics rather than in thermodynamics.

When spring finally came, and everyone was suffering with cabin fever the hormonal juices increased with the level of sunshine. Both testosterone and estrogen began doing the job intended by our Creator. One evening I sat at my desk when I heard a noise in the distance. Not knowing what it was I ran outside to discover that a panty-raid was in process about six blocks away. Not wanting to get into trouble near the end of the year I stayed away, but listened to all the stories with relish after is was over. Our student newspaper also recorded the event with photos.

During a panty-raid the men marched en masse cheering and chanting from the west side of campus to the east   to raid the girls dorms to steal panties. With all the noise the men made, the proctors in the ladies’ dorms had enough warning to lock all the doors to keep men out. The girls knew beforehand what was happening and flocked to the windows to the delight of the men. Of course the boys would begin to crawl through the lower level windows to gain entry. Girls in the upper floors began to dangle their panties out to tempt the guys. Mayhem ensued when the girls began tossing their undies out to the crowd, and the guys who made it into the rooms had quite a story to tell about how they acquired underwear. Without being the room with them I could never know exactly what ensued. I am sure that by the time the stories were told they were embellished and expanded beyond what actually happened.

Today’s students may read this and think how lame. Yes, compared to today’s coed dorms, and free sex on demand are quite something. Our kids probably believe a panty-raid is something you do at Sunday school. The moral of this story is to tell the story some sixty-two years after the fact. I participated in my own style of sexual experimentation with the opposite sex, but it too was tame by today’s standards. But what if I were being considered for a big job in government and one of my college dates decided to write to her Congressman about how traumatized she was by my crude and unsuccessful advances. Could she really remember that time accurately? I told you a story above about panty-raids to the best of my ability, but I’m sure if you were to research panty-raids you might learn they were much different from my tale. Would our youthful experiments in sexuality really matter to anyone or to anything? I am also certain that each of us has their own story to tell about a youthful adventure in sex education.

I finished college with a degree, and so did all my dates. I have never seen any of them since that time to know if I traumatized them. I pray they all had happy lives and found faithful partners. I did.

I met the girl of my dreams on a blind date. I was a perfect gentleman throughout our courtship and can very proudly state that we were both virgins when we married, although I tried like heck to not be one.

2018 Version of a Panty-Raid

Filed under: Biography, Education, Society | Tagged: Cabin Fever, College, Panty-Raid, Raging Hormones |