I bet you didn’t know “slave day” was a fundraiser?

 

I am in the midst of planning my 25th high school reunion and as a result have been daydreaming about all the fun times I had in high school. I started thinking about the end of 1986 when I participated in Newport Harbor’s SLAVE DAY.  I know, can you believe the ASB hosted a fundraiser called Slave Day?  It only gets worse.  It went like this.

As a junior, I signed up with 2 of my best friends, Beth and Samantha to be “auctioned off”, to raise money for the school.  If I remember right, there was about 10 -12 groups that were auctioned off.   We were sold for a couple hundred dollars  to a group of male seniors.  The purchasers then had a week to prepare for what exactly we would do as their slaves on “slave day”.  Hummm.  Let’s just say all three of us received crank calls all week with hints as to the torture we were going to endure.  The night before slave day we all slept at Beth’s house, per our instructions from the boys.  We were so stressed because we had a history test the next day and we had no idea what terrible things the guys had planned for us.  We were told to  be ready by 5am and have a bathing suit.  OMG.

I think we finally fell asleep around 2am and all of the sudden we were ransacked by a group of boys.  We were instructed to grab our bathing suits, put on blind folds and get into the back of this Jeep Cherokee.  Not in the back seat, the actual back of the car.  Oh super safe, you can already see how crazy this was.  We were then driven to a house situated on the Newport Bay.  They handed us each a black plastic bag and told us to undress, put on our bathing suits and put our clothes into the bag.  Seriously?  We were standing inside someone’s gate, so the guys couldn’t see us, or at least that was our hope and we did as we were told.  I don’t even think the house belonged to anyone of the guys in our group.  Once we changed, they walked us to the bay and threw the plastic bags with our clothes into the bay.  “Swim for your clothes.”  Nice guys.  And so we swam.

After we retrieved our clothes from the freezing cold, dirty bay and returned to shore, which took a while because I had to dog paddle to avoid getting my hair too wet.  Wet hair is so not cute for a school day.  At least I had on my cute new royal blue swimsuit with the gathered sides.  How pathetic, I can actually picture the suit in my mind.?  We were then given extra accessories to put on with our suits.  I think I was the skier, Beth was the snorkeler and I can’t remember what Sam was for the life of me.  I had to wear ripped pantyhose over my bathing suit and a pair of ski boots and gloves.  Super uncomfortable and awkward.  Have you ever tried walking around in ski boots?  We were then all given alcoholic beverages to quickly consume, yes I was only 16 years old, but luckily I was an experienced drinker.  Off to the next exciting activity, a visit to McDonald’s.

I don’t know if you remember but back in the day McDonald’s used to have round cement tables with an umbrella going through the center at most locations.  They were always outside the restaurant and the umbrellas were red, white and yellow metal.  Well, our owners thought it would be really funny to have us sit on the table in our bathing suits and ski boots and tie our hands to the pole at the McDonald’s on the Pacific Coast Highway at 7am while everyone was driving by on their way to work.  After they tied us up, they drew on us with shaving cream.  And the best part of this, was that the Newport Beach Police stopped by for a visit and thought it was hilarious and took pictures with us.  No, they didn’t seem to care or notice that we were drunk, or bound to a table in bathing suits.  They used their Polaroid cameras for crime scenes to snap our picture.  After many people stopped and took pictures, it was time to head for school.

They drove us almost to school but then when we were about a half a street away, they had us get out and tied us in a line to the back of their car.  Seriously, we walked behind the car in our ski boots, flippers and whatever Sam was wearing with our hands tied to a rope.  They actually made us go through the whole parking lot and in front of campus.  Once we got to school, we had to attend all our classes drunk in those outfits and take our History test.  Wherein my History teacher asked me before the test to get up and close the back door.  Really?  I had to walk across the room and close the door, what a pervert.  I can still remember that moment, but I was always such a teacher’s pet so I just did as I was told despite the fact that I knew he was just checking me out in my swim suit.  I was so mad.

And finally lunch time.  That was when I was supposed to mud wrestle another slave in a baby pool in the center of the quad.  I am having memory lapse right now, and I don’t think we had to do that, because I think the guys were too lazy to gather all the mud and bring it to school.  I pretty much remember the lunch time festivities ending with a girl cracking an egg on my head and me running into the guy I was dating who was also a slave.  His slave outfit was even racier than mine.  He was wearing a make shift diaper, no shoes, no shirt, no pants and he was more drunk than me.  I think I finally went home and cleaned up.

And that my friend’s is how the Associated Student Body used to raise money at Newport Harbor back in the day.  I am laughing so hard right now, and I actually had a ball that day but I still can’t believe that all went on.

Not surprisingly enough, that was the last time they ever did slave day and I can’t find a single picture of the event in the yearbook.  Do you think it was an unsanctioned fundraiser?