The boys had never seen a girl sculpt steel on a spinning lathe or plunge fireplace tongs into 500º oil before. Arrange metal type into letterpress galleys. The manual training building was our escape from the core classes that were de rigeur. Two misfit girls in a testosterone-fueled world. When the printing teacher wasn’t around, we’d sneak in and ink messages on cards we’d hide for each other like a treasure hunt. 

Meet me at the bleachers at 12:30.

George looks hot today.         

WherE tHe hell aRE You?!

We even shared a boyfriend. We weren’t exactly all flowing in the same lane simultaneously. We were more like a cloverleaf intersection designed by an engineer on acid. And maybe some of us indulged in another substance they harangued us about in health ed, the clacking projector beaming Reefer Madness, while everyone cracked up, eyeballs rolling. 

The cloverleaf boyfriend wasn’t like other guys, didn’t try sticking his hand up your skirt in the darkened auditorium, or catcall when you passed. He was more the let’s get high and lie in the grass talking for hours type. Sometimes we’d go to his house, listen to “Here Comes the Sun,” and moon over him and his Che Guevara looks while he made tuna sandwiches. No one feeling possessive or jealous. Just three rebels who loved sticking it to the man—skipping classes we deemed useless, reading Zora Neale Hurston or Howard Zinn in an empty classroom instead.

When Cloverleaf graduated, he went to a local art school, where he’d indelibly ink his creations on an offset press. One night he was working into the wee hours—and may or may not have partaken of something other than black coffee. Now, those presses have two long rollers like hard-rubber versions of aluminum foil rolls that rotate towards each other. One you slather with fragrant-smelling ink, the other you moisten with potent solvent, to keep the ink from drying. It’s advisable to have your wits about you when you use a sponge to drizzle the solvent on, because if it slips between the rollers, you’ll definitely want to let go. But Cloverleaf tried to grab that sucker, and sadly, fingers don’t compress nicely the way sponges do. 

Still seniors, we walked the hour plus into town to visit him in his hospital room, where they’d set him up with some very fine (and legal) potions. But the last thing on his mind was getting high, being too busy grieving his two half fingers the beast had swallowed up and digested. 

After that, we developed a newfound reverence for the equipment we had unfettered access to. When we forged steel spinning tops or printed a flyer for the senior prom (which we boycotted because we were too badass), we made damn sure we were clean and sober enough to make even the health-ed teacher proud, thanks to Cloverleaf and those sad stubs we’d never be able to unsee.