When I was six years old, I thought the coolest girl in the world was Leather Tuscadero on Happy Days, having no idea that she was played by an even cooler real-life girl, Suzi Quatro (both girls were way cooler than Fonzie). Two years later, Leather Tuscadero was supplanted by the sunglasses-donning, cigarette-smoke-blowing, trash-talking Betty Rizzo. I vividly remember seeing Grease in a second-run movie theater with a couple of girls from the neighborhood. They were swooning for Danny, but I was tuning in to another frequency altogether.
When Rizzo started into “There are Worse Things I Could Do” and got to the part where she belts out, “I don’t steal and I don’t lie, but I can feel and I can cry, a fact I’ll bet you never knew, but to cry in front of you, that’s the worst thing I could do . . .” I had to bolt for the bathroom stall, where I bawled my eyes out, hurting for the both of us, isolated and alone.
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