Spring Break
76-year-old fraternity house mom teaches ballroom dancing and sexual enlightenment
Caitlin Myers, Contributing Writer, cmyers@smu.edu
Issue date: 2/29/08 Section: News
"I told her that one day, when her son lives in the real world, he will probably have a wife and children and will have to take care of them," McCurtain said. "So, I am giving him an opportunity to practice by taking care of me."
Don't mistake her frankness and practicality for a lack of compassion, though. She says that's a common misconception about her Chinese zodiac sign, the monkey.
"We monkeys are often considered insensitive, but that's just because we are the active sign of the zodiac," she said. "We're fast moving and have high energy."
At 76, McCurtain makes an effort to ballroom dance five nights a week at various community centers around the Dallas-Fort Worth area. When she's not waltzing, she likes to tone up with the Total Body Gym that sits in the middle of her living room.
"No other house mom is like ours," junior PIKE member Curtis Edenfield said. "She gets all dressed up and tries to teach us her ballroom dancing skills. It's awesome."
A tour of her tiny, first-floor apartment inside the PIKE house (one of the job's perks, along with an undisclosed salary from the fraternity) reveals her passions in life: several rolling racks of feathers, sequins and satin ball gowns, elephant figurines and family photographs, a Ms. Congeniality Award from the 1994 Ms. Senior Texas Pageant, where she was also the first runner-up.
"That's me from a long, long time ago," she said, pointing to a black and white photograph of herself hanging above the desk. "Eighteen years old. Back when I was a brunette."
She's proud of her soft, wavy blonde bob now. She cuts and bleaches it herself. She's gone through every hairstyle imaginable, even enduring the pain of the frosting phenomenon. But it was her naturally brown locks that taught her a lot growing up in McAlester, Okla. As the "mousy brunette" in a family of blonde sisters and an athletic brother, McCurtain quickly learned that to get noticed she had to bring something else to the table.
Don't mistake her frankness and practicality for a lack of compassion, though. She says that's a common misconception about her Chinese zodiac sign, the monkey.
"We monkeys are often considered insensitive, but that's just because we are the active sign of the zodiac," she said. "We're fast moving and have high energy."
At 76, McCurtain makes an effort to ballroom dance five nights a week at various community centers around the Dallas-Fort Worth area. When she's not waltzing, she likes to tone up with the Total Body Gym that sits in the middle of her living room.
"No other house mom is like ours," junior PIKE member Curtis Edenfield said. "She gets all dressed up and tries to teach us her ballroom dancing skills. It's awesome."
A tour of her tiny, first-floor apartment inside the PIKE house (one of the job's perks, along with an undisclosed salary from the fraternity) reveals her passions in life: several rolling racks of feathers, sequins and satin ball gowns, elephant figurines and family photographs, a Ms. Congeniality Award from the 1994 Ms. Senior Texas Pageant, where she was also the first runner-up.
"That's me from a long, long time ago," she said, pointing to a black and white photograph of herself hanging above the desk. "Eighteen years old. Back when I was a brunette."
She's proud of her soft, wavy blonde bob now. She cuts and bleaches it herself. She's gone through every hairstyle imaginable, even enduring the pain of the frosting phenomenon. But it was her naturally brown locks that taught her a lot growing up in McAlester, Okla. As the "mousy brunette" in a family of blonde sisters and an athletic brother, McCurtain quickly learned that to get noticed she had to bring something else to the table.
Be the first to comment on this story