Woman Finds It’s, Like, Rilly OK to Be a Val

Allison had suggested the Cheesecake Factory in Warner Center, a restaurant she occasioned in high school. “This was, like, a double-dating place,” she explained.

The idea was to pick a spot that embodied the essence of the Valley, her Valley. The menu featured apparel ads--swimsuits, bridal gowns, whatever. She ordered the Oriental chicken, which, she said, is her usual at the Cheesecake Factory.

Allison isn’t her real name. The name was changed to protect the embarrassed.

She has a tale to tell, an odyssey of self-discovery. It is the story of a Valley Girl, an archetype that many mistakenly think became extinct in the ‘80s. In truth, not unlike Peking man, the Valley Girl has simply evolved, mutating into young women like Allison, a Val despite herself, a Val who discovered this simple truth:

You can take the girl out of the Valley, but you can’t take the Valley out of the girl.

*

The story begins in 1982, when Allison was in elementary school, about 9 years old. Even now, in her early 20s, Allison remembers the moment the world changed.

Her best friend was a girl named Sarah. One day, after many months apart, Allison called her up. This is what she heard:

“Omigod! Allison! Omigod!”

Sarah had learned the lingo the teenagers were using, the vernacular and the lilt that only then was being celebrated and popularized by the musical Zappa family, father Frank and daughter Moon Unit. Their satirical ditty, “Valley Girl,” was a hit. The song would spawn a book and a movie and soon teenagers across the land were saying “omigod” and “gag me with a spoon” and “fershur” and, presumably, buying lots of shoes. These were heady times to be a bona fide Val, what with the world sort of looking up at you and down at you at the same time.

Sarah was a Val in training. Allison, precocious and suspicious, viewed the phenomenon with disdain. Still, she clearly remembers the day she and Sarah visited Topanga Plaza and stood before a life-sized cardboard cutout of Moon Zappa, hawking her official Val guidebook.

Allison wasn’t buying this stuff, but in the Valley there was no escape. Like her friends, she pronounced really “rilly.” And in time, the superlative “rad” became near and dear to her heart.

“ ‘Rad’ gave me my first boyfriend.” Allison was 15, and when she told the 17-year-old, “I think you’re rad,” he became hers.

Still, Allison never believed she was a Valley Girl. On the contrary, she was Anti-Val, a nonconformist. In her high school newspaper, she wrote articles poking fun at all the conformity of Val culture. There were a lot of rich kids at her school, and it seemed like they all drove red Acura Integras. One girl drove a blue one with a vanity plate that translated as “be unique.” Like, fershur.

Allison didn’t drive an Integra, red or otherwise. And only in desperation would she and her friends cruise Ventura Boulevard--or “The VB” as they called it. But Allison rilly, rilly preferred Hollywood or Malibu. She was too cool for the Valley.

It was after Allison headed off to college, to a fine university in the Midwest, that she learned the painful truth.

The Midwest, she discovered, was a place where people drink “pop,” not soda or soft drinks or the generic Coke. And whenever Allison spoke, the Midwesterners knew there was, yes, a Valley Girl in their midst.

Imagine the Anti-Val’s dismay: “Everyone was pointing me out as something I really thought I wasn’t. As soon as I spoke, everyone knew where I was from.”

College classmates thought it was quaint when Allison said “rad.” To them it was a relic of the ‘80s, something they’d long moved past. And when Allison would protest that they were wrong, that she wasn’t a Valley Girl at all, it dawned on her that she was speaking with the whiny quality she often heard in the Vals back home.

Still, Allison resisted. She could have decided, to hell with them. Say it loud: I’m a Val and I’m proud! And I’m rad too!

But she didn’t. She tried to conform--which is, after all, just what a good Val would do.

Allison decided to tackle the biggest problem first. President Bush decided to boot the Iraqis out of Kuwait. Allison decided to kick “rad” out of her vocabulary.

“God, it was hard. It was the only word I had to express something beyond cool.”

In time, Allison conquered “rad.” And she learned to order pop, not that it fooled anybody. They knew she was a Val.

*

And now Allison’s back, living in the Valley, her Valley. She landed a job in that other Valley, the San Gabriel.

Funny thing about growing up here. Allison knew her Valley. She knows Hollywood and Malibu. But she says she’d never even been to the San Gabriel Valley until she got this job.

To make matters worse, Allison is lousy with directions. So on her first day at her new job, driving out to that strange land beyond Glendale, she feared she might get lost.

She didn’t. She never made a wrong turn. Allison drove into the lot and parked her car, as eager and excited as can be.

“Rad!”

She said it out loud.

The word just popped out, she says. For the first time in nearly four years.

Scott Harris’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Readers may write to Harris at the Times Valley Edition, 20000 Prairie St., Chatsworth, CA 91311. Please include a phone number.