[Work in progress, not fully edited]
Grades 7 through 10, ages 11 through 15 saw zero girlfriends in my life. After that, relationships got real. Girls no longer were playmates with dresses. We began rehearsing roles as lifemates. From now on, names will be changed to protect our memories.
First up, Elsie S., daughter of a doctor residing in upscale Amberly Village. For reasons never explained to me, she invited me to a “Sadie Hawkins” dance. She was a year behind me in school, meaning the same age as I. A lean, lithe cheerleader, her dark hair, corralled by a headband, flew side-to-side as she urged on the Eagles at Friday night football matches. She took her task seriously, never smiling while jumping with arms spread out and up, her sweater pulled high above the short pleated blue skirt shimmering down below.
I had a screw loose somewhere. The shock of being approached was total, blotting out any thought of a future between us. I don’t remember any conversations between us prior to the phone call inviting me out. As far as I could remember, we’d never even been in the same room together. I did have the sense to say, “Yes” when asked, but remember none of our date. Only that we must have danced and talked and ridden in a car together. Whether I drove or her father, I can’t recall. Only a sense that I was shy and quiet, and not what she’d expected.
It never occurred to me after our attempt at slow dancing that I should reciprocate and ask her to a movie the next weekend. I’d gone so long with a girl in my life that I couldn’t imagine letting one in again. I fell back into solitude, a caterpillar awaiting release.
That came a few months later when Sarah J. appeared at debate team practice one night accompanied by her sidekick Beth D. Like Elsie, they occupied the upper echelons of the class behind me. Newspaper editors, honor roll members, one a dancer, the other a brilliant bon vivant. And they both wanted to be cheerleaders, of a different sort than Elsie.
“We think the debate team is cool, and should have as much attention as the football and basketball teams,: they said when Miss Foley let them into her apartment where we prepared one evening a week for our competitions. They’d decided to adopt us, to attend our competitions, and “cheer” in a manner fitting the buttoned-up, rules-bound nature of debate tournaments. They would be our time-keepers.
Once again, as with Kathy, Judy, and Elsie, I didn’t quite know what was happening. I took them at face value, that the idea of the debate team was what attracted them. My partner, Bob, lived directly behind Sarah in Clifton, another upscale part of town. He was our Big Man On Campus, elected “Best All Around” in our senior poll. He already had a girlfriend, Page. I should have figured out he was not their quarry. And since Beth already had a boyfriend of her own, anyone with his eyes open would have seen that Sarah was after me, Beth and Bob scheming to make that happen.
The veil hiding Sarah’s intentions didn’t lift from my brain until they sent us a telegram after our victory at the regional debate tournament, signed “Love” with Sarah’s name first. That finally triggered the tom cat in me, and I called her up. I started writing poems to and about her, fantasizing about her, adopting her interests and aligning mine with hers. All the things a teenage boyfriend ought to do.I’d tell the rest of that story here, of the next five years, but I’ve already written a book about it, an “Imagined Memoir” called Love Rhymes [available in print or on Kindle from Amazon].