Quintessentially Quilly

Mocha With Linda has started her very own meme. This is how she describes it:

This new meme’s purpose is to have us take a look back and share about a specific time or event in our lives. It will be fun to see how similar – or different – our experiences have been!.

I think I am going to like this meme a lot.  Grab the button and the link and come play along. Linda’s theme this week is:

When was your first date? You can choose either your first date ever or your first date with your spouse – or both! How old were you? What did you do/where did you go? Did anything memorable – either good or embarrassing? If it was your first date ever, did you continue to date that person? If so, how long? If you are sharing the story of the first date with the person you married, did you know then that he/she was “the one” or did it take a longer for love to bloom? Any other memories you wish to share about those wonderfully awkward first dates?!

My first date was a self-induced nightmare. First-off, I have to explain that I hung out with a rather large group of kids. The girls in the group were always going on about how embarrassed they were over the way their dads treated the boys. My dad was kind and welcoming and friendly to the boys in my group.  I couldn’t help but wonder why.  I mean, it was obvious that my dad didn’t care about me the way the other dads cared about their daughters.  I decided a test was in order.

Three days after my 15th birthday — the age when it because permissible for me to date — I approached a young man I knew my father would take exception to and maneuvered the conversation very neatly so the boy in question asked me to the movies.  I coyly agreed.

That night at dinner I mentioned I had a date for Friday and Dad asked who.  I told him.  Dad looked kind of surprised and said, “Do we know him?” And upon discovering that they’d never met, Dad wanted to know why I wasn’t seeing someone from my regular group.  He told me he wanted to meet this new boy before we went anywhere.  I was rather pleased that my date had so easily served his purpose — but I still wanted to see how dad would react when he got a look at him.

This was the mid-1970’s.  We’ll call my date Harry, because he was.  Harry had hair that hung down to his waist.  He kept it tied back with a ratty piece of boot lace leather.  He generally wore army boots, holey blue jeans, white muscle shirts and plaid flannel shirts he never buttoned.  That’s what he was wearing when he arrived at my house on his bike.  Bike — as in bicycle.

It was a nice Spring evening.  My father was standing in the yard leaving on his rake and talking to the neighbor man over the fence when Harry rode his bike down the street, turned into our driveway, clipped the fence post with his left handlebar, lost control, careened into the back of Dad’s pickup and landed sprawled at my father’s feet.

Dad helped him up.  I watched the scene unfold through the living room window.  I was mortified but Harry, completely unfazed, hopped to his feet and introduced himself to my dad.  They chatted.  I wanted to rush outside and intervene, but my step-mom said a lady waited in the house for her escort.  This lady contemplated locking herself in the bathroom forever ….

So, to bring this painful episode to a rapid close: we rode our bicycles to the movie despite the fact that I had a driver’s license and a motorcycle. I was forbidden to ride double and Harry’s Schwinn never could have  kept up with my Yamaha. (I wasn’t certain at the time that that was a bad thing.)  I have no idea what we saw for a movie.  I do recall that our date ended at 8:30 p.m. because we had to get home before dark.

Surprisingly, I did see Harry a couple of more times after that.  He was a nice kid.  My beautician step-mom itched to cut his hair, and my dad marveled over his lack of coordination, but pronounced him likeably weird.   I think the kindest way to end this story is to tell you that about a year after our high school graduation, I encountered Harry in a favorite pizza joint downtown.  He was in full military uniform.  His hair was short and, he was looking sharp — and somewhere he’d found the coordination to become a paratrooper.

~*~

There’s no point in telling you all about my first date with Amoeba. We met in blog land and most of our relationship unfurled right her on this blog. You can find it moment by moment in the archives.