Once Met

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I grew up in a small town without entertainment options for teenagers. At the time I lived there, there was no bowling alley, no movie theater, and the best thing that could happen is the Friday night dance, which occurred after a football or basketball game in the rec center across the street and up the hill from the high school. Even then, those dances were only open to those in high school, and while the junior high was attached to the senior high, there was no shot of getting in unless you were in ninth grade or above. Everyone knew everyone; there was no pulling a fast one.

Unless you knew someone who was willing to sneak around to the back door of the rec center, once inside, and then surreptitiously let you in. I’m surprised none of the adults ever caught on to that, by the way.

Alas, the woeful experiences of a rural teen… I’m being completely honest when I tell you I’m still resentful that there is both a bowling alley and a movie theater now. They do me no good as an adult who lives hundreds of miles away.

The one thing we did have (if your parents weren’t interested in driving you 18 miles to the nearest town with some entertainment options—like a mall, or—count ‘em—two movie theaters) was a skating rink. Roller skating was a big deal to the middle school and junior high crowds in my town, unless you were like me: clumsy and prone to falling on your ass and embarrassing yourself in public WITHOUT the assistance of roller skates.

Still, this is where I ended up one Friday night.

Several of my friends were going, and had been planning for at least three days. This was highly exciting stuff. And because I desperately needed some entertainment of my own (you could imagine that if I were a SIM, both my fun and social meters would have been deeply in the red for most of my teen years), I begged my mother to allow me to go along. Surprisingly, she agreed, even though it required driving me there (after already returning home from work) from our very rural home, and then making an additional trip four hours later.

Another feather in the Nana’s cap.

The main reason I wanted to go—despite the fact that I couldn’t skate—is because HE promised he would be there. Even if he had to walk the three or four miles from his house to the outskirts of town, where the rink was located, in the November cold. We were going to meet there.

I was the holder of the booth when we were at the skating rink. As the person most unlikely to roller skate, and the person most likely to get there early, I would scoop up the best booth, and then help hold down the fort while our group was there. I usually was paid by my friends in nachos and those huge pixie sticks. This was an arrangement of mutual beneficence. I waited, fretting, in that booth until he arrived fashionably late and chilled to the bone from the wind.

I didn’t think he would actually make it there, or that I would have the best time of my young life.

He was the type of guy who did not get embarrassed by public attention—a rare feat in junior high. I didn’t matter to him if I could skate or not; in fact, he made it his personal mission to teach me (he failed, but it did involve holding hands, ohmygosh!).  He thought it was fun to tell the front desk that it was my birthday (it totally wasn’t) and have them make a big deal about me. He was talkative with all of my friends and funny, and yet he had the uncanny knack for being able to carry a private conversation amidst a sea of people. And hours later, once my mom returned to pick me up, he stood up with me, walked me to the door, asked if he could kiss me, and then proceeded to do so. Right in front of my mom.

She thought he was quite the gentleman, by the way.

Teenage romances don’t often last, and this one was no exception. We grew apart—although still friendly--and finally our relationship fizzled out until we no longer spoke to one another. Nevertheless, that date—which I didn’t even realize as a date until much later—was the standard upon which I would base many subsequent dates. His behavior towards me was the gold standard of what other boys’ behavior towards me should be. One meeting, one night that likely did not mean as much to him as it did to me, had the power to influence my judgment and my choices for many years to come.  

And the next time I met a boy who could carry on a private conversation in a sea of people, had the uncanny knack of making everyone in a room laugh along with him, and asked if he could kiss me? I married him.

This post was written in response to Mama Kat’s writing prompt: 2.) Describe where you were when you met a boy.