Well, there was Susie Hicks. I was walking down the hall with her between fifth and sixth hour, on our way to student council class. In my last year of high school I ran for student council. I won on a platform of promising to eliminate the homecoming queen contest. This immediately had me crossed off the list of every pretty girl in the school. But I didn’t care; I never stood a chance with them anyway.
Susie Hicks was the one exception. She was the vice president of her class, served on student council with me, sang in the high school musical, and was also a jock. She always laughed at my jokes and I, of course, somehow misconstrued that as her giving some thought to me as possible boyfriend material. I clearly didn’t understand that just because a girl likes you, it doesn’t mean that she likes you.
Susie and I had three long hallways to navigate before reaching student council, giving me plenty of time to make my move. I had worked out my pitch that morning in front of the mirror. Keep it cool, don’t make it sound like you’re asking her to go out on a date, have a backup plan to cover up my massive hurt and rejection if she says no. With an optimistic outlook like that, I was sure to score.
I spent all of hallway #1 walking with her and just trying to calm down and make my heart beat at regular intervals instead of watching it push its way through my shirt. Hallway #2 was spent trying to remember my lines—I had forgotten what to say, what to ask (but not who to ask, I knew who to ask, I was walking with her!). We rounded the bend into the third and final hallway and, with the last bit of oxygen I had left, I opened my mouth.
“Su-Susie,” I stammered, “I-I was thinking…”
And at that moment an incoming mortar round in the form of Nick West, captain of the basketball team, president of the class, and possessor of the stolen face of Robert Redford, flew in between us.
“Hey Susie!” he said, as he went in for a quick kiss. “See you after council!”
If anything, I was grateful for Nick’s interruption. I had no idea they were going together, and I would have suffered the worst form of humiliation had I actually been able to get the question out of my mouth. I breathed a sigh of relief. I felt no remorse that the world was an unfair place. To the contrary, I was glad to be reminded that I was not sent to Earth to date homecoming queens. Or at least that sounded good enough to get me through the next hour. (Yes, she became homecoming queen. I admit it—I desperately loved all homecoming queens, each and every single one of them.)
Admission: When it comes to social interaction, I am a shy person. Yes, me. My idea of an exciting Saturday night in high school was staying home and watching Mannix and Mission: Impossible on CBS (Friday night it was The High Chaparral and Nanny and the Professor). Occasionally I hung out with my guy friends, and when it looked like the planned activity of the evening didn’t involve violating state or federal laws or being driven around by a drunken sixteen-year-old, I was every bit the participant in lighting sacks of dog shit on people’s porches, then ringing the doorbell and running like hell.
But girls were far too intimidating to approach, and it was just as well. I had work to do, books to read, and… and… I forgot, but it was important! I was consoled only by statistics and probability: if there were 1.5 billion females on this planet, the chance that at least one of them would want to be with me was something like… 100 percent! So, she was out there. Somewhere. Maybe between Bay City and Sterling Heights, please? If it turned out that my one true love had been placed (mistakenly) in Slovenia, then I guess all I could do was sit back and hope that CBS would renew Mannix for another season.
Date #1
It was in my junior year when the gods, perhaps bored out of their omniscient minds from being so godlike perfect all the time, decided to play a practical joke on me, just to see me collapse into a puddle of misery. Out of nowhere, they sent Linda Milks, a senior—and a cheerleader!—over to my locker on the last day of the school year.
“Hey—I was thinking—you want to go out on a date with me?”
I assumed she was talking to someone else on the other side of the locker door, so I kept fumbling with my combination.
“Hey, you!” she said, gently slugging me in the shoulder. “You wanna go out with me?”
I was paralyzed with fear and unable to speak. The fear quickly turned into embarrassment as I looked around to see who sent her to play this mean-spirited prank on me. But there was no one around in the hallway. Just Linda, looking up at me with those rich brown eyes, long dark hair and a body (a girl’s body!) that was covered by a maroon and gold graduation gown.
“Um, me?”
“Yes, you! C’mon, it’ll be fun. You like me, don’t you?”
“Uh, yeah, sure. Sure, I mean, you’re… Linda!”
I was finally able to spit out a two-syllable word: “Lin-da.”
“Where’s your yearbook? I want to sign it.”
I fumbled around my locker for it and gave it to her. She wrote next to her senior photo: “Your friend is your needs answered. See page 200. Love, Linda.”
She then turned to page 200 in the yearbook and wrote a full-page letter to me about how much I meant to her and how she would always be there for me. She signed it again with “love.”
I stood there reading it, not having a clue what to say or do. I finally looked at her, the cheerleader, and she was all gooey-eyed and full of smiles. I wanted to ask her if she was high or had me confused with someone from shop class.
“Thank you. That’s very nice. People don’t usually write that sort of thing in my yearbook. Are you sure you don’t want to scratch any of this out?”
“Hahahaha! Silly! That’s why I love you. Well, here’s my number”—she was writing on a page she had torn out of her notebook—“give me a call this summer. Let’s go hang out and do something.”
“OK. I will. Thanks.”
“Don’t thank me yet! And don’t forget to call!”
Still not believing this was real, I checked to see if I was still alive: Uncombed hair? Check. Nose with the sinus condition? Check. Roll of fat? Check. Zits on forehead? Check. Yup, I was all there. Still me.
And that’s what the cheerleader just asked out?
Linda Milks was a year older than me. She decided to take speech class in her senior year and join the forensics team, an unusual move for a cheerleader. She wasn’t intensely interested in the topics covered, but she was interested in what I would say in class—especially if I did my Nixon impersonation. That would crack her up, and she would often turn around and flash me a smile that said… said what? I had no idea! She was a senior and a cheerleader and she was smiling at me. That was enough.
When she would ask me for help on an assignment I willingly gave it to her. But I would do that also for the farm kid in the hand-me-downs or the hoodlum who kept telling me he wanted to see if his fist could maybe help rearrange my face so I’d have “a better chance with the ladies.” But Linda said she was taking forensics to gain some “self-confidence,” and so I helped her with various ways and methods to give an effective speech. A couple times she stopped by my house to talk, but it wasn’t until I read her letter in my yearbook that I realized she was coming by for something more. She really wanted to be friends. I was clueless. I just thought I was getting the opportunity to practice talking to a senior girl, which was a major accomplishment in and of itself. I will admit I did like it when she wore her cheerleader uniform on game days. Made speech class come alive.
After school was out for the summer, I went a full month before I dared to dial her number, and only then after practice-dialing it a dozen times. I finally dialed it for real, and she answered. A deep breath, and then my proposal: we go to a matinee showing of a new film called Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, and we then go on a picnic to Richfield Park after the movie.
All innocent, safe, daylight activities. She loved the idea and said to pick her up Saturday at noon.
The most important part of this was that my parents were to have no clue I was
going out on a date. If they were to find out, there would be an inquisition I imagined I would not survive.
Who is she?
What? She’s older than you?
She’s not Catholic?
She’s a cheerleader?
Are you sure she doesn’t have you confused with another Mike?
We don’t know her.
She lives where?
Who are her parents?
How come we’ve never heard of her?
What kind of grades did she get?
She’s not going to college?
Wait, give me your yearbook. This is her? Oh, no siree, you’re not going anywhere with her!
Something like that, but with more questions.
So the trick was to get the car for the afternoon without any suspicions being raised. I told them I was picking up a couple guys and we were going to go play twenty-seven holes at the Flint Park golf course. This was a lot of golf, especially for me. But I’m sure they were happy to hear that I was getting any kind of exercise, so the keys were handed over and I was off to the Promised Land.
The birth control seat (I mean, the bucket seat) had not yet been mass-produced, so car seats were just one long bench. And when Linda got in the car, she slid over next to me—and I had no idea how I would be able to drive after that. Did I mention she was a cheerleader? Did I tell you about the perfect smile and the angel-white skin and the way her legs crossed like twin beams designed to withstand the worst earthquakes? I didn’t think so.
We went to the Dort Mall Cinema, one of the first generation of mall theaters that were designed for “extra comfort,” and in this case that meant they had stiff metal-backed seats that reclined so you could be more “relaxed.” At least one of us relaxed during Willy Wonka. I was anything but. I don’t remember much about the movie because I couldn’t stop worrying about the picnic lunch I left in my car. I had put a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken in the trunk and it was a ninety-degree day. My other worry was, What was I doing at a children’s movie on my first date? Nevertheless, Linda thought it was sweet and she told me as we left that most boys wouldn’t have taken her to a movie like that. I did not take that as a compliment. I wanted to be like most boys.
The second half of the date went better. First, we didn’t die of food poisoning. We found a nice place in the park and I broke out the bucket of chicken and some warm lemonade, laid a blanket out on the grass and we sat and talked about Vietnam, Mrs. Corning’s art class, and Rod Serling’s Night Gallery. She told me how I’d been good for her, and I looked at her and tried to figure out what she meant. Then it was time to go (I had to get the car back). We tossed the scraps in the trash barrel, rolled the blanket back up, and got in the car. I drove her home. We sat in the driveway.
“Thanks for the neat time,” she said.
“You’re welcome. I had a nice time.”
“Was this your first date?” she asked sympathetically.
“Uh, what do you mean? No, I’ve gone out. Lots.”
She smiled and leaned over and kissed me on the cheek.
“Let’s do this again,” she said.
Again?! You mean, go through all this again? I was exhausted.
“Sure,” I said. “That’ll be fun.”
She got out, flashed another one of her sweet smiles, and I never saw her again.
Date #2
Sharon Johnson was the vice president of the student council. We often clashed and voted on opposite sides of the issues. She was very much for everyone getting along and finding “common ground.” By the time I was a senior, I wanted to organize walkouts, boycotts of the lunchroom, and study-hall revolts. She hated hippies but played folk guitar in the choir and led the school in “Where Have All the Flowers Gone” at the spring talent show. She thought student council should plan school dances and hold theme-oriented “fun days.” I thought student council should ask why we had no black teachers. She’d roll her eyes and shake her head at me.
She was perfect dating material.
It had been nearly four months since my one and only date and, being a teenage boy, I was going a bit bonkers. And what better way to push myself right off the cliff than to get fixated on a girl who found me slightly reprehensible?
The local congressman, Don Riegle, a liberal Republican at the time (he later switched parties), had asked to meet with two student reps from each of the county’s high schools at his office in Flint. Sharon and I were picked from Davison High. I offered to drive and told her I would pick her up.
It was early on a Saturday morning when I pulled in her driveway. I honked to let her know I was there (getting out of the car and knocking on the door might make me seem too forward; had to play it cool). There was no response, so I honked a second time. At that moment she appeared at her upstairs bedroom window. She was wearing only a bra.
“Hold your horses!” she shouted down at me. “I heard you the first time!”
Simply wishing she had more lines to yell at me so she could stand there a bit longer in her underwear wasn’t going to make it happen. She abruptly closed the window. My eyes were frozen on that window and I waited anxiously for the encore.
But when I saw her next, she was coming out the front door, this time fully clothed.
“Let’s go,” she ordered. “And quit staring at my chest.”
“Whaddaya mean—you just showed me your chest!”
That was the best I could do? Act upset? Like I was mad I got to (sorta) see her breasts? Jesus, I could have thought of something nice to say, I could have offered her a compliment or an indication that she looked nice, I might have even figured out that she came to the window that way because she liked me. But that possibility was nowhere to be found in the shallow pool that passed for my total lifelong experience with girls.
We were late for the congressman’s meeting. So what? I got to see Sharon Johnson in a bra! I was unable to listen to anything the congressman had to say, as I was trying to remember and store those entire four seconds at her window.7
When the time came to send the high school kids on their way, I went up to Mr. Riegle to ask for a favor.
“Congressman,” I said, “I was wondering if you would come to our high school and speak about the war?”
“If it fits with my schedule, sure. Just check with my staff here and we’ll see if we can set it up.”
I drove Sharon back to her house. She was not happy with my request of the congressman, as he was famous for being only one of two Republicans in Congress who were opposing Nixon’s reelection over the issue of the war. Sharon felt that my invitation to Riegle was sure to upset our high school principal.
“What’s Mr. Scofield going to say when the congressman calls and says he can speak at the school?” she asked, perturbed. “Do you think he’ll be able to tell a congressman no? Of course not!”
“I’m glad you’re with me on this,” I said with a grin. “You wanna go to a movie sometime?”
Wow. I did it. I said it. And all it took was to see a functioning bra in use.
But wait! Oh, no—here comes the rejection.
“Sure. How ’bout next Saturday night?”
“Sure.”
“See you in student council Monday.”
And on Monday we were right back at it, with her voting with the majority to shoot down my latest proposal to declare “Church Night” unconstitutional (no after-school activities were allowed on Wednesday nights in Davison’s public schools, as that was the night the Protestant churches in town held their midweek church services).
When Saturday came around I picked out the movie to take her to, something I had seen back in the summer and could not get enough of: Billy Jack. This movie, I believed, would convert her to my worldview. In the movie, an ex–Green Beret is now a Zenlike Native American who takes on the local town rednecks and conservatives when they try to shut down a hippie “free school.” And there were breasts in the movie!
It was a chilly fall evening as I p
ulled my dad’s Impala into her driveway. This time I got out and went to the door. Her father answered and greeted me with the justifiable suspicion that was required in those days. As he did a quick scan into my eyes, let’s just say he did not like what he saw. Sharon appeared wearing a sweater that was modest but low-cut enough to confirm her father’s assessment of what the two of us were up to.
“When do you plan to have her home?” he asked.
“As soon as the movie is over, Mr. Johnson,” I said doing my best Eddie Haskell impersonation. “Just two hours, sir.”
“OK, don’t make it past eleven thirty.”
OK. Eleven thirty. Perfect. That should give us a good twenty minutes of making out, whatever that was.
We got in the Chevy and closed the doors. I put the key in the ignition and turned it. Nothing. I turned it again. Still nothing. Dead. I pumped the gas pedal and tried to start it again. Silence. This car was not going anywhere. Fortunately it was dark enough to cover how red my face was.
“Wow. I’m so sorry,” I said. “It does this from time to time. Needs a new battery, I think.”
“So, what are we going to do?” Sharon said, in a coquettish voice.
“I guess we could ask your dad for a jump.”
“Yes, we could do that. I think it’s a bad idea.”
“So, what do you suggest?”
“We could just sit here and talk.”
“Sure,” I said. “But won’t he see us out here?”
“You can’t see anything out here from in there at night. He’ll never look out here ’til it gets near eleven thirty. Plus, he thinks we’ve already left.”
Huh. OK. Seemed like a plan. And so we talked.
We talked about teachers we liked and didn’t, we talked about having siblings, we talked about the football team and the choir and where each of us were thinking of going to college. We even talked about our battles on student council.
Here Comes Trouble Page 20