Freckles Rule, Boys Drool - Memories of Me Monday

TODAY'S MEMORY JOGGER: "What is the most outrageous thing you did as a teenager?"

Heh.  I really don't want to go there. Yet.  Not to mention, I did so many outrageous things as a teenager that I simply can't decide which one to write about!  So I'm going to take creative liberty and write about the most outrageous thing I did before I became a teenager.

If you've been following my "Memories of Me Monday" posts you already know that I was very shy as a child.  So shy that my older brother, Mike, was able to tell his friends that I only had half a tongue, which was why I never talked, and they believed him. 

That's why what I did one day at the age of nine really can be called outrageous.  How did I have the nerve??  Why would I have ever thought to do something like that??

But first, let me set the scene:

Just up the street from us, in a large corner house, was a family with six or seven boys, all in a row, all mean, and then finally, a girl, perhaps a year younger than me.  They were the Snedigers.  Like I said, they had a LOT of boys, all older than me, and all mean, hateful creatures.  One or more were probably pals with my brother, though I really don't remember for sure.

I do remember that they were all mean to me.  On the schoolbus or around our neighborhood, whenever they saw me, the taunting began.  At nine years old I had realized that pretty much every kid got teased about something, but I still thought I had more than my fair share of things to be teased about, that I somehow was still less OK than other kids. 

First of all, I was a girl.  That was the Snediger boys favorite topic: "little girl," "girly," "baby," and "crybaby" were among the names I was called.  As you've probably already guessed, I refused to answer back.  I just kept silent.

Secondly, I never spoke when they were around.  Ever.  Fuel to that fire was my brother's claim that I only had half a tongue.  It was endless, the things they tried, to get me to open my mouth and stick out my tongue so they could get a good look at it.  No way would I do that.  Instead I endured what seemed like very long bus rides to school, on the days that I was their target.  Thankfully, this didn't happen every day.  In fact, I think I may have been their last resort tease.  If the Snediger brothers and their friends hadn't found someone to pick on before I climbed on the bus, then I was It.  The best days were when they were already fixated on someone else.

Finally, I had freckles.  Boy-howdy, that was like a goldmine to those boys.  "Freckle-faced strawberry" was something I heard a lot, thanks to the Kool-Aid flavor of the same name.  But more hurtful was just the stuff they made up, like that I had some dread disease that produced the spots on my face, and that everyone should stay away from me or they'd end up spotted, too.

Yeah, those Snediger boys had the goods on me. I remember being relieved when the school year ended and summer began.  It would be three months before I had to ride the bus again and, by then, maybe the Snedigers would have moved away.  Meanwhile, I planned to avoid them all summer.

It couldn't have been more than three weeks later that I saw the youngest Snediger kid, the girl, out riding her bike.  I was in our front yard, just wandering around in the tall grass, swinging a stick at the heads of dandelions.  I think I may have been a bit bored.  Then I saw the girl on her bike; she'd just exited the driveway of her family's home, and was heading down the street toward me.

I have no idea now what was in my head that day, as I strolled toward the street edge of our lawn, my eyes on the girl.  As she reached our driveway, I reached the street.  Our eyes locked as she pedaled closer, until her front tire was just about to pass in front of me.

With one swift motion I thrust my stick between the spokes of that front tire.  As the wheel continued its forward rotation the stick jammed against the frame and the bike flipped completely over, and so did the girl.

She let out a short, sharp scream and then landed with a dull thud in the street.  I just stood there, the stick still in my hand, for about two beats of my heart.

Then I ran.

From the living room window I saw her pick up her bike, get back on, and ride toward home, wobbling a bit.  She looked back, once, at my house.  My heart was in my throat.  What had I done?  And how badly were those brothers of hers going to beat me when she told them about it?

I was terrified.

I was also horrified that I'd done something so mean and hateful, to someone younger than me, and who had never once been mean to me.  Her brothers had, yes, but she hadn't.

Looking back with an adult's intelligence I have to wonder if what I did came from months of pent-up anger against the teasing I'd endured, and that I finally saw my chance at retaliation.  If I couldn't get my revenge directly against the brothers, I'd take it out on their little sister.

Or, maybe I just have a mean streak.

FOR NEXT WEEK: "Which of the following would you characterize as your taste: sour-crunchy, sweet-sugar,  or sugar-fats?"

Back to School Way Back When - Memories of Me Monday

{Franklin Park - formerly Franklin Elementary School; Redondo Beach, CA.}

 
TODAY'S MEMORY JOGGER: "Describe the grade schools you attended (what were the buildings like, the area; did you walk or bus), and physical descriptions."

Most of my grade school years were spent in the suburbs of Los Angeles.  All southern California elementary schools looked alike in those days.  Three or four classrooms were strung together in long rectangular buildings separated by concrete walkways and some grass and trees.  At one or the other end of the classrooms were the bathrooms, and sometimes an audio-visual room.  One row would also have the library, which was the same size as the classrooms.  Another long building usually stretched perpendicularly across one end of the row of classrooms, with space between for walkways.  This was the administration building and the front of the school.

There'd be a huge square of asphalt behind the school, that was the playground.  It was partitioned off into a number of zones: the kindergarten play-yard was always separate from the other kids; there was another fenced off area where we parked our bikes and which was closed and locked during the day; an area closest to the classrooms held the playground equipment (slides, swings, monkey bars, parallel and chin-up bars, teeter-totters, and a merry-go-round); there was a grassy area in a back corner with a baseball backstop where we played ball games; the rest of the playground was either open space, or were painted with lines designating basketball, tetherball or dodgeball, hopskotch, and foursquare.

There was no cafeteria.  We all brought lunch from home and if you forgot yours, hopefully your mom would bring it to you, or the teacher or other students would share theirs with you.  We had metal lunchboxes with thermoses and our moms packed tuna or peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, cookies, and fruit, and milk.  No one had yet come up with the bright idea of installing soda or snack vending machines on school grounds.  You ate what your mom packed or you traded with the other kids.

That would've been a pretty typical California elementary school in the 1960's.  All of the students walked to school, or rode their bikes.  No one lived so far away that they had to be bussed or driven to school.  We went to school with the same kids we were neighbors with.  Our parents all knew each other.  Our moms were active in the PTA and were our Room Mothers.  Our dads volunteered in the Boy Scouts, put us to work in the yards or garage on weekends, and did all the home repairs.

There were no drugs at school, except maybe an aspirin from the school nurse if you were running a fever.  But even that was rare; our moms were at home so if we got sick, they came and got us.

 {a school similar to how I remember Eden Prairie Elementary School}

I attended the 3rd and 4th grades in Minnesota where the schools were very different.  Instead of rows of classrooms with outdoor walkways, in cold-weather Minnesota the elementary schools were one huge multi-floored brick building.  Classrooms lined either side of long dusty hallways.  The bathrooms, or washrooms, as they were called, held rows of stalls (at least in the girl's, I never saw the boy's facilities) and, in a large open area at one end was a round, free-standing sink, about belly-height to a 9-year old.  Girls could gather all around the edges of this sink, step on a chrome ring that circled it at floor level, and hold their hands under the sheet of water from the round faucet in the center.

I loved that sink!  It was very social.  We girls would stand there letting the warm water run over our hands, and chat.  We had a great time in there, sharing secrets and giggling.  There was a lot of camaraderie.  The teachers often had to run us out of there.  I've rarely seen "communal" sinks like that since those two years in a Minnesota grade school.  It's really a shame.

In California we had huge windows on both sides of our classrooms, a hard sheeting on the floor that always seemed dusty, and a small closet for our coats and lunches. You could tell what time of the year it was, or what the class was currently studying, by the drawings and projects taped to the windows.  The teacher had a large desk at the front of the room, where huge blackboards covered the wall.  There was a white projection screen, and maps, that could be rolled down out of metal tubes above the chalkboard.  Our desks were one piece with plastic chairs, a laminate surface for the desktop. and a basket under the chair to hold our books and papers.  I can't remember for sure whether the laminate tops were hinged and opened into a storage well, but they probably did.

Our desks in Minnesota were similar in that they were all one piece, but there was no basket underneath, and they had had a very deep well for our books under the hinged wooden lid.  The lids had inkwells so obviously they'd been around a long time!  Just inside the well was a tray for our pencils and crayons but we used them for another purpose as well.

Eating powdered Jell-O gelatin was very popular then; we'd sneak a box out of our mom's kitchen and take it to school.  There, we'd carefully pour a small mound of the green, red, yellow, or orange powder onto a corner of the pencil tray.  Then, throughout the day we could slip a moistened finger inside our desk and then nonchalantly bring that finger to our mouths for an sneaky treat.  It got so popular that it was bound to be found out, and jello was soon banned from our classrooms.  I remember well my 4th grade teacher, Mr. Lindgren, striding up and down the rows of desks checking every student's fingers for tell-tale stains!

In Minnesota, like in California, we taped our special papers and projects to the windows.  But the windows were a lot smaller and when your classroom is on the 2nd floor there isn't going to be anyone walking by outside to see the papers, so we taped them facing in toward the class instead of out.  Our classroom floors were wood, and so were the long hallways.  Inset into the walls outside each classroom was a long bench with hooks above and space underneath.  This is where we sat to remove our knit hats, mittens, scarves, boots, and snowsuits when we arrived at school on a winter morning, and where we again sat at the end of the day to bundle back up.  The same routine was repeated to go outside to the playground, where we went on all but the coldest of days.  There was also a large glassed-in display window, similar to what you'd see at a department store.  The back opened into our classroom.  There were glass shelves.  This is where we displayed some of the projects we worked on; usually art projects.

Once, during a arts and crafts period, I got creative and made some 3-dimension animals out of construction paper.  I had horses and cows, dogs and cats, and even an elephant.  Mr. Lindgren was so impressed he dedicated the display window of our classroom to my creations for two whole weeks.  I was very proud.

Minnesota was much more rural than where I'd lived in California.  Houses were further apart from each other, there was no little corner store, and school was definitely not within walking distance.  We were bussed from our housing subdivisions to school.  Can you imagine how long it must have taken my mom to get three of us out of the house in full winter regalia?  Not to mention keeping an eye on my two little sisters, who weren't in school yet.  Actually, it was just Mike and I who took the early bus; Steve was in Kindergarten, and his bus came about an hour later.  Which was a good thing because whenever Mike and I didn't manage to get out of the house and over to the bus stop in time, we simply waited and got on the bus with "the little kids."  That was embarrassing, though, and we had to take notes, from mom, so we'd be excused for arriving late.

I didn't like riding the bus, either one.  I was so shy that it was a daily challenge to screw up my courage and climb those steps.  Our bus was crowded and I never knew if there'd be an empty seat next to a child who wouldn't tease me or pick on me.  Boys were the worst, the 6th grade boys, a terror.  Bullies gravitate to children who are timid so I got my share of pokes, jeers, and rude comments.  They often tried to get me to talk but I'd grit my teeth and just stare straight ahead.  I don't remember ever saying a word on the bus.  My brother told the other boys that I only had  half a tongue, and that's why I never spoke.  They all wanted to see that for themselves but I never gave in.

Our bus passed by a golf course.  Every day I'd stare out the window and try to see down into the ditch between the road and golf course.  The older kids had passed the rumor that there was a decapitated corpse in that ditch.  I wished desperately to catch a glimpse of it, but was also terrified of that wish might coming true.

In Minnesota we had a huge cafeteria at school.  My brother and I usually brought lunch from home but now and then we were thrilled to be given 25 cents to buy the school lunch.  You collected a plastic tray at one end of the long metal counter.  As you moved down the counter you were handed a plate of food, perhaps a small dish of jello, and a piece of fruit.  At the other end was the cashier who also presided over racks of milk cartons.  You were allowed one carton of milk with your lunch.  If you wanted another carton of milk it cost a penny.

Yes, a penny!

There was a small white dish at the cashier's table for us to put the pennies in.  This way she didn't have to stop ringing up the student's lunches, taking money and giving change, and could keep the line of students moving.  We also didn't have to wait in line again.

I don't know where I got the bright idea that I could just pretend to put a penny in the dish.  I like to think it was my brother, Mike's, idea, but I have to confess I think it was actually all my own.  I only did it a few times - I'd walk up to the cashier when she was very busy. I'd have my thumb and first two fingers pinched together as though I were holding a penny.  Then I'd pretend to place it in the dish, at the same time giving the existing pennies a little swirl to create the tell-tale rattle of coins. 

Then I'd pick up my carton of milk and head back to the lunch table.  I thought I was pretty dang clever!

Yeah, it's hard to believe I was brave enough to do that.  It seems totally out of character but maybe it was a way to make myself feel better after the crap I'd get handed on the bus nearly every day.  A way to prove to myself that I wasn't a complete retard.  I wasn't brave enough to ever tell anyone, though . . . 'til now. . . gee, I hope that school doesn't come after me for their three cents.


FOR NEXT WEEK: "Describe at least one family tradition that you remember from childhood.  Do you have a favorite tradition?  Describe that one.  Which did you like the least?  Describe that one, too."

My Secret to Good Health - Memories of Me Monday

TODAY'S MEMORY JOGGER:  "What is your secret or recipe for good health?"

When I was in the 6th grade I joined a diet club to lose weight (I've always had the vaguely held idea that if you stayed slim you stayed healthy). Actually, my two best friends, Judy Rich and Jill Brunson and I created the club ourselves.  We were the only members.  We planned to meet once a week at Jill's house.  During our first meeting we weighed ourselves and wrote the date and our weights in a little notebook.  I had a tiny calorie-counting book that I'd bought at the dimestore that we carefully studied, picking out the foods with the least calories and planning to only eat those foods.  But when you're an active 11-year old girl it's a little hard to just eat lettuce and radishes, especially when you don't even like radishes!

The club didn't last long.  We went on to create other clubs, the three of us, including a plant club where we all purchased tiny seedlings and measured their growth each week, a writing club (we were all working on novels), and a music club, where we kept track of the songs we heard on the radio each day, and how many times we heard them (a practice Judy and I continued for several years even after this club went the way of the others).

Truth be told, however, my "secret" to good health was my parents.  The food we ate was predominantly freshly prepared and homemade.  Spaghetti sauce was made from scratch, as was mac 'n cheese (no blue box full of preservatives), beef stew, fried chicken, sloppy joes, enchilada casserole, meat loaf, and creamed tuna on toast.  Sometimes we kids got hamburgers while my mom and dad each enjoyed a steak.  My mom was too thrifty to cook steak for us; it was too expensive, and we were surely too young to appreciate it.  Now and then when my mom was too busy to cook we ate Campbell's Pork 'n Beans and boiled hot dogs, a meal we called "weiners and beaners,"  or Campbell's tomato soup & grilled cheese sandwiches.

As for vegetables, we kids mainly got served canned peas, canned peas & carrots, canned green beans (my most despised veggie), or canned corn; once in a while we got creamed corn.  Potatoes were baked in the oven and had a hard, sometimes crispy skin (which we kids wouldn't eat); sometimes they were mashed or boiled.  My parents ate cauliflower, broccoli, spinach, and lima beans, but my mom seldom bothered trying to serve them to us - I expect she figured why waste good food and money when we were sure to refuse to eat them?  I don't think I ever saw a brussel's sprout, fresh spinach (instead of frozen), kale, mustard greens, any kind of squash, or even knew that peas grew inside a pod until I was an adult.

Salads were iceberg lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers and radishes, with Thousand Island dressing.  Grocery stores hadn't yet begun offering the vast variety of leafy greens you see now.  Arugula?  We'd have thought that was some kind of exotic, foreign dish!

My mom did go through some phases with our family meals.  There was the time period when she was grinding all her own wheat in the basement of our home in Minnesota.  I think that only lasted a few years, but she baked bread my entire childhood (at the time I had no idea how lucky I was).  Then there was the "Spam phase."  We got spam-burgers, spam and eggs, spam casseroles, and spam loaf.  I liked it best fried 'til crispy with eggs (to this day I get the occasional craving for Spam 'n eggs).  Another time she experimented with a soy meat substitute that I remember as being the consistency of mealy ground meat.  It wasn't bad tasting, but it was hard to get my siblings and I to even try anything new, let alone accept it as part of our "normal" family meal routine.  As soon as we knew it wasn't really beef, we rebelled against it.

My dad cooked, too, but he was mainly a breakfast kind of guy.  He was the one who made Spam 'n eggs most often, usually on weekends.  He also like to fry up slices of bologna.  He was our designated pancake-maker, and he was the one who most often wrestled with our heavy waffle iron, forcing it to give up perfectly crisped waffles.  He fried eggs and scrambled eggs and, when he didn't feel like cooking, got out the Cheerios and Corn Flakes and poured us each a bowl with sliced bananas and whole milk.

My mom packed our lunches for school, too, not to mention my Dad's lunch that he took to work every weekday for over 50 years. Our sandwiches were nearly always on my mom's homemade bread (which we didn't appreciate then, but sure do now); tuna w/mayo and a bit of lettuce, or peanut butter and jelly or, less often, bologna.  There was always a piece of fruit, an apple, orange, or banana, and two homemade cookies, usually chocolate chip.  I remember having a lunchbox off and on during my school years, with a thermos of milk, but I remember a lot more years of just using a brown paper bag and buying a carton of milk in the cafeteria.  In Minnesota, in the 60's, I can remember that milk costing just one penny!

We may not have had fancy meals, but we had well-balanced meals. Mom kept up with the current info on what constituted a well-balanced diet, and she made sure we were fed appropriately.  Apart from the usual childhood illnesses (measles, mumps, and chicken pox), and the occasional bout of 'flu, I was hardly ever sick.

Thanks to my "secret" to good health.  Thanks, Mom and Dad!

FOR NEXT WEEK: "Talk about, describe, the oddest or most unique person in your family tree."  Uh oh!

Stand Up, Sit Down, Fight, Fight, Fight!

TODAY'S MEMORY JOGGER: "Do you have a special school memory?"

So many memories come to mind it would be a very long post if I tried to include them all so, since my time is limited today, I'm going to pick just one.

Yes.  It was very difficult to pick just one!

I will say, though, the one I've picked is an all-time favorite.

In 1971 I had just entered Redondo Union High School in Redondo Beach, CA., as a freshman.  Go Seahawks!!!  My BFF, Judy, and I had both tried out for the drill team.  We'd gone to weeks & weeks of after-school practice, performed the routines in front of the leaders & current members of the team, and now the day had rolled around when we'd find out whether or not we'd made the cut.

Each girl who had made it would receive notification during one of her morning classes.  A current member of the drill team would come to the class, hand the teacher a note, and then leave.  The teacher would then read out the name of the girl who'd made the team.

Sounds so nice and personal, right?  True, it was much nicer than everyone crowding around a list and then either squealing happily, or walking away dejectedly, but it did make for a very nerve-wracking morning!  In every class, every time someone walked by in the hall, or came into the room, my heart would pound and I'd wonder, is this it???  And every time it wasn't "it," I would be sure that I hadn't made the team.

Thank goodness I only had to sit on the pins-and-needles through the middle of my second period class.  Geography.  In came a girl dressed in the red-and-white drill team outfit to hand a folded piece of paper to the teacher.

"Well, Miss Hansen," he said, and gave me a smile.  "Looks like you've made the drill team.  That's quite an accomplishment."

Those were his very words, his exact words.  I remember them so well because, not only was I super-excited to have made the team, but they were the only words of praise I ever received from this particular teacher -- I didn't do at all well in his class!

I couldn't wait to see Judy at the mid-morning break which was called "Nutrition" but, based on what we all bought from the vending machines, would have been more aptly named "Junk Food."  The minute I saw her, though, I could tell by her expression that she hadn't yet gotten her own good news. I tried to reassure her; there were still two more classes before lunch.

As I remember it, Judy and I had 4th period together, the last class before lunch. I don't remember the subject of the class, I want to say History, but I'm really not sure.  At any rate, I can recall how sad Judy was in class that day, because third period had come and gone, and now it was fourth period, her last chance to get notified, and by then she had pretty much convinced herself that she hadn't made the team.

I was bummed, too, because I couldn't imagine drill team being even remotely as much fun without Judy there, too; after all, we did everything together! We'd spent hours in our yards practicing the try-out routines and encouraging each other, and it was just inconceivable that we hadn't both made it, we both knew those routines perfectly!  We'd even already learned most of the cheers that we'd be screaming from the bleachers, including this one:

Lean to the left,

Lean to the right,

Stand up,

Sit down,

Fight!  Fight!  Fight!

We'd already made our red-and-white pompoms!

The clock kept ticking relentlessly toward noon, and Judy's head got lower and lower.  I knew how bad she felt, and I felt terrible, too.  It was just unbelievable that we hadn't both been chosen, that we wouldn't be having this very important high school experience together.  If we weren't both on the team I didn't know if I wanted to be on it at all.

I was just beginning to think I'd forego drill team for my freshman year, and then Judy and I could both try out again as sophomores, when the door opened.  Ten minutes before the end of class.  It was a drill team member and in her hand she carried The Note!

If the Los Angeles Harbor Light had burned out we could've just stood Judy up on top of it to keep the ships safe, that's how much she beamed!

NEXT WEEK'S MEMORY JOGGER: "Tell about a frustrating experience you've had with a car."

 

Learning to Drive - Memories of Me Monday

"Tell about how, when and where you learned to drive. Any memorable experiences?"

I took Driver's Ed in high school. In those days, the mid-1970's, it was part of the public school curriculum. We had classroom instruction, learned the basics of behind-the-wheel technique in simulators (which we called "stimulators") then, finally, piled into white sedans in groups of 3 or 4 plus an instructor to practice in the school parking lot and surrounding neighborhood.

We also got to watch really gory movies of car crashes. I guess those were to scare us into behaving once we got our licenses and were out on our own!

My mom and dad both let me practice in the family station wagon, while they sat nervously in the passenger seat. From the start I was a pretty crappy driver. I just didn't get the big picture. I understood the driving laws, from the classroom instruction, but the simulators had done nothing to prepare me for a real car, and my behind-the-wheel time at school was limited to about 15 minutes a couple of times a week for only a few weeks.

The simulators were in a small trailer parked on the school property. We sat in chairs with a steering wheel in front of us and gas and brake pedals at our feet. Projected onto a large screen at the front of the room was a movie of an empty road as seen through the windshield of a moving car. We all pretended we were steering our "cars" along the road, pressing the gas or brake pedals as instructed. I suppose the point of the exercise was just to get the feel of putting our hands and feet on the the wheel and pedals.

I passed the class and a few months before my 16th birthday my mom took me to the DMV to get my learner's permit.

During the driving test, I was so nervous I made a left turn in front of oncoming traffic.

Automatic fail; the test was aborted immediately.

More practice with mom and dad and, as soon as I could I went back at the DMV. I had some additional motivation this time because I had invited a boy to the Sadie Hawkins Dance and I wanted to be able to pick him up.

Nervous again, I was unable to properly execute the 3-point parallel parking maneuver.

Fail!

My dad was incredulous. The next time he took me out driving he noticed that I wasn't looking ahead, but down at the ground in front of the car. He asked me what I was looking at and I told him the line in the middle of the road. I was following it! He told me to keep my eyes on the road ahead. That helped me stay more in the middle of my lane, but I still had trouble negotiating turns and parking. Finally, my dad realized I was having trouble judging distances. A trip to the eye doctor revealed I had very weak vision in my left eye leaving me with virtually no depth perception.

No wonder I'd totally bombed when I took tennis in P.E.! Not to mention the two failed driving tests.

I got glasses and I got my license.


FOR NEXT WEEK! "What tradition at Christmas is your very favorite?"

Bodies of Water - Memories of Me Monday

{The memory jogger for today, as posted last Monday (click here to read last week's Memory of Me post): "Tell about how you feel about water -- playing in it -- seeing it -- tell about the various bodies of water you have seen and an experience or feeling about each."}

I don't remember the first time I saw the ocean, or the first lake that I dipped my toes into, or whether I was ever scared of water as a very young child, but I do remember that my first kiss took place underwater.

When I was ten I had my first boyfriend. His name was Alan Carter, and he was my older brother, Mike's, friend so he'd have been in the 6th grade while I was in 5th. At that time my brother was "going steady" with my best friend, Teri. The four of us used to hang around in the neighborhood acting all big because we were "couples." Of course, the boyfriend/girlfriend relationship at ages 10 & 11 didn't consist of much more than holding hands, and of Teri and I wearing St. Christopher's medals, given to use by the boys, around our necks. Still, it did give us a little boost up the elementary school playground social ladder!

I was quite shy, and so was Alan, at least when he was around me. He pretty much took his lead from my brother who, as a natural-born leader always had followers. One Saturday they came across a yard sale and they bought Teri and I each a stuffed animal. Mike paid 10 cents for the yellow bear he gave to Teri, and Alan spent a nickel for my green floppy-earned rabbit. Teri and I thought they were boss, and displayed them proudly in the center of our beds.

Another time, in early December,we were still outside past dark. I'm not sure how we got away with that; we were supposed to be home as soon as the streetlights came on. On this night, it had been dark for awhile, and the Christmas lights in our neighborhood were all on. It was a crisp and very clear southern California night. In spite of the streetlights and Christmas lights, the stars in the sky shone bright and crystal-white, and it seemed they hung very low over our heads. We could see decorated Christmas trees behind many of the large picture windows of the houses we walked past, and sometimes the movement of people. It was very quiet, and the only sound was the crunch of dry leaves under our shoes.

One house had a waist-high wooden fence covered with ivy and on twined with strands of Christmas lights. These were not the mini-lights, or the dangling icicle-style that you see everywhere now. The lights used in the late 60's were still the larger sized bulbs, painted in bold colors, and they probably used way more electricity than would now be considered eco-friendly. Nor did they stay cool to the touch the way most holiday lights do these days.

My brother stopped at the fence and took up an overly casual stance. Alan, Teri, and I gathered in a loose semi-circle, wondering what was up. Mike had a roguish look on his face that I was quite familiar with; he was about to do something he shouldn't.

Sure enough, he reached out and quickly unscrewed a red bulb. It went dark in his hand, came free of its base, and disappeared into the pocket his jacket. Chuckling, he strolled off. Teri and I stared at each other, momentarily stunned, but then we grinned because we were just as thrilled by Mike's daring than we were horrified at his thievery.

Alan saw his chance to also play the confident & daring bad-boy, and quickly followed Mike's example. He grasped a green bulb, twisted it, and slid it into his pocket. We hurried after my brother, Teri and I clutching each other and giggling almost hysterically. After we'd caught up with Mike and calmed down a bit, Teri moved forward to walk beside him and Mike draped an arm across her shoulders. Alan and I fell into step together and fell silent, shy again.

After a few minutes, Alan took my hand. That alone caused a ripple of sheer excitement to run down my back and warm my belly. Then Alan lifted my hand, placed the still-warm bulb in my palm, and closed my fingers over it. He guided my closed fist into his jacket pocket and slid his hand in with mind, wrapping his fingers around mine.

My knees went weak, and I knew I'd love him forever.

What can I say? I was ten, it was my first experience of what I would later learn to call romance and, as it turned out, it was unforgettable. The underwater kiss? Oh, that had happened at least a couple of months earlier, possibly even before school started in September.

A group of us kids were at the local high school swimming pool which was open to the public when not in use by the school. Alan and I were standing on the edge of the pool. He was wearing one of those nose-clips that hold your nose shut and I was wearing a white rubber bathing cap. Alan was scared of the water which I found endearing and which made me brave enough to take his hand and together we jumped into the shallow end. In the brief moment that we were underwater Alan let go of my hand, grabbed my face, and pressed his lips against mine.

Afterwards I wondered what the big deal was, about kissing. Seemed like a cold, kinda slimy activity to me. Alan couldn't have been too impressed either because, as far as I can remember, we never bothered with it again. In fact, although we exchanged sheepish grins after our kiss, we never acknowledged it again in any way.

But I did love him forever.

Or, at least for the length of a ten-year-old girl's perception of "forever," which was probably two or three months. Whatever activities we were each involved in back then just kept us from seeing much of each other as the school year progressed and one day, without a word between us, I simply handed Alan his St. Christopher's medal as I passed him in the hall at school.

As school neared its end I had second thoughts. Maybe I'd remembered the fun of the summer and fall of the year before, maybe Teri had a new boyfriend and I felt left out, or perhaps I just wanted to feel again the way I'd felt when Alan pressed that warm bulb into the palm of my hand; I honestly can't remember what set me off but suddenly I wished I hadn't broken up with him. I wanted Alan back. I concocted a plan.

I labored over a letter, writing and re-writing it to get what I thought was just the right casual tone, but still making it clear that I missed him and, though I didn't come right out and say it, would like to be wearing his St. Christopher medal again. I took a stamp from my mom's supply and placed it on the envelope which held my precisely folded letter. Then I carefully drew a cancelled postmark, right down to the squiggly lines, copying a real one from a letter my parents had received. I wanted it to look like the mailman had delivered the letter, make it look official and important. I walked the four blocks to Alan's house, looked around to make sure no one was watching, then ran to his porch and slipped my note through the letterbox in the door.

A day or so later I received a reply -- just a piece of folded paper notepaper shoved through our own letterbox and which I just luckily found before anyone else did. Printed in black marker it was short, only a few sentences, and I only remember the very last line, but I remember it perfectly:

"If my girlfriend knew you were writing to me she'd kick your a**."

And that was that. The end of my first romance and the boy who kissed me underwater.

FOR NEXT WEEK! "Tell about how, when and where you learned to drive. Any memorable experiences?"