Soap Opera Sunday - First (french) kiss

Brillig and Walking Kateastrophe's collective baths continue. Here is another one of my sudsy tales....

The summer before eighth grade, I worked as a Counselor in Training (yup a CIT) for a camp my brother and I attended for several years. I loved it. So much that I ended up working there as a counselor through my freshman year of college. But that isn't what this post is about.

Most of my school friends that summer enrolled in a summer sailing program that cost $1. Yup, $1 for months of sailing instruction, access to boats and members of what-ever gender you were attracted to. I'm sure the $1 fee was intended for more poverty-stricken youth but no one asked the kids from the suburbs what their parents' incomes were so they all went sailing.

A few times I joined them. Some of my girlfriends had become friendly with some boys from a different town. They were all a year older. They were going into high school.

One of them was Lew Root (not his real name). Lew was blond and tall (like 5'10"). And he was older than me. An entire year older. One of my friends started "dating" a friend of his so after the sailing program ended, we would occasionally double date.

Later in the school year, my friend and I went to a dance at, gasp, the other town's high school. We were the dates of our, tee-hee, high school boyfriends. The high school gym was dark and the DJ played early '80's songs because it was the early '80's.

Eventually, Lew and I made it to the far wall in front of the pushed up bleachers where other couples were making out. I was just so excited to finally, for the first time, kiss a boy at a dance. I lifted my chin, just like in the movies, closed my eyes and opened my mouth ever so slightly.

And thought my tongue was going to be ripped out.

This may also have been Lew's first attempt at a french kiss as well. He seemed to think that you sucked really hard on the other person's tongue. With a lot of force.

So I pulled away, fortunately with my tongue still in my mouth, and ran back to my girlfriend (a chaste Catholic who wouldn't go near that wall, much to her boyfriend's dismay) and yelled to the group they were standing with,

"Lew kisses like a vacuum cleaner!!"

The entire group, mostly 9th grade boys who were classmates of Lew's, burst into hysterical laughing. We didn't see each other after that night.

***

Three years later I was the Head Drum Major for our 100+ marching band. Drum Major. Not Majorette. I wasn't some girl in a little skirt twirling a baton. I led the band on the field during performances. I conducted the music and co-led rehearsals (you haven't lived until you've conducted Sweet Georgia Brown). I yelled commands ("Atten-hut! For-ward march!"). I will admit I did some twirling. It was a three foot long mace with a big spike at one end that I threw into the ground with a grand, forceful jab. I could've killed someone with that thing. I most definitely wasn't an ornamental majorette.

Our high school football team had a pre-season game against Lew's high school team. The band went as well. I hadn't talked to Lew since that night in his high school gym. He was a senior by then and I noticed he was walking around with a camera. Turns out he was the yearbook photographer.

After I had lined up the band I turned around to face the field with my chin up and shoulders back (standard Drum Major stance). Out of the corner of my eye I saw Lew then heard,

"Hey Hoover! We need you to take a picture over here!" He winced.


Hoover? HOOVER?!?!? This kid, for the last three years had been carrying the nickname "Hoover" (which in case you don't know is the name of a brand of vacuum cleaners).

I am apologizing that my outburst as an 8th-grader led to such a mean-spirited nickname. While it is funny, it was a horrid name to bear during the cruel years of adolescence.

I just hope his 20th high school reunion last year didn't use nicknames on the name tags.