My first girl friend was named Nicole. I was eight, she was nine. Unfortunately, she was not aware that I had bestowed this great honor upon her. But in my eight-year old mind, she was my girl friend, and that was that. Of course, the fact that she did not know was probably directly related to my fear of telling her.
I would lay awake for hours in bed, tossing and turning, sweating out a way to get to hold her hand. All I really wanted was to hold hands with her, even for a moment. Did she like me, the way I liked her? I figured if she would hold hands with me, then she did like me. If not, well, then she would just continue to be my girl friend, even if she did not know it.
My memory of Nicole has pretty much faded. I don’t really remember what she looked like now. I don’t remember much at all, except the fact that she was a whole YEAR older than me, she would always come over to my house to ask me if I could play, and that she had some brothers and sisters, though Nicole was the oldest. But there are a few days I do remember…
June or July, 1978
I was at Nicole’s house, and her Mom was gone. Nicole’s Dad did not live there, and it was always a matter of much debate where he was between all the other neighborhood kids. I really didn’t care, until the day he came home. The day Nicole’s Mom was gone and only us Kids were in the house.
He pulled up to her house in a red car. It was a large red car, though the make and model are long forgotten, if I had even known. When Nicole saw the car, she got really scared. So did all her brothers and sisters. (As I said, I don’t remember how many of them there were, though I do remember a sister my own age.) What ever the reason was for their fear, it was contagious. Fear swept through me as well, and being the oldest man present, I took charge.
“He probably don’t know we are in here! Let’s hide!” I said, and we all bolted for the stairway, which led to the bedrooms on the second floor of the large house. Clumping our way up the stairs, all the kids ran into a closet in the hallway. All the kids save Nicole and myself. “No more room! Hide somewhere else” someone in the closet said.
I found myself in another closet, and this one actually had a tiny square window in it. Why a closet had a window, I don’t know. Perhaps it was part of a room at one point. But the window was over a ledge, large enough for one person to squeeze upon. Though the window, one could look out onto the front yarn.
“Let’s go up there!” Nicole suggested, so we both squeezed upon the ledge build for one. Somehow, we managed to fit ourselves on it without falling off.
We sat there, in the closet, and watched her Dad sitting in his car. He was smoking a cigarette. He would occasionally look up at the house, or flick his ashes out the window, but did little else. Just sat there, smoking. Waiting. Waiting for what?
“Why don’t you want to see your Dad?” I asked Nicole. She did not answer, but instead took my hand in hers and squeezed tightly. Fear of the unknown, this mysterious fear of her dad she had, and the feel of her hand in mine was enough to make me dizzy.
Nicole and I sat there for hours, it seemed, though in reality it probably only lasted ten minutes. Her mom showed up, and got into a big fight with the dad. He left, and all the kids came out of hiding. Her mother later came to my house and told my parents I was very brave, and that she wanted to buy me an ice cream for helping her kids.
The ice cream was nice, but all I remembered was that I got to hold Nicole’s hand. Nicole and her family moved away very soon after that.
May-June 1981
I was eleven years old, and one of my jobs was to help my dad burn the garbage in the backyard fire pit. (Really just a metal barrel half buried in the ground and surrounded by rocks) Today this sort of thing is not allowed, but in 1981 it was fine. I loved to help burn the trash. Usually all I really did was stand there, breathing the noxious fumes after the fire had died down below the rim and I could be trusted not to through anything in the flames. I loved to watch plastic thing melting in the fire. Watching glowing things drifting out of the flames.
Baseball season was in full swing, a fact well known to me as we lived next to a large field with two baseball diamonds. There was always late afternoon games going on, but on this day, while burning the trash, a little piece of history would show up.
I was eleven, and had an actual girl friend. Her name was Tracy Peterson, and we had kissed! Heck, we had even talked about doing a French Kiss, though we decided we needed to think about it a lot before trying it. Nicole was YEARS ago to me, and I never really thought of her much.
Until she showed up, out of the blue, as I stood there watching the trash burn in my back yard.
At first, I noticed this girl looking at me from across the way, over by the baseball bleachers they always carted away after the summer. There were a lot of people over there, and the game had been going on for nearly an hour already. And every time I looked over there, I would catch this girl looking my way. Eventually, she walked over to my yard, and it was then that I realized it was Nicole.
While I don’t remember much of the conversation, I do remember her asking if I remembered her. I said I did. We talked for fifteen minutes, until someone called her name that it was time to go. I remember thinking she was even more beautiful than I had remembered. I told her that I had had a HUGE crush on her when I was younger. I remember she just smiled, said it was nice to see me again, and left.
I thought about her for weeks, and could not get her out of my mind. Until Tracy Peterson and me finally tried that French Kiss thing, after which THAT was all I could think of.
Fall – 1997
I was married by this time in my life. It was by sheer chance that I walked into a barbershop to get my haircut. The lady who was cutting my hair that day was a really nice person, and halfway though, it came out she had lived on the same street I did growing up. What’s more, she remembered me! I didn’t remember her until she told me “My sister, Nicole, had a crush on you for years! She always talked about her first boy friend, even though he did not know he was her boy friend. She always wished he was the first person she would have kissed. His name was Tim. You.”
I was crushed. Kissed? Nicole had wanted to KISS ME? I was sweating just holding her hand, and here I could have actually KISSED her and she WANTED me to?
Life is funny like that.
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