SIXTEEN BLUE

Thank you Simon for your query. In re: yesterday's post asking you (my Readers) to ask me (Me) anything you might want to know. Obviously I've told most of you more than you ever wanted to know...

Simon asked aboot my first date EVER. I'm assuming he means "car date" which was (way back then) the reigning qualifier for a real date. I can picture the car, a very hot car, but I can't for the life of me remember the model. It was metallic aqua anyway. I was not allowed to "car date" until I was sixteen. When you are 15 and allowed to date at 16, believe me that is all you can think aboot. So of course when I turned 16, I went out with the very first boy to ask. The guy, Doug, was a friend of a friend. It was actually a double date, the other couple made out in the back seat for the entire date and I was scared to death to know what was going on back there. I wore a white peasant blouse with lace down the front and blue denim hot pants (don't ask, they were a fad, kind of along the lines of F-Me pumps today. They were the absolutely tightest, shortest hip-hugger shorts you could wear and not get arrested.) with a suede fringed belt. Ooooh baby. I cannot believe my mother let me out of the house. Although, after I put the shorts in the laundry, I never saw them again, swear to god.

So Doug shows up at my house. Had to go and have a nice firm handshake with my Dad (slick). The other thing I remember aboot Doug is that his long-on-top dark hair kept falling in his eyes and he would jerk his head to the side every 5 minutes or so. I don't know if he was just afraid to touch his hair of if he did it for effect. But it was way cool how he did that. The uncool thing he did was wax the seats in the car. Most of the night I spent trying to keep my hot pants in the middle of the seat, straddling the hump on the floor and not in his lap. Small consolation, he let me pick out which 8-track we would listen to. He had a lot of country music but also the Rolling Stones. "Under My Thumb" was one of my favorite songs back then and still is in my top 500. He had a very good sound system...

So anyway, where did he take me? First we went to a drive-in restaurant (Yes, the real deal- where they bring the food to your car.) I'm not really that old, I believe it was the last existing drive-in restaurant in PA, was called The Cadet. We had burgers/fries/cokes. Then we went to a drive-in movie to see Buster and Billie starring Michael Vincent and a bunch of no-names. He later became Jan-Michael Vincent. Kind of a weird movie but I liked it. I watched it again a couple years ago and have no idea what I found to like aboot it.

So my first real date was also my first real exercise in fending off the advances of a hormonally-charged teen-aged boy. Who had six arms if I remember correctly. Didn't exactly help that Annette and Frankie were trying to start a family in the back. Made for some interesting "mood music". I guess after awhile, Dougie got the message because I did see some of the movie. And he did ask me out again.

So there, that was my first date. I was home by eleven. My diary got an earful.