My First Date

By Karen, January 29, 2019 — I wrote in my diary, 7th grade- “April 12, 1960. I will never ever ever forget today.” I grew up an only child, and I was kind of a loner and backwards. A bunch of people in my grade were going over to our local park, which was Wissinoming Park, and they just didn’t do anything after school except hang out there. There was what we called a “bridge” but was really a tiny walkway over a pond that you could probably walk through and not even get wet, there was that little bit of water. That’s where we would go to hang out. I couldn’t just tell my mother that this was where I was going, so an elaborate lie had to come into play which was a big deal for me because I wasn’t good at lying. I had no sisters or brothers to give me input, so I was flying on my own. But I really wanted to go there because Franny was going to be there and all the boys he hung around with. A girl in my room in Catholic school, whose name was Tessi, said I could come over her house because she lived near the park. So, I told my mother I was going to go over Tessi’s, and I have no idea why she didn’t think that was weird because I had never gone to Tessi’s before, but I guess she was just glad that I had a friend finally.

I then needed to find the least nerdy clothing I could find, because I had a lot of nerdy clothes. I will never forget, I found a striped button-down shirt and what we called petal pushers at the time and I went over to Tessi’s. At Tessi’s, I put on lipstick that was called Tangee, and it was a color as bright and orange as the cones that they put in the road to stop traffic. This was the style in 1960. I think she put some stuff on my eye because I would have poked my eye out if I had done it. She also helped comb my hair better, and then we went over to the park. I didn’t know how to hang out with people, so I stood around and tried to laugh at the appropriate time. And 7th grade boys are just showing off for girls, pushing each other to show they are strong, or are badder, or know more curse words than the guy next to them. I can’t tell you how long we were there, an hour maybe an hour and a half. Back then people just assumed you would come home when you were supposed to. It was just so cool because I was with this boy and I had just thought he was so handsome since I was 10 and now, I was 13. He lived around the corner from me, so although he didn’t ask to walk me home, we walked home together because it was the same way. We didn’t touch each other in 7th grade, so there was no hand holding on this walk home, only two of the couples there touched each other because they had been “going out” for a while. But other people made fun of them.

So, we walked home together, but we couldn’t walk in front of my house because my parents would see, so we walked to a parallel street. At the end of the street we stood there awkwardly trying to think of something to say. And finally, we just said bye, and we went home. And if you can call that a date, I did in my brain and my diary, but we didn’t do anything, he and I again for another 2 years or so. Later on, I wound up being fortunate enough to marry this man. We were married for 49 years and had 6 children. When we talked about this day afterwards, he said to me “I remember that, what god-awful stuff did you have on your mouth? You looked like a clown.” That was my first date with my husband, and I never used that lipstick ever again.