I fell in love for the first time when I was six years old.
Picture it: Valley View Elementary school, Abilene, Texas, 1976. It was the first day of first grade. We were all seated in a circle and asked to spell different words in order to know which class we would advance to. This was back in the good ol' days when I could do no wrong. I was too busy chasing after "good girl" accolades so I overcompensated on everything. I wouldn't just read A book, I'd read five. I loved words and spelling and language arts from the very first moment I impressed someone for having the early skills to embrace them, and I chased straight As and gold stars like my life depended on it.
I never imagined how I'd feel at such a tender age when someone ELSE managed to impress ME. And that is what this young fellow did. For my purposes here, I'll call him Brad... mostly because this poor kid had his fill of me by the time we were twelve.
Brad was easily the smartest kid in the room. He could spell words I couldn't, which made him smarter than me, which made me take immediate notice. That, and he was a-freakin-dorable. He had dark hair, which may have sparked my preference for such, and he was as cute as a button. I'm sure my memory has tinkered a bit with the visual, but the way I remember it he had a floppy haircut and dark eyes, and I remember being a little starstruck when he took center stage.
Imagine my disappointment when the teacher decided he was SO smart that he was going to another class altogether, starting the very next day.
It was the first time I remember noticing someone of the opposite sex, and I was truly starry-eyed. I didn't get to really know him until the next year, when we finally became friends. And we were the best of friends. When he had his 8th birthday party, I was the only female in attendance. We lived close enough to walk to school together, and I remember distinctively singing the theme song to Spider-man as we made our way to school.
His dad was a lawyer, so he lived in a really nice house and got all the cool toys. In my mind, he was a rock star. By the time we reached third grade, I was completely smitten. This, of course, led to him being mercilessly teased by other classmates for having a "girlfriend," which, as you know, is schoolyard death when you're eight.
The tide turned one day at recess, when we were playing on the colorfully painted playground equipment. I had no interest in doing anything remotely athletic. Games like Duck, Duck, Goose and Dodgeball brought upon acute anxiety for the biggest kid in the class. (Not just weight-wise, but height as well.)
While other kids were swinging happily on the monkey bars, I parked my tuckus on an oversized tire, hyperventilating as I prayed we wouldn't play any games that required being picked for teams. This has never worked in my favor.
But somehow Brad still liked me enough to hang around me. And, one magical day on the playground, he gave me my very first kiss. Granted it was on the cheek and I'm fairly certain he was dared to do it, but for someone as completely infatuated as I was, it totally counted.
And of course, me being me, I couldn't leave it a sweet little childlike innocent memory.
When I went to school with Brad, I didn't really notice people making fun of me for my size. They laughed if I couldn't beat them to their seat in Duck, Duck, Goose, or run without being taken out at kickball, but I don't recall my size ever being a deal-breaker making friends or being included in any social circle. That came later, after my dad died in 1980, when the most positive, uplifting, encouraging voice in my ear was silenced forever. After that, all I heard was the bad stuff.
And that was where my own personal story broke down.
By fifth grade we had moved again to another town and I was in another school (my third by the grand ol' age of 11) and the kids at this new school found plenty to mock. I stepped into the role of outcast and I never made it out again. Thirty-some-odd years later, I see this as a good thing. Back then it sucked donkey balls. Brad ceased being a sweet memory and became a life raft tethering me to a happier time, and I navigated the choppy waters in my way to hold onto it... including his discomfort and disinterest.
I kept in touch with him throughout the next year or so, eventually funneling all my affection his direction, much to his chagrin. But I've always gone after what I want, completely convinced I was entitled to get it, even if it was the worst thing in the world for me. My big ol dreams and big ol mouth led to my downfall, and I lost one of the best friends I had as a kid. Letter after letter, phone call after phone call. I was determined to cast him in my Happily Ever After, since no one I met or liked after him wanted to fill the position.
Eventually he had to say "enough's enough" and I learned why they call first loves crushes.
In my book,
The Leftover Club, I revisit this childlike crush in several key scenes lifted right from this star-crossed love affair. They are embellished for effect, of course, because fiction, unlike life, demands a HEA... or at least a HFN.
Unlike me, Roni knew when to say when.
Excerpt: The Leftover Club
May 12, 1979
There was a forgotten little playground about two blocks from where we lived in Fullerton. It didn’t belong to the city. Instead it was a sad little remnant behind an abandoned church with boarded windows and an overgrown field. None of the equipment really worked. The swing seats hung by one chain and the teeter totter was missing the plank, no doubt stolen by rebellious teens who used the abandoned lot to drink or smoke pot when playing hooky from the nearby high school. The tether ball pole stuck out of an old tire, but the ball was long gone. The only piece of equipment that hadn’t been destroyed by neglect and vandalism was the simple merry-go-round. It was painted in sections of red, yellow, blue and white, though all the colors were faded by the sun and the paint had begun to chip.
As sad as it looked, it was one of the happiest places on earth when I was nine years old.
Back in 1979, there was no cable TV for most kids, no home video games, smart phones or personal computers to entertain us. Instead we prowled our neighborhoods on our bikes, perused comic books and ate handfuls of candy we could buy for a dollar. All we really needed was some small patch of the Earth where we wouldn’t be disturbed. The haven that my best friend Dylan and I had found was in this quiet neighborhood with a dilapidated church that didn’t invite visitors.
It was perfect.
The older we got, the more unkind school was. As we aged out of the “ew” stage regarding the other gender, suddenly things like boyfriends and going steady and kissing and even s-e-x became a titillating topic of conversation for kids a stone’s throw from junior high. And once our classmates found out we were an unrelated boy and girl living under the same roof, all sorts of rumors started to spread, despite how passionately I denied it.
“Why do you care?” he asked one day in our special, private spot. “If it’s not true, it doesn’t matter.”
Because it wasn’t true was precisely why it mattered. As we got older, I started to have feelings for Dylan that were in no way sisterly. I knew if he ever found out about it, I would just die. The only way to hide it was deny such proclivities instantly and vehemently.
This, of course, made me a fun target.
So every day of fourth grade, we’d take the detour from the crowded schoolyard and stop at that church on our way home. There was a corner store just a block away from the playground, where we’d raid the candy aisle and buy a forbidden soda to share between the two of us. Our mothers would have had strokes if they had seen our bounty of sugary goodness, especially since I had never been able to drop my childhood pudge.
Dylan, however, had always been my partner in crime. He had nothing to say about my size, even though kids at school were starting to. To him, I was just Roni, the buddy he camped out with in the back yard and told scary stories to under a shared blanket with a flashlight. Others treated us like siblings. If he was invited anywhere, so was I, and vice versa. It was like we were connected at the hip. We went to matinees every Saturday, after we overdosed on morning TV that included Looney Tunes, Schoolhouse Rock, and Sid and Marty Krofft.
Saturdays were the worst for Dylan. His dad had weekend visitations, but usually flaked out at the last minute. I hated that sad look on his face, and insisted that we get on our bikes and go somewhere, anywhere, just to get out of the house.
It was on one of these Saturdays that we ended up at that neglected playground with a bag full of candies and a bottle of orange soda to share. Within minutes we lay on our backs on that dusty merry-go-round amidst empty candy wrappers, staring up at the sky and using our feet to propel it in an endless circle.
We discussed our favorite show (The Incredible Hulk) and the music we had recently discovered (ELO.) We discovered a lot of music courtesy of his AM/FM handheld transistor radio that followed him everywhere he went, hanging by its strap from his handlebar. It now sat next to our heads on the merry-go-round, blasting America’s Top 40, and we sang along with all the songs we knew, with lyrics so far beyond our maturity level we didn’t even understand what we sang.
After I belted out a Donna Summer song with gusto, he handed me the soda to wet my whistle as a reward.
“You sing good,” he praised.
“Well,” I corrected.
“Whatever,” he dismissed.
I giggled as I sucked on sweet candy stick coated with colored sugar that was supposed to taste like fruit. I wanted to tell him I was sorry that his dad flaked out again, but I learned a long time ago that he didn’t like to talk about that kind of thing. Instead it was time for Operation: Distraction. “So what movie do you want to see?”
“I don’t know. I’m not really in the mood to see a movie.”
“Oh,” I said. “What do you want to do?”
“I want to see my dad,” he said.
I turned my head to look at him. That softly worded confession was unexpected. I saw a tear at the corner of his eye.
“Why doesn’t he want me, Roni?”
I turned over on my side and propped up on my elbow. I didn’t know what to say, or do.
He turned on his side to face me, mirroring my posture by propping up on his elbow. “Sometimes I think you’re the lucky one. Your dad didn’t leave you on purpose.”
“Still hurts,” I pointed out.
“Yeah, I know,” he said.
“And your dad can change his mind someday. He can come back.”
His dark eyes were big and sad. “He won’t.”
I didn’t know what to do so I reached for his hand, just to let him know I’d always be there for him, no matter what. He smiled.
So did I.
He pulled himself up into a sitting position, hooking one leg around one of the poles. “It’s your turn. From last time,” he said.
I laughed. Since we had been coming to this playground all year, we had to get creative with our games. We played truth or dare like most kids, but with this old merry-go-round, we came up with another game, “Truth, Dare or Puke.”
The object of the game was for the askee to sit in the middle of the creaky old merry-go-round while the asker spun it as fast as they could. While the askee was disoriented, the asker would level their challenge… to tell an embarrassing truth, to agree to an even more embarrassing dare, or to stumble off into the corner and toss his or her cookies.
Naturally the longer it took you to answer the question or respond to the dare, the more likely you were to puke. It ensured absolutely honesty and immediate compliance. I learned one of his most embarrassing moments in school involved laughing so hard milk came out of his nose. He learned that one of my most embarrassing moments including farting in church. He took on a dare act out Greased Lightning, and I got the dare to do a knock and run at the crabbiest neighbor’s house.
As we got older, our dares got a little naughtier. We tested out curse words and shoplifted candy and vandalized a newly laid section of sidewalk. During our last game, he dared me to show ‘mine’ if he showed me ‘his.’ The idea of being in any way naked in front of a boy was unthinkable. I tried to change for truth, but he was empowered by the one thing I refused to do and kept spinning me around the merry-go-round, laughing so hard I thought he might wet himself. Thankfully I finally puked and it was over, and even more thankfully we had already put a rule in place that we could never repeat a dare.
So I felt more confident as I climbed off the merry-go-round and started to spin him where he sat. After a few turns, I asked, “Truth, Dare or Puke?”
“Truth!” he said as he held onto the bar.
I thought for a moment, but then decided to go with an oldie but a goody. “Who’s your latest crush?”
I couldn’t wait to hear how he answered this oft repeated challenge between the two of us, as his answers had ranged anywhere from Judy Jetson to Miss Maloney, our fourth grade English teacher. He always answered honestly because he knew I never judged.
How could I, with my moony-eyed crushes over teen idols named Davy, Leif and Chachi?
I spun him even faster. “You’re gonna puke!” I warned with a big grin. “Better tell me who!”
“You!” he finally admitted.
I lost my footing and fell right on my face. I spit dirt from my mouth as I lifted up from the ground. He scooted to the edge and stalled the ride with his feet. “Are you okay?”
I nodded as I rose to my feet. I wore red shorts and a multi-colored stripped tank top, all of which had dirt all over it. He jumped off the merry-go-round to help me brush it off, but I backed up immediately. “I’ve got it,” I mumbled. I hopped up on the merry-go-round before he could say anything else. “My turn!” I declared as I took my place in the sacred circle.
He hooked his shoulder under one of the bars and started to spin me around. Once we were going pretty good, he said, “Truth, Dare or Puke?”
Fearing he might want to know who my crush was, or worse… if I had a crush on him, too, I had no choice but to opt for dare.
I had to hold on tight as he spun me even more out of control. Then, surprisingly, he hopped up onto the merry-go-round and scooted to where I hunched in the middle. His eyes glittered as he said, “Kiss me.”
My mouth fell open. Was he serious? We had lived in the same house together for going on three years, living and interacting much like brother and sister. Now in one afternoon he told me he had a crush on me and he wanted to kiss me?
For a girl who barely got Valentine’s cards, this was all very confusing. I was growing dizzier by the second, and I suspected it had little to do with the child’s ride we were on.
As the merry-go-round still spun and Dylan still waited, I realized that I had two options. I could scramble off the merry-go-round and hopefully puke out of Dylan’s line of vision, or I could just kiss him.
So I leaned over and kissed his cheek, just like I did my mom or his mom, my aunt Daphne or my cousin Charles.
Dylan’s eyes were dark as I pulled away. As I lost myself in them, I knew he was none of those people. He wasn’t my cousin, or my brother, or even just my friend. He was now a boy. And not just any boy, he was the first boy in my life to admit he had a crush on me.
And I felt exactly the same.
It was a very significant moment.
Even though we were spinning, it felt as though time had slowed down to a crawl. When he leaned forward, I did too, until our lips met tentatively as the world spun around us. His lips felt warm and firm on mine. It felt so good that our passionate peck lingered, just like we had seen on movies and TV. We didn’t pull apart until the spinning wheel finally slowed to a stop.
“Ew, gross!” we heard a boy say, and we scooted apart instantly. A group of fifth grade boys who regularly made life miserable for us happened to be riding by the church at exactly the wrong moment. “You’re making out with your sister!” he said, as if that was the grossest thought ever.
There was only one thought worse: “Your fat sister!” the other boy said.
When I turned back to Dylan, I saw that he had flushed deep red. He scurried off the merry-go-round. “She’s not my sister!” he screamed back at our tormentors. He looked back at me, as if seeing me through brand new eyes. “And I didn’t kiss her!”
He turned away and ran home.
****
I had a lot of fun writing The Leftover Club, trying to rearrange some of my memories into something a little less mortifying than writing no less than 522 love letters to a boy who made the sad miscalculation to kiss me on a dare.
We reconnected thanks to MySpace many years ago, and there didn't seem to be any hard feelings. He grew up to be successful and happy, with no residual scars or lingering PTSD. I found him again on Facebook, but I don't have the ovarian fortitude to "friend" him.
Sometimes a memory is better left a memory. If I need to rearrange it, that's what the books are for. ;)
So enjoy my timey-whimy trip through the 70s, 80s, 90s and 2000s in THE LEFTOVER CLUB; a tale of often painfully awkward first crushes, first loves, first kisses and finding the one you were supposed to be with at last (even if it takes 30 years.)
Here's what readers are saying...
"What a trip down memory lane...and that was just the first few pages."
"The premise of The Leftover Club had me sold. I'm grew up and graduated high school in the 80's and I couldn't wait to be transported back in time. Ginger Voight hits it spot on. I almost had to pull out my Jordache jeans and drape myself in neon and lace fingerless gloves. If only hubby would wear those parachute pants once again!"
"The nostalgia of the story was transportive! I think no matter who you are or who you were back then, you'll see yourself in this book somewhere. Would highly recommend!"
"I have loved everything I've ever read by Ginger Voight. She writes from the heart. She gives the reader real feelings, real thoughts and real people. The Leftover Club gave me all of that and an extraordinary trip back in time to the 1980's, a place I will always want to visit."
Amazon has
THE LEFTOVER CLUB listed at $0.99, but that price will be going up so get your copies now.
