“I got a very strange phone call this morning,” my mom said. It was approaching noon Sunday, the 9th of April, 1978. I will always remember it. I was hungover from a cast party the night before, the first time I had ever gotten drunk two nights in a row. I asked her to tell me about the “strange” phone call, and she began, “Well, it was Shelly¹ Staival’s mom, Cleo. I haven’t heard from her in a long time, although we know each other quite well since we were in Faculty Wives² together for years. After some friendly small talk I asked to what I owed the pleasure of her call. Her tone suddenly became very urgent and she said, ‘Carolyn, what are we going to do about the kids?'” My mom told me that confused her: what about the kids? Cleo said, “We have to do something. I heard they are dating. We have to do something to stop them.” My mom got a bit flummoxed and sputtered back, “Well, I don’t know what you have in mind. Kirk told me all about it. It seems to me they are old enough now that if they decide to date each other there’s nothing we can do about it.” Cleo took a deep breath and replied, “Well, we can’t just let that happen. Your son is so gifted and has such a bright future ahead of him — and I know my daughter. She is so intense she will consume him, deflect him from his goals and destroy his life.”

We sat there in silence for a few moments as we processed the implications. Shelly’s mom, whom I hadn’t met, sounded crazy to me. And how antiquated the notion of controlling your teenage children’s dating choices was! I was sixteen, soon to be seventeen, and Shelly had already been eighteen for a few months. We most certainly would continue dating if that’s what we wanted. But I owe the reader an explanation as this is all coming out of nowhere.

What happened was that on the previous Friday evening after opening night of the Spring Musical, I was invited to go to a cast party. I honestly don’t remember who I got a ride with, but it was at a little “country club” just outside of town. I use the term “country club” cautiously, as it was merely an acre of land surrounded by a chain link fence. There was a pool, a covered picnic area, and a couple of tennis courts. The rest was a large grassy field for whatever. We had been members when I was growing up: I took swimming lessons there when I was about seven. I had never been there after dark, so the experience of the cast party was surreal. I don’t think we even had permission to be there, but somebody obviously had a key to the gate. There was beer, of which I happily consumed several cans, and I even took a few puffs of a joint that was being passed around. This was only the second time I had tried smoking. Let me tell you, the beer and the pot combined hit me hard. I remember being in a highly altered state, just wandering around talking to people, then becoming very quiet. When the chaos and shenanigans started overwhelming my senses, I wandered off to the pool facility where there was a large restroom and changing area. There were a few people milling about in there talking and laughing, but I just retreated to a nearby wall and leaned against the cool cinderblocks, zoning out.

Suddenly Shelly was standing in front of me, looking directly into my face as if trying to solve a puzzle. Without a word she stepped forward, put her arms around my shoulders and planted a sweet, wet kiss on my lips. The similarity with what Kelly had done four-and-a-half years earlier is striking, and my response was the same. Which is to say I received the kiss passively, in shock. But I liked it. She pulled back, intently surveying my expression for any kind of feedback. I looked past her, over her shoulder and, as if speaking to someone else, said in my best Spock voice, “Captain! I appear to be receiving a curious labial stimulus.”

Her jaw dropped, then she burst into laughter. She moved in a second time, took me in her arms, and we began “making out” for the first time. The first time for us, the first time for me, but certainly not the first time for her. So now I need to give you some background on who Shelly was, at least as far as I knew her up to that point.

1. My wife Sarah [real name], whose advice I trust, has told me I need to make up fake names from here on out, so Shelly and Cleo Staival are not their real names. ↩︎
2. Back in the early 1960s, when most of the high school teachers were men, there was actually an organization called Faculty Wives where the spouses of faculty met together socially. Shelly and my parents already knew each other when we were born. ↩︎