In a Blink

In a blink, summer is gone and fall has once again begun sprinkling leaves all over our driveway. I've propped my eyes open with toothpicks because I don't want to blink and lose fall as fast as I lost summer. Where did it go? Why does it feel like tomorrow is yesterday already?

Before I got sidetracked in June by a crazy political reality show that could very likely become a real life horror show, I was rambling--just moseying on down life's winding road, walking backwards some seventy years.

It occurred to me today while I was taking a shower (the shower is where I get most of my ideas for this blog) that if one thing in my past had played out differently, I wouldn't be where I am now: exceedingly happy and in love with my best friend. Timing is everything and seconds count. Turn left instead of right and your life changes forever. Heartache, pain and suffering along the way builds character, gives perspective and insight, develops wisdom even though we don't know it at the time.  I shutter to think that had I not said yes to that cowboy from Greenwood on that July night, Jason would not be here today and Amy wouldn't be in my life. What if I hadn't cancelled my marriage to the football star from southern Indiana just two days before the wedding? What if the lawyer I dated for nine years had taken the opportunity to ask me to marry him  anytime before that night when I broke up with  him? What if Mike Nickels had been a better kisser?

Speaking of Mike Nickels, let's go back in time to middle school, where it all began. All through middle school and high school, not one boy liked me. Why? I was ugly, okay? There I said it. Are you happy now? Here is a self-drawn picture of me from those middle-school years.

I was boy crazy, but the one boy who was at the top of my list of six crushes was Mike Nickels. What I knew about sex and doing the nasty, nasty when I first met Mike was nothing, nothing. Just one year before, a friend had told me how babies were made and I was sick for days. Yuck! Yuck! But there was something about Mike that made the thought of doing the nasty, nasty not so bad, bad. He was gorgeous: slender yet muscular, great hair that stood up in a flat top perfectly, big beautiful gray blue eyes, masculine voice, aloof, distant, not interested in me. It was all there. Oh, how I loved that boy.

I did everything I could to get Mike's attention in school, but to no avail. I was invisible. But then one day it happened; he noticed.  It was our junior year, we were in Spanish class together, and I said something funny that brought the class to out loud laughter. I looked over at Mike, and he was smiling. Finally! He noticed me. After that, nothing...until that is one year after we graduated.

1965. I was a secretary at Kunz & Kunz, a law firm downtown Indianapolis. At one hundred pounds, I was fifteen pounds heavier than my senior year at Lawrence Central. My pimples were gone, contact lenses had replaced my Coke-bottle glasses, and my mousey brown hair was now platinum blond.  Men were starting to notice.

"Mike Nickels called" my mother said one day after I got home from work. "MIKE NICKELS!!! The Mike Nickels??"  I asked. I wanted to know every little detail about the call. What did he say? How did he say it? Was she sure his name was Mike Nickels? But before she could answer me the phone rang again. It was Mike Nickels. Would I like to go out Saturday night, he wanted to know.  My heart was racing as I accepted his invitation.  Saturday night. 8:00.  

I changed outfits a dozen times before settling on a pair of white pants with a blue top that people said showed off my blue eyes. Mike picked me up sharply at 8:00 and we buzzed The Cup before heading to the Pendleton Pike drive-in. I've  forgotten most things about that night with Mike except for two things: He was heavier than I remembered him; more fat, less muscle, and then there was that thing that happened that changed forever what could have been between Mike and me.

Mike, my heartthrob of five years, the man my cuddle pillow was named after, reached out for me in the passenger seat, beaconing me to come closer.  I slid next to him. We were side by side now, his arm around me. My  heart was pounding. I knew what was coming: a kiss.  A kiss that I had imagined a thousand times. He leaned his head down, his lips within inches of  mine. I could smell popcorn on his breath. Then it happened. The moment our lips touched, his tongue pried open my mouth,  plunged past my teeth, flailed around inside my mouth, and then headed down my throat. "WHAT THE HE..?" was my first thought. Gagging, I pulled back.  Saying nothing I slid back over to my side of the car. I had kissed a boy before--actually it was a girl in sixth grade pretending to be a boy so I would know what kissing a boy would be like--but it was nothing like this; just lips on lips, like in the movies. "What just happened?" I wondered as I sat staring at the movie I had up to this point in the evening been ignoring.

In a blink it was over. Poof! Just like that. My fantasy love evaporated into the hot summer night over Lawrence. I never saw Mike again.