Here Comes Trouble (27 page)

“But there is something I would like to ask you,” I said, deciding to take the plunge. “Let’s say we were draft dodgers, and we wanted to move to Canada—could we do that?”

The “Mountie” looked me up and down, and shouted over to the desk. “Cavity check!”

What???

“This way, please,” said another official from the welcome wagon. And then he stopped, and the pseudo-Mounties started laughing.

“Just kidding. We’re not like the American border guards. You can keep your pants on for us. We’ll just give them a call and tell them you’re on your way back.” More laughs. I was familiar with this warped humor from watching Canadian television. They needed it to counteract all those dreadful beaver and moose documentaries.

They took us back out to the car where, thankfully, they found nothing but the boat without a motor.

“You can turn your car around now and head back to the U.S.,” the head Canadian said.

Pushing my luck, I asked him again. “But, sir—what if we don’t want to be drafted someday. Can we come here or not?”

“If you are here legitimately as an objector to the war, the Canadian government will give you asylum, yes. Have you been drafted? Are any of you in the armed services?”

“No.”

“Then have a nice night. And be on your way.”

We got back in Joey’s car and headed back across the Blue Water Bridge to Michigan. The border guards on the American side were, fortunately, in a rush, so they asked the same set of citizenship questions as the Canadians did and sent us on our way. There would be no cavity checks that night. For the rest of the ride home we didn’t say much, other than review what we had learned: Canada would take us in if need be, even if we had to endure their Canadian sense of humour.

A fair deal, all around.

In February, my birthday was the 279th date called for the draft lottery, and the year after that it was #115. Both were beyond the cutoff number. I was classified 4-F on my draft card and did not have to learn French, the metric system, or how to soak my fries in cheese curd.

I would remain fond of Canada for a very long time.

Two Dates

T
HERE WAS
L
INDA
L
IMATTA
and her sister, Sue, and Mary Powers, Marcia Nastle, and Luanne Turner, too. There was Barb Gilliam, Lisa Dean, Debbie Johnson—it’s all true. Denise Hopkins, Cheryl Hopkins, Karen Hopkins, any Hopkins would do! There was Kathy Minto and Kathy Collins, Kathy Root, and Cathy O’Rourke—yes, if her name was Kathy, that just might do. There was Mary Sue Johnson, Mary Jo Madore, Mary Sue Rauschl, and Maribeth Beach. Jill Williams, Diane Peter, Lora Hitchcock, Wendy Carrell, Jeanie Malin, Madeline Peroni, Louise Prine, Suzanne Flynn, and Susie Hicks—and there wasn’t
one
of them, not a single one of them, that I had the courage to walk up to and simply ask if they’d like to go out to a movie with me on Friday night.

Well, there
was
Susie Hicks. I was walking down the hall with her between fifth and sixth hour, on our way to student council class. In my last year of high school I ran for student council. I won on a platform of promising to eliminate the homecoming queen contest. This immediately had me crossed off the list of every pretty girl in the school. But I didn’t care; I never stood a chance with them anyway.

Susie Hicks was the one exception. She was the vice president of her class, served on student council with me, sang in the high school musical, and was also a jock. She always laughed at my jokes and I, of course, somehow misconstrued that as her giving some thought to me as possible boyfriend material. I clearly didn’t understand that just because a girl likes you, it doesn’t mean that she
likes
you.

Susie and I had three long hallways to navigate before reaching student council, giving me plenty of time to make my move. I had worked out my pitch that morning in front of the mirror. Keep it cool, don’t make it sound like you’re asking her to go out on a date, have a backup plan to cover up my massive hurt and rejection if she says no. With an optimistic outlook like that, I was sure to score.

I spent all of hallway #1 walking with her and just trying to calm down and make my heart beat at regular intervals instead of watching it push its way through my shirt. Hallway #2 was spent trying to remember my lines—I had forgotten what to say, what to ask (but not
who
to ask, I knew who to ask, I was walking with her!). We rounded the bend into the third and final hallway and, with the last bit of oxygen I had left, I opened my mouth.

“Su-Susie,” I stammered, “I-I was thinking…”

And at that moment an incoming mortar round in the form of Nick West, captain of the basketball team, president of the class, and possessor of the stolen face of Robert Redford, flew in between us.

“Hey Susie!” he said, as he went in for a quick kiss. “See you after council!”

If anything, I was grateful for Nick’s interruption. I had no idea they were going together, and I would have suffered the worst form of humiliation had I actually been able to get the question out of my mouth. I breathed a sigh of relief. I felt no remorse that the world was an unfair place. To the contrary, I was glad to be reminded that I was not sent to Earth to date homecoming queens. Or at least that sounded good enough to get me through the next hour. (Yes, she became homecoming queen. I admit it—I desperately loved all homecoming queens, each and every single one of them.)

Admission:
When it comes to social interaction, I am a shy person. Yes, me. My idea of an exciting Saturday night in high school was staying home and watching
Mannix
and
Mission: Impossible
on CBS (Friday night it was
The High Chaparral
and
Nanny and the Professor
). Occasionally I hung out with my guy friends, and when it looked like the planned activity of the evening didn’t involve violating state or federal laws or being driven around by a drunken sixteen-year-old, I was every bit the participant in lighting sacks of dog shit on people’s porches, then ringing the doorbell and running like hell.

But girls were far too intimidating to approach, and it was just as well. I had work to do, books to read, and… and… I forgot, but it was important! I was consoled only by statistics and probability: if there were 1.5 billion females on this planet, the chance that at least one of them would want to be with me was something like… 100 percent! So, she was out there. Somewhere. Maybe between Bay City and Sterling Heights, please? If it turned out that my one true love had been placed (mistakenly) in Slovenia, then I guess all I could do was sit back and hope that CBS would renew
Mannix
for another season.

Date #1

It was in my junior year when the gods, perhaps bored out of their omniscient minds from being so godlike perfect all the time, decided to play a practical joke on me, just to see me collapse into a puddle of misery. Out of nowhere, they sent Linda Milks, a senior—
and a cheerleader!
—over to my locker on the last day of the school year.

“Hey—I was thinking—you want to go out on a date with me?”

I assumed she was talking to someone else on the other side of the locker door, so I kept fumbling with my combination.

“Hey, you!” she said, gently slugging me in the shoulder. “You wanna go out with me?”

I was paralyzed with fear and unable to speak. The fear quickly turned into embarrassment as I looked around to see who sent her to play this mean-spirited prank on me. But there was no one around in the hallway. Just Linda, looking up at me with those rich brown eyes, long dark hair and a body (a girl’s body!) that was covered by a maroon and gold graduation gown.

“Um, me?”

“Yes,
you!
C’mon, it’ll be fun. You like me, don’t you?”

“Uh, yeah, sure. Sure, I mean, you’re… Linda!”

I was finally able to spit out a two-syllable word: “Lin-da.”

“Where’s your yearbook? I want to sign it.”

I fumbled around my locker for it and gave it to her. She wrote next to her senior photo:
“Your friend is your needs answered. See page 200. Love, Linda.”

She then turned to page 200 in the yearbook and wrote a full-page letter to me about how much I meant to her and how she would always be there for me. She signed it again with “love.”

I stood there reading it, not having a clue what to say or do. I finally looked at her, the cheerleader, and she was all gooey-eyed and full of smiles. I wanted to ask her if she was high or had me confused with someone from shop class.

“Thank you. That’s very nice. People don’t usually write that sort of thing in my yearbook. Are you sure you don’t want to scratch any of this out?”

“Hahahaha! Silly! That’s why I love you. Well, here’s my number”—she was writing on a page she had torn out of her notebook—“give me a call this summer. Let’s go hang out and do something.”

“OK. I will. Thanks.”

“Don’t thank me
yet!
And don’t forget to call!”

Still not believing this was real, I checked to see if I was still alive: Uncombed hair? Check. Nose with the sinus condition? Check. Roll of fat? Check. Zits on forehead? Check. Yup, I was all there. Still me.

And that’s what the cheerleader just asked out?

Linda Milks was a year older than me. She decided to take speech class in her senior year and join the forensics team, an unusual move for a cheerleader. She wasn’t intensely interested in the topics covered, but she
was
interested in what I would say in class—especially if I did my Nixon impersonation. That would crack her up, and she would often turn around and flash me a smile that said…
said what?
I had no idea! She was a senior and a cheerleader and she was smiling at
me.
That was enough.

When she would ask me for help on an assignment I willingly gave it to her. But I would do that also for the farm kid in the hand-me-downs or the hoodlum who kept telling me he wanted to see if his fist could maybe help rearrange my face so I’d have “a better chance with the ladies.” But Linda said she was taking forensics to gain some “self-confidence,” and so I helped her with various ways and methods to give an effective speech. A couple times she stopped by my house to talk, but it wasn’t until I read her letter in my yearbook that I realized she was coming by for something more. She really wanted to be friends. I was clueless. I just thought I was getting the opportunity to practice talking to a senior girl, which was a major accomplishment in and of itself. I will admit I did like it when she wore her cheerleader uniform on game days. Made speech class come alive.

After school was out for the summer, I went a full month before I dared to dial her number, and only then after practice-dialing it a dozen times. I finally dialed it for real, and she answered. A deep breath, and then my proposal: we go to a matinee showing of a new film called
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,
and we then go on a picnic to Richfield Park after the movie.

All innocent, safe, daylight activities. She loved the idea and said to pick her up Saturday at noon.

The most important part of this was that my parents were to have no clue I was going out on a date. If they were to find out, there would be an inquisition I imagined I would not survive.

Who is she?

What? She’s older than you?

She’s not Catholic?

She’s a cheerleader?

Are you sure she doesn’t have you confused with another Mike?

We don’t know her.

She lives
where?

Who are her parents?

How come we’ve never heard of her?

What kind of grades did she get?

She’s
not
going to college?

Wait, give me your yearbook. This is her? Oh, no siree, you’re not going anywhere with her!

Something like that, but with more questions.

So the trick was to get the car for the afternoon without any suspicions being raised. I told them I was picking up a couple guys and we were going to go play twenty-seven holes at the Flint Park golf course. This was a lot of golf, especially for me. But I’m sure they were happy to hear that I was getting any kind of exercise, so the keys were handed over and I was off to the Promised Land.

The birth control seat (I mean, the bucket seat) had not yet been mass-produced, so car seats were just one long bench. And when Linda got in the car, she slid over next to me—and I had no idea how I would be able to drive after that. Did I mention she was a cheerleader? Did I tell you about the perfect smile and the angel-white skin and the way her legs crossed like twin beams designed to withstand the worst earthquakes? I didn’t think so.

We went to the Dort Mall Cinema, one of the first generation of mall theaters that were designed for “extra comfort,” and in this case that meant they had stiff metal-backed seats that reclined so you could be more “relaxed.” At least one of us relaxed during
Willy Wonka.
I was anything but. I don’t remember much about the movie because I couldn’t stop worrying about the picnic lunch I left in my car. I had put a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken in the trunk and it was a ninety-degree day. My other worry was,
What was I doing at a children’s movie on my first date?
Nevertheless, Linda thought it was sweet and she told me as we left that most boys wouldn’t have taken her to a movie like that. I did not take that as a compliment. I wanted to be like most boys.