The Coolest Kid

For my 9th birthday I received a brand new bike. It was a pink and white Schwinn Sting Ray complete with banana seat, flared handlebars and hand brakes. It was the coolest bike in the neighborhood — which, of course, made me the coolest kid.

Mr. LaBeau, my baby-sitter’s husband, insisted that I try out the bike in his driveway before he would allow me on the street. That is probably a good thing, because I used the side of the garage as brakes several times before I learned not to pedal backwards, but squeeze the hand grips instead.

Finally I was declared street worthy and I zipped to the homes of all of my friends, cajoling each of them in turn to join me outside on their own wheels. There were about eight of us zooming through the neighborhood in follow-the-leader style. Me — the coolest kid in the neighborhood — being the leader, of course.

They followed me around the block, through the empty field, across the playground, around the school building, and then — knowing I would loose the cowards — I headed straight for Dead Man’s Trail, an almost vertical drop into the big gully behind the school house. At the bottom of the drop where the trail leveled out it passed between two pine trees and immediately made a 50 degree turn. Bikes that didn’t make the turn ended up about six feet down in a narrow stream. Riders flew several feet through the air and landed in a tangle of wild raspberry bushes. Very few of us had the guts to take that trail on our bikes.

Some say that dare-devil bravery is not really courage. It is, instead, a form of hubris birthed by lack of fore-thought. I’d like to argue that point. I’d like to, but I can’t.

I took the trail at top speed. Both wheels left the ground and I soared several feet, landing smoothly. I rocketed down the trail, standing on the pedals with my long hair streaming in my wake. I imagined my friends all standing at the rim, watching me in awe. Unfortunately, I couldn’t look. Coming up fast were two huge yellow pine trees. It took a steady hand to maneuver between them. More than once when riding my “baby-bike” I had left the back of my knuckles on the bark of one of those trees. The best thing to do was let go of the handlebars and just steer with one’s fingertips. That way no skin was lost. The passage only took a fraction of a second, so the bike never had time to go out of control.

I was an expert at fingertip steering — in fact, I was an expert in hands-free steering, but not with a 50 degree curve ahead of me. I let go of the handlebars for a nanosecond. My bike shot into the gap between the trees. Those fancy new, flared out handlebars scraped bark from both trunks. I jerked my hands to my chest as the bike jolted to a stop. Like a rocket, I flew ten feet through the air, sailing over the embankment and the stream, arching over the raspberry patch and landing upside down in it’s southern-most branches. Unfortunately, despite their tenacious grip, they weren’t strong enough to hold me. I crashed to earth flat on my back, staring up at the sky. Stars burst behind my eyes, and I swear I heard little birds singing my death chant.

My friends left their bikes at the top of the trail and clambered down. They had to climb the embankment, circle the raspberry patch and fight through a Pussy Willow thicket to get to me. By the time they arrived, I had regained my feet and rid myself of most most of the raspberry branches. Some of the thorns, however, stayed with me throughout the summer.

I heard my friends crashing through the underbrush and braced myself for the onslaught of their teasing. They greeted me instead with joy and concern. Sugar and Cheerleader began searching for my skin beneath the blood. Handsome insisted on checking for broken bones. Amazingly, aside from being a bit crumpled and scratched, I was fine.

My friends wanted to take me home. I insisted on being taken to my bike. It stood right where I’d left it, wedged between the two trees at the bottom of the trail. Handsome freed it with a tug, and aside from a mangled right handgrip, it was none the worse for wear.

With Handsome helping me, and Stretch and Sugar on either side of my bike, we climbed the hill. The boys refused to return my bike at the top. They insisted on delivering me to the tender mercies of my grandmother. They escorted me all the way into the kitchen.

Gram was cooking lunch. She stood in front of the kitchen stove and looked me over from head to foot, tangled hair, tattered clothing and blood smeared skin. She sighed, shook her head and said, “I swear, one of these days you’re going to kill yourself. I ought to just get it over with and do it for you.”

I would have felt a lot better at that statement had she not been holding a wooden spoon. However, Gram didn’t spank. Her punishments were much more subtle. She stood me in the bathtub, scrubbed me with a stiff-bristled wooden brush, painted me in Mercurochrome, and made me sit on the kitchen stool for days on end — well, at least one.

By the time I made it outside every kid within five square blocks wanted a look at my cuts and to hear my Dead Man’s Trial survival tale. Really, it wasn’t anything special. Just pretty much what you’d expect from the coolest kid in the neighborhood.

The Valentine’s Day Dance

Every Wednesday and Saturday night of the 14th year of my life I was forced to go square dancing. It wasn’t cool and the other kids teased me. I acted like I hated it and claimed that my parents forced me to go, but in reality, I went more than willingly. You see, Bob’s parents forced him to go, too, and I had a huge crush on him.

Bob, Jeff and I were the only teens who attended the dance. Plenty of grownups attended, a sizable group of little kids, and one twelve year old, loud-mouthed, obnoxious girl-child named Nancy Rae. Nancy Rae also had a crush on Bob. Unlike me, she wasn’t cool about it. She followed Bob’s every footstep, and even waited outside the men’s room whenever he went inside. Sometimes he would stay in the restroom so long hiding from her, that his mother would send his father in to make certain he was all right.

Finally, to save himself from both Nancy Rae and his mom, Bob asked me to be his regular partner. As you might imagine, this was quite a hardship for me, having to dance with the cutest boy in town all night twice a week. It’s a wonder I survived. I probably would have died of joy had my parents not interfered. I was ordered to wait beside one of them until I was formally asked to dance, and I had to accept the first person who asked me. Bob’s parents also made it clear to him that it was unkind for him to never dance with Nancy Rae. He was told he had to dance with her a least once per evening.

Despite my having eyes for only Bob, Jeff often asked me to dance. He was 16 and, in retrospect I’m thinking he may have had a crush on me, but back then I was too focused on Bob to notice. As the squares started forming for a dance, Bob and Jeff would race each other across the room. Whomever got to me first won the dance. However sometimes, just to tweak the boys I’m sure, either my dad or his friend Don, would ask me to dance. Don was the police chief. He would put his hand on my shoulder and tell the boys to go dance with someone else, or he’d give them a ticket for loitering. Sometimes he even told them who the someone else was that he expected them to dance with.

Twice every evening they would call a lady’s choice dance. Unlike the boys, I refused to race Nancy Rae for the privilege of dancing with Bob. For that reason, Bob usually still dashed across the dance floor to my side. My step-mother noticed it, and insisted that I only dance with Bob for one lady’s choice dance, and then dance with Jeff for the other.

The night of the Valentine’s Dance, there were no extra people to stand on the sidelines. If someone chose not to dance, a whole square had to sit out. Nancy Rae and Jeff were among the people who did not come to the dance. I danced every dance in the first set with Bob, though he never once asked me. He would motion with his hand or his head, and I would walk over and join him in the square. It started to irk me a bit. For the first lady’s choice dance, I asked my dad, and stuck Bob with my step-mom. After that I danced with Don, and Bob had to dance with some one’s grandmother. Then they called intermission.

I sat at a table with my parents and another couple eating cookies and drinking punch. Bob sat across the room with his parents. The caller announced intermission was over. Squares started to form. Neither Bob nor I moved. Finally, everyone was on the dance floor except the two of us. The dance couldn’t start because the final square was incomplete. Bob’s dad motioned for him to get up.

Bob sauntered across the dance floor, took his place in the square, turned to me and snapped his fingers, then he pointed at he spot on the floor beside him. The room was silent. I looked over my shoulders, first right and then left, pretending to search for whomever he was motioning to. I turned back to face him, pointing at myself. He nodded his head, snapped his fingers again, and pointed at the floor.

I sat back in my chair and crossed my legs. Scattered chuckles approved my action. Bob’s dad said, “Give it up, Son.”

Bob slowly crossed the floor to where I sat, held out his hand, and asked through gritted teeth, “Will you dance with me?” I stood up and took his hand. Laughter and applause followed. Bob nearly broke my fingers. He also stomped on my feet several more times then was usual during the dance.

He did not ask me to dance again for the rest of the evening. In fact, as far as I could tell, he never once glanced my way. He just kept asking grown women to dance and stranding me with their husbands. My step-mother came over. She said, “The last dance will be lady’s choice. You need to save Bob’s pride and ask him to dance.” At that point my feelings were hurt and I didn’t really want to dance with him. I told her it would be too embarrassing to ask him to dance when he’d been ignoring me for the past hour. She suggested that I consider how embarrassed Bob must have been to have to walk across the floor and ask me to dance while everyone in the room watched his every move. I grumbled then that I would ask. My step-mother answered, “You don’t have to, but you might be sorry if you don’t.”

Sure enough, a couple of dances later they called lady’s choice, and said it would be the last dance of the evening. Holding my breath, I walked across the room and asked Bob to dance. He accepted — but they didn’t call a square. The fiddler started playing a waltz. I stepped into Bob’s arms and we danced. It was my first slow dance with someone not related to me. I kept having to remind myself to breathe.

As the dance came to an end the lights dimmed, then went out. Bob let go of me. I was disappointed. Then he grabbed my shoulders, pulled me forward and kissed me. He wasn’t there when the lights came back on. It didn’t matter. It was Valentine’s Day, I was fourteen years old, and I’d just had my first kiss.