Well, I’ve got a brand-new pair of roller skates
You’ve got a brand-new key
I think that we should get together
And try them on to see
~~ from the 1971 song by Melanie, Brand New Key
Yesterday, I was in one of those big box stores, well Walmart on Manchester, if you must know. I was walking down the main aisle between the registers and the merchandise displays, looking for a right turn that would take me back to the electronics department. In front of me, I noticed a twenty something couple. What got my attention was that they both had hair dyed a strange shade of dark purple. At first, I thought them a lesbian couple, but one of them from the backside was obviously male.
My father after his first stroke lost a lot of his filters. He was prone to say things vaguely inappropriate to complete strangers. He at least had an excuse. I have not had a stroke – thankfully, but sometimes I think I need a zipper on my mouth.
As I neared to them, I said, “Wow, matchy, matchy.”
The female of the two turned to me and gave me a big smile. I winked at her. The male just ignored me. At this pointed I spied the main aisle to the back of the store, and I turned right while they continued straight.
The encounter started me reminiscing about an old girlfriend, Pam, from my high school days in Rhode Island in the late 60s. Pam once talked me into to wearing matching outfits to school. We both had on white jeans and matching tied-dyed t-shirts. But wait, allow me to add a little nuance to that image…
We were both strawberry blondes at the time. Her hair was a little redder than mine while mine was a little blonder than hers. I had reached my full height of 6’ 2” by that point and weighed a very muscular 175 pounds. Pam was 5’ 11” and very athletic. She played on the girls’ basketball team and the field hockey team. Her father, a commercial fisherman, was also a scuba instructor, and Pam was certified for this activity as well. I used to joke that when we played wrestled – big smiley face- she would take me two times out of three, but I truly believed then and now, that if we had been wrestling for real, she still would have taken me two times out of three. In retrospect, we must have looked like fraternal twins. It is something I will never do again, as kids were still teasing me about it 6 months after the fact.
I have reminisced about Pam from time to time since high school, but sometimes that is the way it is with first “loves”. We dated off and on for 3 years, mostly on, all through my Junior and Senior years of high school, and my first year of college at the University of Rhode Island. There was one summer during that period when I was in Oklahoma**, and the summer between high school and college was, well, chaotic. Sometime towards the end of my college freshman year, she threw me over for a lifeguard. And that, my friends, was my first heartbreak.
In retrospect I was amazingly stupid and possibly very lucky. We were like two kids with a brand-new toy, totally engaged in exploring all its possibilities. In that epoch, in Rhode Island, for teenagers to obtain any form of birth control was challenging, to understate the difficulty. I tried, somewhat, but gave it up as more than I wanted to deal with. This was one part of my amazing stupidity.
Pam seemed to not care. What bothered me a bit at the time, and thinking back on it, I should have seen it as a huge red flag, was that her favorite book was Mr. and Mrs. Bo Jo Jones. The novel is basically a story of two young teenagers who get married as the girl became pregnant. That was the other part of my amazing stupidity.
Years later, I took Señora on a long road trip through New England as she had never been to that part of the country. Being the good sport that she is, Señora allowed me to drive her by several of my old homes in Rhode Island and Connecticut and other nostalgic sites. I also checked off several state capitol buildings.
On our way to the Wickford Art Festival, which is a big deal in that part of the world, we passed a typical New England pond. I related to Señora that I stood by that pond often when hitchhiking back home after visiting Pam, who lived a little way up a side street. Being her ornery self, Señora had me drive by Pam’s old house. This got me wondering about the former inhabitants, and when we got to St. Louis, I did a quick Internet search. I found the obituary for Pam’s mother, Mona, who had moved to Florida. The sad part was that Mona had been preceded in death by three of her four kids, including Pam. Pam would have been 41 when she died. Under each child it listed Mona’s grandchildren. For Pam and her also deceased brother, it did not list any children. The other deceased sister had six children listed. So, there are a couple stories of which I will never know the details. Perhaps Pam was incapable of having children, so that is why I say possibly very lucky.
My father might have been right, I did have rocks for brains. Or what is more likely, I paid more attention to my little head than my big head. I am sure though, I am the only male to have ever done that.
** The summer of 1969 I was in Oklahoma. Had I not been there, there was a very real possibility that I might have been at Woodstock. I had three or four buddies with whom we had a tendency to urge ourselves on to activities less than appropriate and unapproved by our parental units. Maybe someday I will write about a road trip from Rhode Island to New York, to Montreal and finally Provincetown we took one weekend when my parents were not around. Back then you did not need a passport to cross the border. It still amazes me how I did not get into more trouble than I did.
A little lagniappe for y’all:
Wickford, RI is a village within the larger municipality of North Kingstown, RI. At the time of this story, there was a very large Navy base there, which was why we were there. Pam lived in what was essentially the outskirts of Wickford.
If you are old enough you have most likely have seen the 1987 film, The Witches of Eastwick, starring Jack Nicholson, Michelle Pfeiffer, Susan Sarandon and Cher. It is based on the novel of the same name by John Updike. There is a sequel to The Witches of Eastwick titled The Widows of Eastwick. Even with Updike fictionalizing the place names, if you know this part of Rhode Island, after reading the books, especially the sequel, you will realize the setting is Wickford, RI. At least, that is my take.
Fun times, eh?