True love for a sad case

I was a sad case really.

I hid it the best I could in the younger years; hid behind lockers when the bully walked down the hall, pretended to be upset when the spinner didn't land on me in Spin the Bottle, purposefully raised my hand late in class and acted disappointed when the teacher didn't call on me.

There's an invisible spotlight that finds us all, however, and in the case of adolescence, it's called your 16th birthday. Two things happen then: 1) you're supposed to learn to drive and 2) once you master Rule 1, you must now take girls out on a date. Rule 2, of course, carries several addendums such as, a) do I call her sober or can I sneak a few shots out of the parent's liquor cabinets; b) do I ask her straight out, call her or do I ask John to tell Gene to tell Cindy to tell....

You remember the drill. Hopefully you don't if you were sane in your youth.

Part "b" was the toughest: This consisted of dialing six digits of her phone number, hanging up, dialing all seven, hanging up, then rejoicing when you called all seven and the line was busy.

Finally, you get her on the line. She knows you're going to ask her out and you know you're going to ask her out, so there's silence. And more silence. And you learn, even as a ripe teenager, that sometimes there isn't a sound louder in the world than pure silence. Finally, you ask. She accepts. You exhale 643 pounds of adolescent energy. The air is now fit for breathing.

So there we were. It was late; we'd already done the go-to-Athens-for-dinner-and-a-movie thing. The Beatles had already played through twice on my 8-track player. Conversation had run stale, dry, then completely out. The changing channels of the 8- track were getting louder, a big comparison to the silence between my date and me.

Finally, it happened. She asked me the question most teenagers would have traded all their baseball cards for: Do you want to get in the back seat? The silence was ... seriously heavy. Thick. Dense. Forever. Birds quit chirping. The 8-track tape player paused. The stars and moon moved closer, waiting. "No thanks," I finally replied. "I think I'll stay up front with you."

Yes, it started bad. And it only got worse.

High school ended (thank God) and off I went to college life. Ah, the life of freedom. Living in dorms. Away from home. No curfew. No having to wear clothes that matched all the time. The pleasure of wearing the same jeans over and over and over, washing them be darned.

One of the first weekends there, my doubles partner picked up a woman. To prove his manhood, he picked one up for me, too. I knew then that I had a serious friend on my hands. I hadn't felt that honored since first grade when my teacher made me stick my nose in a circle drawn in the chalkboard.

"Now who wants to join him?" the teacher asked angrily.

It was Don Gilbert who threw up his hand.

"I do, I do!"

True friends. They don't make 'em like they used to.

Sorry, back to the story:

"Come on, man, we're going back to your room."

My double's partner was smiling so big his mustache was shaking back and forth in exuberance, and he and his date were already in the back seat ready to go. Me, I'd never even had a beer with someone with a mustache, much less taken he, his woman and one for me back home.

But there we were. In my room. Two girls, two boys. Oops, actually it was considered politically correct to consider us men and women now, though what happened on my drive from Madison to Rome that converted me I'll never know. All I did was slam on some ELO, the Who, and some Beach Boys and there I was in non-record time.

Sorry, I digress once again.

Things were getting serious. Jimbo and his date were on my couch. There was nowhere for me and my "date" to sit but on the bed. In a panic, my eyes scanned all corners of the room for an alternative. None existed. So we sat. I tried small talk, then realized I wasn't capable. She, being more mature at that age naturally and way more mature anyway, was years away from small talk when it came down to it. She put her hands on my lips to shut me up. She moved closer. She put her hand on my stomach, about to make the BIG move.

And I laughed like I've never laughed before. "What's wrong?" "That tickles." She tried again, and again, and again. Laughter every time.

Jimbo pulled me aside. Tried to explain. Threatened my manhood. Promised that tomorrow's first serve would find its way into the back of my skull. Promised my reputation would owe points on the scale of 1-10.

Nothing worked. A human hand on my stomach equaled laughter. Sorry, that's the way it was.

Over the summer, I was at a camp in the mountains of New Hampshire. As promised and like a good little "man", I called home to talk to mom and dad. "I hate to cut this short folks, but Julie and I are about to leave campus and go looking for a moose."

I could hear the pride in my dad's voice. The relief. The Ode to Joy that Beethoven had always promised him. I could feel it 2,100 miles away, up the entire east coast from Georgia to New Hampshire. I could've sworn I heard him tell mom, "Shirley, good news, Dunn does date after all." Maybe that was my imagination. Actually, I think he said, "That's a likely story, son." It was mother who put a dagger through his heart. "No, you don't understand," she cut in. "He REALLY IS going looking for a moose."

I was. We were. We saw one, too. It was a baby - a calf I think it's called - but by God we found one. It was big and ugly and goofy, but man what a successful night it was.

It was a year later, at that same camp, when IT happened. I think God finally got tired of laughing at me. Maybe he pitied my mom and dad. Regardless, she was single and she was cute and she was smart and she was funny and she was sweet. Translation: she scared the crap out of me."Run for the hills!" my inner voice would say.

So I did. Steve Prefontaine, the great runner of the 70's, would've been proud. I had his stamina and could hide better than eight of the ten most wanted. No one could find me. Then again, probably no one looked.

Still, it was a hornet that ended my charade called a love life, just a hornet and nothing more. I was walking to a meeting; had my head down behind my clipboard and was heading straight, the shortest direction between two points. I tripped over a bush. The hornets came out. Most of them passed. One of them did not. He stung my index finger. The pain was intense.

Immediately I jogged to the nurse's station. Guess who the nurse was?

"What happened?" she said.

Being tongue tied, no syllables emerged. "Would you believe I got head butted by a pileated woodpecker?" I finally replied.

She laughed. I had to admit, that was pretty funny for me.

"Come back tonight. I'll see about it."

My friends congratulated me, patted me on the back, gave me high-fives, low-fives, butt slaps, whatever the going craze was. Me, I turned red.

That night, after hours, I visited her in the health center. She closed the door. We were all alone. Just me. And her. The world stopped. After looking at my hand, she got down to business. Gazing into my eyes, she dropped her head, raised it again, and spoke.

"It's like this," she said. "I've found this book club we ought to join. We can get eight books for a dollar each. I figure you can get four, I can get four, then we can split the cost on the three we have to buy."

Ah, true love at last...