how very lucky to be a girl

Summer lovin’ had me a blast
Summer lovin’, happened so fast
I met a girl crazy for me
Met a boy, cute as can be
Summer days driftin’ away, to uh-oh those summer nights

Well-uh-well-uh-well-uh. Uh!

Tell me more, tell me more, did you get very far?
Tell me more, tell me more, like, does he have a car?

It was summer of 1978.  I was 7.  And apart from chasing Josh relentlessly, and without success, on Sadie Hawkins Day, there really is nothing more to tell.  But it was my first awareness of the idea of Summer Romance.

I had a crush on him, and if my cooties and I could have ever caught up with him that day, I was sure that he would be the one to push me on the swings, tell me secrets, share his afternoon snack, pick dandelion and daisy flowers for me, not slam the tetherball too hard when we played, hold my hand on hikes, shower me with the lanyard jewelry he’d made in Arts & Crafts, and never ever try to get me out in four-square.  He would be the Danny Zucco to my Sandy.  And while kissing was totally out of the question, I really kinda did want those skin-tight satin leggings and red Candies to wear on those hand-holding hikes.  And, of course, for our inevitable dance in the Shake Shack.  The summer would end and so would our romance, as we returned to our separate schools, without the surprise relocation and fate that had befallen our beloved Danny and Sandy.

This was the early-learned rule of the Summer Romance: Like the Hydrangea’s bloom, these loves would last only as long as the warm summer months.

 

Wouldn’t it be nice if we were older
Then we wouldn’t have to wait so long
And wouldn’t it be nice to live together
In the kind of world where we belong

You know its gonna make it that much better
When we can say goodnight and stay together

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could wake up
In the morning when the day is new
And after having spent the day together
Hold each other close the whole night through

Happy times together we’ve been spending
I wish that every kiss was neverending
Wouldn’t it be nice

I was 14.  Leo was 12.  He was a cute Texas boy with this beautiful auburn, swept ’80′s hair that reminded me of pretty much every brat-packer I’d ever fantasized about making out with.  As a side note, I’ll tell you that if he still has that hair, I’d pay good money to run my fingers through it.  Anyway, Leo was quiet, but not too quiet to ask if I’d go out with him.  Of course, I said yes, and of course we never actually went anywhere.  This was at summer camp.  Our cabins were seldom paired together at any co-ed activities since I was an “older” woman. Our time together was limited to free periods and evening activities that allowed for co-mingling.  Activities like Socials (the Saturday night dances) and Movie Nights.  And also Sunday Night Football.    We slipped away from the game that particular Sunday to go lay on the pole vault mats and star gaze.  We made out there, under the stars, until this was broken up by the clever counselor who’d found us.  We were promptly sent to our cabins.  I woke the next morning with a hickey on the front of my neck and a tick firmly nested in the back of it.  Both were obviously signs that this relationship was doomed, but there was no need to take any action.  Summer came to a close, we said our farewells, and I never saw or spoke to Leo again.

 

I never will forget those nights
I wonder if it was a dream
Remember how you made me crazy?
Remember how I made you scream
Now I don’t understand what happened to our love
But babe, when I get you back
I’m gonna show you what I’m made of

I most certainly will never forget those nights.  It was only one year after my summer romance with Leo and this time I’d resolved to have an older man.  And the man of my choice?  A handsome and hardy 19-year-old lifeguard-slash-theology student named Luke.  Yeah.  You heard me right.  Luke loved sunshine, swimming and God.  He was going to be a priest.  And if I was a betting lady, I’d say that this probably never worked out for him.  At all.  He loved girls way too much, as evidenced by the fact that I was his third Jewish girlfriend that summer.  I can’t say what that was about, his love of Christ and Jews, but the world might be a better place if there were more people like him.  I sometimes wonder who he married.  Because I’m beyond sure that it wasn’t God.  Anyway, when I wasn’t imagining my future residence in the cloister next to the rectory (and let’s be honest, I never once imagined my future there), I was busy plotting how Luke and I could sneak off and be together.  We were forbidden fruit to one another for more reasons than his pending vow to Christ.  We were forbidden fruit because he was a 19-year-old counselor and I was a 15-year-old camper.  That didn’t stop us.  In fact, I suspect it was a big part of the allure for both of us.

The last night of our summer fling coincided with the last night of camp.  It was an easy night to escape, since most campers and counselors were running amok, trying to get time in with whomever had captured their fancy that summer.  There was no one to stop us when Luke whistled outside my cabin door and I ran out to meet him.  We immediately raced into the woods, running far beyond the cabin clotheslines, past the tree line and into an open pasture where Luke had already laid a blanket and a bottle of cheap wine for us to enjoy.  We laid there under a crescent moon, drinking the Christian equivalent of Manischevitz and one another.  Until we heard a motor.  A loud motor.  The kind of motor that would belong to a pick-up truck, like, say, the one driven by the camp director.  We were about to be busted.  I jumped up and ran, occasionally glancing behind me to see where Luke and the truck were.  I was going to get away with this.  All I needed to do was make it to the tree line, where the pick-up truck could never follow me.  I got there and was greeted by a barbed wire fence.  And in a moment of supreme self-assuredness, and by “supreme” I mean “assinine” I jumped that fence, as if it were a sprint hurdle.

Unlike a sprint hurdle, it turns out that barbed wire fences don’t recede to the leg that doesn’t clear the bar.  No.  A barbed wire fence grabs on to the offending leg and digs its claws in firmly from your knee to your ankle leaving a quarter-inch deep trail redder than Georgia clay and which flows as fast as your heart can race.  I didn’t stop to tend to this injury.  Not until I was sure I’d escaped conviction.  Some girls keep a football jersey, a carnival stuffed animal or an item of jewelry as a souvenir of a long-lost romance.  I kept an 8-inch scar running down the front of my right leg.

 

It turned colder, that’s where it ends
so I told her we’d still be friends
Then we made our true love vow
Wonder what she’s doin’ now
Summer dreams ripped at the seams, but oh, those summer nights

There’ve been many other keepsakes, and scars, over the years.  But one thing remained consistent.  Each summer romance began like dawn and ended with dusk.  They never endured beyond this season of life.  Maybe that was a mirror of my expectations.  Maybe it was the knowledge of the season lurking off in the distance, the one which shed its growth in preparation for winter’s cold.  I can’t say.

I can only say that somewhere along the line, the rules changed.  It turned colder, that much was true.  But it wasn’t necessarily where it ended anymore…

 

 

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