Question – Did you know that I thought that you wanted to hold my hand today?
His response to me was, “No.”
Just a simple no was his only response. He didn’t even think about holding my hand.
Then I became preoccupied with the fact that I had never kissed a boy before, so I hoped maybe this was truly becoming a summer of firsts. I had my first date, then a first boyfriend. I was so scared of my first kiss, yet I was constantly wondering when he was going to try to kiss me.
One night, while hanging out with the neighborhood kids, we were dared during truth or dare. We were told to go behind the wall at the end of my street and kiss. I think my heart nearly stopped right there.
“Don’t worry,” Danny said. “It will be really fast.” He probably knew I was upset about kissing for the first time.
If I didn’t let him kiss me, everyone would laugh at me and I would be back in middle school once again. I was so sick of being tormented by the other kids. You are going into high school in September. You can’t do something that will give anyone a reason to make fun of you. This was my chance to start anew. I wish I would’ve told him about my fears of being the object of more ridicule. “Okay,” I replied. “As long as it’s really fast.”
We went behind the wall, so no one could see us. I couldn’t believe this was happening to me. I thought that I’d finally convinced myself that I could actually do this as I leaned on the wall. I knew it was coming and seconds seemed like minutes. Did I really want this to happen? What am I supposed to do? As he leaned into kiss me, panic set in and I quickly moved away. Luckily, he didn’t bang his face on the wall, but it was close. All I could think of was that I would be laughed at for sure over this.
“Don’t worry. I’ll tell them we did,” Danny said, his words sounding magical to me. He took my hand as we made our way out from behind the wall.
We were holding hands! I was up in the clouds, I was flying, I felt so happy. I trusted that he wouldn’t tell anyone that I chickened out.
The next night, we were playing truth or dare again. Since I moved there, I noticed the neighborhood kids all loved doing this every night. Danny took my hand again, that night. I was ecstatic and suddenly felt so safe. All of a sudden, I heard those words again.
“I dare you to kiss Danny,” Michelle teased. The tone of her voice told me she knew we didn’t kiss the night before.
He wouldn’t have told his siblings, would he? It was dumb of me to think that this wouldn’t happen again, after last night.
As soon as we got behind the wall, I asked him with a bit of an angry tone, “You didn’t tell your sister that we didn’t kiss, did you?
“No, of course not. I understand why we didn’t,” he responded in a voice that somehow told me he wasn’t lying.
“Really?” I instantly felt relief. “We won’t have to lie tonight,” I stated with a sudden flare of courage. In my mind, I knew we couldn’t put this off forever.
I leaned back against the same wall that saw me flee from kissing him the night before, the same wall that almost broke his nose. He came towards me and we finally kissed. I felt really awkward, strange and yet, I saw fireworks all at once. I could only imagine that my face was bright red. We went out from behind the wall still holding hands. He held my hand the rest of the night and I was in pure heaven. That night I wrote in my diary:
August 16, 1977
Dear Diary:
Tonight we kissed for the first time. We were playing truth or dare again and his sister dared us. I couldn’t chicken out on him again, after last night. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be, it was fun! Write again tomorrow!
‘It was fun’ was the only creative phrase my 14-year-old brain could come up with to describe the first kiss I ever had. Even after we shared our first kiss, kissing wasn’t something that came naturally to us. We even got creative enough to plan them. One time, he was to go up the stairs, I was to come down them, and we would meet in the middle to kiss. We met in the middle as planned and wound up not even kissing.
Life was simple back then. We sat with my piles of 45s and albums and picked our songs. We decided on, I Just Want to be Your Everything by Andy Gibb as our together song, When I Need You by Leo Sayer was his song to me, and Higher and Higher by Rita Coolidge was my song to him. Simple, yet life was good.
During that summer, we also babysat a little girl around the corner from us. She was the cutest thing, only two and that’s such a fun age. Her name was Christy. She would come to my house all the time for breakfast. She loved to be with us and it made us feel like a married couple. We would take her up to town, imagining that she was ours and we were a family. We went to Woolworths and bought matching friendship rings that looked like wedding rings. We wore them every day. We even talked about getting a pre-engagement ring for our one-year anniversary.
On a summer night while he was babysitting Christy, I wasn’t supposed to be there. We had gotten the hang of ‘making out’ by now. All of a sudden, we heard Christy’s parents. They came home earlier than they were supposed to. It was a good thing I was able to run fast and leap the fence right into my own backyard in a matter of seconds. We didn’t get caught, but it was really close.
Even though we were getting used to making out with each other, we weren’t prepared to witness it happening with other people in a movie—and while sitting next to my parents. For some unknown reason, my parents decided to take us to see The Other Side of Midnight, an R-rated movie. The sex scenes and naked people in that movie were not for young eyes. They were doing things we weren’t even writing about in questions yet. I still don’t know why my parents took us to it, and unfortunately, I couldn’t even ask them why. I couldn’t tell you a single thing about this movie, other than it was very inappropriate for teens to see.
During that summer, I realized how everyone seemed to be friends in our neighborhood and I loved it. Danny told me about a huge block party that was planned. He thought it might be a good time to invite my parents, so that they could meet his parents. Danny even gave me a t-shirt for the occasion. Cherry Lane Gang was written across the front. I couldn’t wait to wear it!
The day of the block party finally arrived. We spent all day setting up the tables and chairs. I finally felt like I fit in, and my dread of going to high school had been replaced with a sense of tentative anticipation.
In my wildest dreams, I never thought that Danny’s parents and mine would hit it off so fast. Danny and I watched them sitting together, laughing and talking the whole night, when we weren’t behind the dead-end wall kissing. We even heard that they made plans to get together the next weekend.
When the party was over, I asked Danny to take a walk with me. I had to go to my old street to take care of my friend’s dog. I had promised her before I moved that I would help her out. I figured it would be easy and they were going to give me some money. They had an Old English Sheep Dog; his name was Running Meat. The name suited him—he was huge. He had long straggly hair that covered his eyes and everywhere else.
When we got there, I opened the door to let him out, then Danny and I sat on her steps, waiting for the dog to finish his business. We both noticed that he seemed to be having a hard time with things. What should have been a quick walk was taking much longer. He finally started walking towards us but was walking funny.
I went behind him and saw what the problem was. There hanging on his behind was his poop. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t let him go back in the house covered in crap. He would get it all over the carpeting. But my friend was trusting me to take care of her dog. I immediately came up with a plan. “I need you to clean his butt for me,” I said to Danny with the sweetest voice I could muster.
“You can’t be serious?” he replied with a look of pure horror. “I am not going near that thing.”
“If you don’t then I will break up with you.” I needed to clean up this dog and I knew there was no way I was going to do it.
&
nbsp; Danny stood there thinking about what I just said to him.
I couldn’t believe those words had actually came out of my mouth. I didn’t want to break up, but I felt desperate now.
Danny didn’t say a word, just got up and walked over to the hose. “You hold him and I will spray him with the hose.”
I didn’t care what he did as long as I didn’t have to deal with it. It took a while to get him all clean, but we did and I put him back in the house.
The walk home was spent in gloomy silence. Why did I say those words? I think I just tested his love for me and he passed.
Danny acted very strange the days following the block party. I eventually realized that he was a moody person, which was hard to deal with at times. Maybe he was thinking about the other night when I threatened to break up with him. His moods and my PMS seemed to put a strain on us. He didn’t understand what I would go through every month and I didn’t understand why he got so cranky for no reason. He could be in a good mood one minute, and then be in the worst mood the next. One day, he threw one of my special stuffed animals on the floor and I told him to leave. I didn’t want to see him ever again. He was halfway down the street when I found myself calling him back and apologizing. We would often break up over silly, stupid things like that, and then get right back together.
“I love you, always and forever,” Danny said to me one day for the first time to my face.
“I love you too, forever and always,” I said back. It felt strange saying this, even though it was how I felt.
“Not forever and always,” he countered with a smile. “It’s always and forever.”
“No. It’s forever and always. You know I like to be different.” I laughed.
I loved him and he loved me. I couldn’t wait to hear him say the words to me again.
The night before school started, I heard the phone ring once and knew that there was a letter in my mailbox. I was excited, but wondered why he wrote me a letter. I was also afraid to go see what it said, since he’d been acting cranky recently. I wasn’t at all prepared for the letter I was about to read.
Cassidy,
See it is like this, if I walk to school with you tomorrow, it is going to put a bad impression on your friends and mine. They’ll think you have me to do anything you want me to do. It is not that I don’t love you, that is not true, and if we hang around each other all the time, we both won’t have any friends. I have already lost two good friends because all we did was be together, but I loved it very much. I am just trying to say if all we do is hang around each other, we will have no friends. What if we ever broke up? You don’t have to agree.
I love you, Danny
WHAT? Was he serious? He didn’t want to walk to school with me? He lost friends because of me?
I quickly wrote back to him: “What two friends did you lose?” I ran to his mailbox, put it inside, ran home, and rang his phone once.
I heard my phone ring and ran back to the mailbox.
He wrote: “It doesn’t matter. If we walk to school everyone from north and south will think that you have me wrapped around your finger.”
I was getting really mad by then. As I wrote him back, my handwriting was starting to look more like scribble: “Well, if that is true that you lost your friends because of me, I guess we should just break up.” I ran to his mailbox, ran home, and rang his phone once.
I heard my phone and this time, my parents yelled to me, “Will you two stop with the phone!”
Now what do I do? I quickly read his latest response. “Meet me outside. I have some bad news to tell you and I don’t want to break up.”
I ran outside. “What is the bad news?” I asked, my voice trembling.
“I can’t play hockey this year,” he told me in a voice like he felt his life was over.
I’d been watching him play hockey on our dead-end street most of the summer with his brothers and his best friend, Bobby. He was really good at it. I knew that he was planning on trying out for the school team. “Why can’t you play?”
“The coach told me since my grades were not high enough and I cut class too many times last year, I’m not allowed to even try out.”
There were no words to say back. I was just happy that we weren’t broken up. I didn’t even bring up the walking to school part again. We decided that we were going to try to cut down on our phone ringing because our parents were getting really annoyed by it. Danny then told me he would throw tiny rocks at my window.
When I heard something hitting my window the next night, it didn’t sound like rocks. It sounded like a loud splatting. It was dark out, so I couldn’t see anything. I went downstairs and heard Danny whistling. “What did you throw at my window?” I asked him.
“I couldn’t find a rock, so I grabbed a couple of tomatoes from your neighbor,” he explained with a laugh.
“Oh, no!” I exclaimed. “You know how my dad is. When he sees tomatoes on the roof he is going to flip.” I was pretty freaked out. I hoped my dad wouldn’t notice, but who was I kidding?
The next morning when my OCD dad saw the roof, freaking out would have been better than the wrath that I heard. I couldn’t help but laugh a bit when he spent hours cleaning it and getting every bit of tomato off the roof. Danny certainly was going to be on the shit list, so to speak.
Even though I knew my dad was really mad, he jokingly said to Danny that the next time he wanted to see me, to please just come to the door or go back to the phone ringing. It would be better than having to clean up tomatoes again.
The days all seemed to blend together and before I knew it, it was Christmas time. I was so anxious for Christmas that year. It was going to be our first year in our house and I couldn’t wait to decorate. I was also incredibly happy to have a boyfriend to share the holidays with. He even helped decorate the tree with us.
My mother was really great at knitting, and had knitted Danny an awesome sweater that I couldn’t wait for him to see. I got him a nice ID bracelet.
On Christmas day, he handed me a box. I wanted it to be jewelry. When I opened the box I found a beautiful heart necklace, and engraved on the back was, “Love, Danny.” In the card he had written, “You will have to wait for your other gift. It is an ankle bracelet.” I was completely and utterly on top of the world at that very moment. I knew I was going to marry this boy someday. I could feel it in every ounce of my soul. I immediately put the necklace on. I couldn’t wait for everyone to see it and see how much he loved me.
A week later, he handed me an ankle bracelet. It was perfect and beautiful to me, with two hearts. Someday, maybe we would add our initials on the hearts, but that would mean I would have to part with it to have it done. I didn’t ever want to take it off.
We never did walk to school together, even though I knew him throughout all my high school years and we lived only houses away from each other. I often wondered what magnetic power he possessed over me. Why would I put up with so much and still keep going back for more. My only excuse was love, pure, innocent, and simple. I loved him. I never shared so much of my soul with any other person ever in my life.
CHAPTER FOUR
1978 – Age 15
It was the first day of the New Year. My parents took Danny and me out to dinner. I really loved that my parents were okay with him being around all the time. The restaurant was really crowded. I glanced over at Danny, who was in the middle of a conversation with my dad and they were both laughing. That was what I wanted more than anything. It was so nice to see them talking and laughing. I gazed out the window and saw the snow starting to come down really hard. I noticed just how much more beautiful snow looks when you’re in love. That’s crazy, right? It just billows down in such a calm way and everything is covered in a white wonderland.
Dinner went by quickly; in a way, it went by too fast. I loved being with my family and Danny. It made me think of what our lives together would be like when we got older, having nice holiday meals with my parents.
We
got into the car for the short drive home. When we pulled up to my house, I saw that everyone was on my street playing in the snow. Danny walked off and started talking to his brother. I thought he would come back to where I was, but he didn’t. I felt really left out.
We’d just had a great day and now for some reason, he was acting like he was mad at me. Every so often, he came near me, but then he just knocked me into the snow.
I tried to laugh it off. It was funny but I wasn’t happy that he kept ignoring me. I pulled him aside and asked him what was wrong. He told me we were probably going to break up and it was just a feeling. I knew it must have been more than that. Did I miss something? It seemed every week there was something. I didn’t understand how someone could be so happy one minute and then change into someone I didn’t know the next. I’d never met someone who was as moody as Danny.
Our six-month anniversary arrived and of course, we had another fight over something dumb. I didn’t even know how it started or why. When he left that night, my mother told me she might forbid me from seeing him. She was tired of all the fighting…I was too. I ran to my room and cried until I had no more tears to shed. I didn’t want to lose him but I didn’t know why all we did was fight. I kept asking myself why I loved someone who was always so difficult. After my tears had run dry, I got up, got a piece of paper, and wrote down my feelings. It was my first poem.
A love so deep down
Your heart beats so fast
I could never think of life
If you were my past
I’ve learned all about you
It seems only a short time
I feel in my heart
That you are really mine
I need your love and support
For the rest of my life
My only dream
Is to one day be your wife
The love we have
Is so very strong