Boy Was My Face Red

When I was a kid (Hey! It wasn't that long ago. All right maybe it was longer than I'd like to think about.) anyway, a regular column in a teen magazine was "Boy was my face red" . Girls wrote in with their embarrassing experiences. It was always one of our favorite columns. We'd read the entries and have a good laugh but be relieved nothing terrible had happened to us. Yeah right, it was only a matter of time.

In the town where I grew up there is a park on the edge of the downtown shopping district. It has a bandstand, playground, and a picturesque bridge over the little stream that leads to the pond.

A number of wild and domestic ducks called this pond home. People would come with their little kids to feed the ducks or fish in the pond. This was before they found out feeding the ducks in the pond caused a fatal bacteria growth in the stagnate water which killed most of the ducks and necessitated dredging the pond and attempting to improve the water flow. Anyway before all this happened the park could be a very busy place. Especially on one of the first days of spring.

I walked to the park with a friend. We were strolling around, checking out the guys and trying to look cool.

A group of boys was hanging out by the pond tormenting the ducks so we casually strolled to the vicinity and stood on the rocks around the pond's edge eyeing them. Remember I said we were trying to look cool. That ended with a splash as I lost my balance and fell into the pond. To make it even worse (How could it possibly be worse?), I expected the pond to be deeper than it was so when my feet hit the bottom I further stumbled and fell full length into the scummy water making a second, even larger splash.

Laughter erupted from the boys and "Boy was my face red".

I sqooshed home, my teeth chattering because although it was spring it was still nippy, especially if you were wet. To add insult to injury my friend refused to lend me her sweater even though I promised to wash it before returning it. I will never forget that day.

The Ring of Keys

My daughter locked her keys in the trunk of the car the other day. She called me to come and help her out. She had unlocked the car itself before opening the trunk and throwing in her golf bag and other gear (including the keys).

It is strange the only way to open the trunk is with the key fob. Perhaps you can manually (gasp) unlock it with the key but those were safely in the trunk.

Any way, she called me to come with keys to unlock the trunk. Driving to the golf course made me think of the times my parents rescued me from similar situations. I ran out of gas numerous times. (In my defense my first car did not have a working gas gauge.A sawed off broom handle was kept in the VW's bonnet to stick in the tank to attempt to judge how much gas it had.) I, too, locked keys in the car, this was way way way before key fob remotes. Also way way way before cell phones. My car broke down multiple times and never close to home. And usually at night. In fact the running out of gas and breaking down were always at night.

So I was thinking about my father teaching me to drive in the Sears parking lot on Sundays because stores way way way back then weren't open on Sundays.

He taught me to drive a manual transmission. First we practiced on the automatic, as he drove down the street he'd have me listen to the engine, he'd have his fist out on the seat with his thumb sticking up as the gear shift. I would listen to the engine and shift gears with it, pretending to press down the clutch and lifting up on the gas then reversing the sequence. When he thought I had the idea we tried it out, in the Sears parking lot on Sunday, with the real thing. The dry runs must have done the trick because it wasn't too ugly. We practiced everything in that parking lot, backing up, parallel parking, k turns, stopping on hills, everything. Then he'd let me drive home.

So it seems I'm coming full circle. I've taught one daughter to drive and I'm rescuing her from locking the keys in the car. Hopefully she won't run out of gas. But that may be part of the ring of keys.