Sixteen Again

I celebrated my sixteenth birthday the summer of 1961.  Kennedy was in his first year in the White House.  Nobody ever heard of Lee Harvey Oswald or Vietnam.  The moon was a place only Buck Rogers could visit in our imagination.  The Twenty-First Century and its fantastic technology was way off in the far-distant future.  It was a peaceful time to be young in a small town where nothing really bad ever happened. 

Sixteen was an age of change.  You could start driving a car.  That gave you freedom of movement, especially from your parents.  You could quit school, get a job, and have your own money.  You were near to being an adult.  While you waited, you started feeling more and more mature; at least you thought you did.

It was about that time I started thinking more seriously about girls.  It was natural for me to feel attracted to them.  I wanted to do something about it, but was filled with fear.  Girls were a great mystery to me.  Why?  There were no girls in my house.  I didn’t understand them.  What to do?

One day, for some reason I can’t fathom now, I was in the principal’s office at my high school.  I was not in trouble.  Perhaps I was there picking up something for one of my teachers.  In walked a pretty, blonde girl.  When she sat down across from me, I noticed her curvaceous legs.  Our eyes met briefly.  There was a spark.  I had to act. 

She was fifteen and new to the school.  Later, I found reasons to talk to her a couple of times.  I got her phone number and called for a date on a Friday night.  She accepted.  The world was wonderful.  I picked her up in my father’s car and we went to the dance at the high school.  Later we walked to a nearby restaurant to get something to eat.  Everything was going so well. 

Then, the deadly conclusion!  I started driving her home.  On the way, I spotted some friends who were hitching a ride in the same direction we were going.  I stopped and picked them up.  They sat in the back seat quietly until I dropped them off.  Then I drove to her house.  When I opened the car door, she jumped out and raced up some steps to her front door.  She entered her house almost before I got there.  Obviously, I had done something wrong.  It had to have been picking up my friends.  Before, she seemed to be enjoying herself.  After, I was persona non grata.  She refused to answer my phone calls or speak to me ever again.  I was crushed; my self-confidence shattered.  I was an utter failure.  My courage was gone.  As Marty Piletti said, “Whatever it is that women like, I aint got it.”

Boy, I wish I could go back and talk to that sixteen-year-old me.  So, she didn’t like what I did. Too bad!  So she didn’t want to talk to me anymore.  Her loss!  Who’s next for me?  There are plenty of fish in the sea.  I can look in my high school yearbook, now more than fifty years old, and I can see plenty of cute, adorable  females who would have been willing and interested in dating me.  Why not?  I was cute and adorable, too.  I wasn’t any jock.  But, I was smart and funny and a good talker.  And I had self-confidence.  No, I have self-confidence now and should have had back then in ’61.

And why didn’t I that fateful night when she slammed her front door in my face without any explanation?  What do I know now that I didn’t know then?  I guess I would call it wisdom.  Why couldn’t a sixteen-year-old have it?  Because, for most of us, it takes time to acquire.  A lot of time!

That one night’s experience shattered me for years.  I became a shy introvert.  I shuttered myself in my room, avoiding life.  My motto was, “nothing ventured, nothing lost.”  Another quote from Marty, “I don’t want to get hurt no more.”

I eventually figured that I couldn’t keep doing this forever.  I had to fight to free myself from myself.  I had to take a chance.  I was avoiding pain, but I wasn’t happy.  I instinctively knew I needed to take a chance for happiness.  It worked.  Success breeds success.  And that brings with it self-confidence.  I have never looked back.  My new motto is, “face life with courage.” 

However, I regret all the time I wasted hiding away in my room.  “I coulda been a contender.”