Pitches
My earliest memories of women occurred at my home church in Kansas City. My parents would put me in the nursery where I’d sing songs, eat vanilla wafers, and play with old Star Wars toys. It was in this play area that I had the most interaction with women.
I remember playing with the Millenium Falcon when a girl said to me, “I can hear your whisper more than your regul ar voice.” I thought that odd, but assumed it was because it held a different pitch.
My dad used to do maintenance and electrical work at the church, digging ditches and improving electrical systems. There was a barn in the bottom of the parking lot by the willow tree full of newspapers. My dad thought it was a fire hazard so one day he went there to take them all to be recycled.
The parking lot was at an angle, with the top being near the road. I was near the top of the parking lot playing, by one of the islands mulched with red lava rocks. My mom was about half-way between me and my dad when she called out my name in such a way as to paralyze my muscles. It was as if it was her dying breath. The muted, passive tone turned my legs into concrete and time slowed down. It was something about the pitch.
There was an older boy at church who would play with me sometimes. He would swing me around in circles, flying me in the air. He had a sunken chest too. Suddenly he stopped playing with me and started hanging around some girl instead. One day I caught him kissing her in the parking lot so I picked up a lava rock and pitched it into her face. He responded by feeding me Apple juice that turned out to be vinegar. I violently puked for the next hour.
Parties
A couple of years later the girl from the nursery moved to Indianapolis and a couple of years after that, we did too. I went to one of her birthday parties and my mom let me have one of her gold necklaces to give her as a present. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but she seemed to enjoy getting it. We went to different schools, but saw each other at church.
I had two third grade teachers – both women. One of them thought I had some issues to deal with so she recommended me to see a counselor – also a woman. One of the first things this counselor had me do was to draw a picture of my family. I figured she would be using it to analyze how I thought of my family based on what I had seen on TV so I made sure to draw everyone with smiling faces, but I have no idea how it actually got interpreted. I credit these visits and my chest with keeping me out of the military, but I’m sure they would have taken me anyway.
The next year my teacher got pregnant and had to leave mid-way through the school year to avoid a virus that was spreading through the school that could hurt the baby. Before she left she asked us for advice on how to raise her daughter, since she would have been her first-born. I remember recommending to give her as much allowance as possible. I recently ran into this daughter on Facebook, which was a surreal experience. This teacher was the one who recommended I be entered into advanced classes, called IDEA.
My fifth grade teacher was as tall as I was at the time (5 feet) and she loved talking about space and space travel. She had a friend at NASA who would visit once a year and do acrobatics on a chair and show us the fastest way to empty a 2-liter bottle. We built space stations out of toilet paper tubes and rockets out of cardboard boxes. She had applied to be on the Challenger, but didn’t get accepted. When it blew up she had to go home because she was so upset.
That year was the first year I had a social group outside of the kids who lived in my neighborhood. Although I had more shared experiences with those of us who were bused to the other school for half a day to learn advanced topics (Solitaire) I got along better with the kids who enjoyed sports. I was the fastest runner and highest jumper at the time probably because of my height. One day I got invited to a party after school. It was my first non-birthday party.
The party was in the basement of one my friend’s houses. There was a home made bar there and a boom box. The music was playing and people were dancing. I had no idea what to do, but there was a girl there who may have liked me. Her name was Misty Ward. She lived in the apartments along Madison Ave, just south of Stop 11. When Valentines Day came around, I gave candy to two girls who didn’t like me and none to her – she never liked me again.
Concerts
In sixth grade, the girl with the necklace moved to New Castle and we moved to Franklin. I spent a lot of time in my back yard digging holes and trimming trees. There was a girl down the street who had hoped to piggyback on my initial popularity at my new school by asking me out. I didn’t initially know how to handle this so I fumbled it pretty bad, making her get up from sitting next to me on the bus and then spending the next three years trying to get her back. I never did.
My first date wouldn’t be until after I graduated high school. A girl from my third and fifth grade classes, who also went to my church, invited me to her graduation party. I went and for some reason we started calling each other and I hanging out. One of the first things we did was go to a party at one of her friends houses. There was a home made bar and a boom box playing music. No one was dancing and I had no idea what to do.
One night I was over at her house watching a movie and her mother asked me when I turned into a pumpkin. Not sure what she meant, she asked when I needed to be home. Not having an answer she told me she wanted me gone by midnight. I remember eating popcorn and wanting to shove as much of it into my face as I could. Stephani (that was her name) advised me to take one or two pieces at a time, but that was very hard for me to do.
She had this quirk about her that whenever she went to a concert she would rush the backstage afterwards to meet the band. We were watching Audio Adrenaline at Garfield Park that summer and as the concert ended she approached the stage and asked if I was coming with her. I said no and I didn’t see her again until a year later at a Reality Check concert at her college, Indiana Wesleyan. I was selling t-shirts for the band and she was about ready to rush backstage. I haven’t seen her since.
Parks
The summer after my freshman year in college I worked at a camp in Michigan. I called up the girl with the necklace and invited her to go to King’s Island with me for Labor Day. She agreed and after eating dinner with her parents at my house in Franklin and spending the night at her parent’s house in New Castle, we drove to the park.
On this same path, three years earlier, I sat in the back of a van with a girl I met at an Audio Adrenaline concert a few months before in Bright, Indiana. It took all day, but I finally worked up the courage to ask her to ride a roller coaster with me. She did and we ended up being pen pals for a couple of years until I asked her to go to a movie with me one night on my way home from college in Kentucky.
We dated off and on for about a year and in June of 1999 I drove down from Michigan to see her graduate. After her graduation in Bright, we drove together to her friend’s graduation in Sullivan, Indiana and on the way she decided to break up with me. I ended up having a great friendship with the girl from Sullivan, who would sell t-shirts with in Marion, but I digress. Today I was on my way to Kings Island.
The girl with the necklace felt uncomfortable going to the park alone with me so she begged one of her friends to come with her. I should have took this as a sign and said “Forget it”, but I didn’t and off we went with her friend in tow. I didn’t ride a single ride with her that day, having to ride each time by myself and even when I offered to pay for her to get a locker for her stuff at the water park, she refused. After her bag was stolen I had to buy her new clothes from the store in the park.
On our way out of the park, I captured a glimpse of the girl from Bright, Indiana walking up ahead. I left the girl with the necklace and ran up to meet her. It was embarrassingly obvious that I had brought everyone here just to show my ex-girlfriend that I had moved on. No one was amused and I didn’t go back to Kings Island until my honeymoon (I rode alone that day too).
Tennessee
The next year, the girl from Bright and her friend from Sullivan enrolled with us at Kentucky and I started hanging out with the school’s accountant’s daughter, who was an identical twin named Sarah. Sarah’s boyfriend was a basketball player on the school’s team, but she was actively trying to break up with him. It was all very odd. I would hang out at her house and she would talk about him and he would visit her window and call her on the phone. I thought we were just friends who watched movies together and made mix tapes for fun.
Before I went home for Fall break, Sarah gave me a card. Not thinking much of it, I ended up going to a club with a girl I dated in high school. [I know I said I didn’t have any dates in high school, but that may be because the dates with this girl were all setup by her friend and I didn’t really like her. The dates I went on after high school were the first ones initiated by me.] When I got back, I told Sarah all about it. She responded by telling me how she really felt, but that it was now too late. I spent a couple of weeks trying to get her back, but never did.
That year I decided to not go back to that college. On a whim I transferred to a college in Tennessee with the other person who was selling t-shirts with me in Marion, Ben. I treated Tennessee like it didn’t matter and looking back I can say that’s true. I told everyone my name was Dirk Douglas and I would regularly kiss girls that I didn’t know at lunch. I was very popular, but I flunked all of my classes and left. My greatest accomplishment was being a part of the first feature length film there as assistant producer.
Before MySpace and Facebook, there was CollegeClub.com, where I met a girl named Susan. She was working backstage at a Christian concert in Johnson City and wanted me to meet her there. I had never met her before, but found the back door, which was more like a garage, walked in, and started to get food from the staff buffet along with the others. It wasn’t until I sat down next to the girl who I thought was Susan that someone asked me who I was and what I was doing there. We ended up dating a couple of months before she decided to move on.
I briefly dated a senior in high school who worked with me at our school cafeteria, but she quickly pawned me off to one of her friends in a group date. I should have known that she was no longer interested when she introduced me to her guy friend and the other girl she had brought with her. I guess I was confused by the mix CD she had made for me with custom artwork. I tried to learn from the mistakes I made with Sarah, but there was so much more to learn.
I moved to Muncie, Indiana in January of 2011 and started dating a girl in Marion, Indiana named Starla. I sent a dozen roses to a girl I knew from Milligan that Valentines Day, but my credit card never got charged. I loved the Internet back then. Shortly after Valentines Day I broke up with Starla and began mowing lawns for a living. I hadn’t started school yet at Ball State. My friends worked at Old National Bank and in June I had an opportunity to apply also. The same week I applied, I met my wife, Suzanne on AOL Instant Messenger.
I broke up with Suzanne in October of 2011 and drove 8 hours down to Tennessee to visit Susan. I met her at the Christian club we used to hang out. There was a home made bar and a speaker system. We danced and then she left with her friend. I drove to my old school and ran into the girl I had sent flowers that prior February. She thanked me for the flowers and then I drove back home. I spent the night in a hotel in Virginia alone.
Tipton
The girl with the necklace got pregnant and named the baby Noah. Her parents moved to Florida and soon she moved there after them. I got married and moved to Greencastle where Suzanne was attending college at the time. We had the opportunity to move to Tipton and did so where we had our first child, a daughter, two years later.
One thing I’ve learned about women is that they are people, just like us. They need to be loved. They have mothers and fathers just like us and the majority of them – like us – don’t know what they are doing. They may appear to have their act together (and they might), but simple rules still apply. Be confident. Be loving. Keep your shoes clean and make sure your socks match. If I could give my son advice it would be to enjoy the company he keeps and love himself first so that he may love others.