Splendid Ignorance

1985

I felt awkward picking Darcey up before the dance, so Iggy went along with me. He had also gone with me to pick out the corsage and informed me of the etiquette of basic rituals for all high school dances. Even though he never had a date, he was a walking guidebook for all those kinds of things; a bonafide, male Emily Post. I met Darcey's parents and her sisters. I felt so out of place. The whole trip to the dance was a blur. Darcey had done her hair differently. I didn't like it, so I didn't say anything until Iggy whispered to me to make a positive comment about it. I complied.

Once at the dance I was able to calm down a bit more. The music was a welcomed distraction and as the rest of the group arrived the comradery also alleviated the awkward need for one on one communication. Just like on the Serengeti, there is safety in the herd.

The dance was fine, but I never was good at knowing a good thing while I had it. Iggy and I joked with Don when he wasn't dancing with Elaine. I believe Don thought that Iggy and I were gay. Like Iggy, I was not the most masculine guy around. I'm sure Don that thought of us like many other guys did, as not much of a threat to their girls. Little did they know.

I danced with Elaine, Charlotte, and Wanda. Danielle was always a bit awkward, so I didn't ask her. She was having some boy trouble with her date from another school. It seemed an old flame of his attended our school and it was still smoldering.

One of the many regrets of my life occurred at the dance. After dancing a few songs with Darcey, Iggy asked if he could dance with her a bit. It was OK with me. While they were dancing to some cheesy power ballad, I went over to another table I had been eyeing all night. As I approached it, I saw Lisa Zanes. She smiled at me. She sat in front of me in Geometry and, while she was a year ahead of me, she gave me plenty of attention. I should have worn a 'do not encourage the teenage boy' sign around my neck because to a starved, confused teenage boy, attention is a potent aphrodisiac. To make matters worse, Lisa also laughed at my jokes I made during class. She seemed to enjoy my irreverent commentary on the teacher's lectures:

TEACHER: How do you find the radius?

ME: (Looking over at Lisa and rolling my eyes) Look on the side of the tire, nimrod.

LISA: (Whispering to me) You're hilarious.

On impulse, I asked her to dance to the cheesy power ballad and she accepted. On the dance floor, when I asked her if she would like to go out sometime to see a movie, she accepted. Little would I know, "Vision Quest" was not worth the regret. After the dance with Lisa, I continued on in through the night in igCharlottence. I danced some more with Darcey, but my mind was far from her and the echoes of passing fads blaring through the speakers in the high school gym.

Since Darcey was not a close member of our group, with no ski club to offer the natural opportunity for proximity, she seemed to fade from the picture. After the dance I never called her, never asked her out to a movie or dinner, and never talked to her at length other than an occasional, cordial greeting between classes when I happened to see her in passing. Wanda asked me a couple times if I had called Darcey; I said I hadn't. She said I should; I said I would. I didn't. The school year ended and the summer came. I had squandered the wonderful gift that I had been given that last night of the ski club. At the time I didn't realize it, but I was in my own personal twilight zone. What can I say, I'm totally clueless sometimes.

Then, in June, I got a call. It was Darcey. She invited me to dinner. I agreed.

The second chapter of me and Darcey started off like the first; me being naïve and selfish. When she arrived and I found out that her car had a cassette player in it, I went back in my house to get my tape case and began to be the travelling DJ for our date. DEVO, Pink Floyd, Rush, Thelonious Monk, and some songs from the Easy Rider soundtrack. Only after we had lunch did I pick up on the vibe that it was overkill. I stopped the tape in the middle of "Through Being Cool" and turned to her.

"Thanks for giving me a call". I said.

"You're welcome." She said.

"I'm sorry for not calling you back after the dance. I had a good time and all. I just didn't think, well, I'm kind of slow on those sorts of things." I tried to rationalize.

"That's OK. I understand. I did wonder if you had a good time or if I had done something wrong." She said.

"No, it wasn't you. Not at all. It was me." Me being me. And while I always had a hard time understanding fractions in school, I was more than understanding that I was a common denominator in many of the problems I would have to solve in the years to come. When it was just me, I cancelled myself out. Add another person to the equation and now you have a story problem that would make the nerdiest math whiz groan in frustration trying to solve. But I always knew that the answer was me.

However, that day in June, as I quit playing DJ, and started to talk and listen, it seemed as though things became different. Different, better.

We actually talked about some interesting things, each other, our likes and dislikes. When she dropped me off, I hated to end the conversation. I got her number and this time I promised to call her. It was promise that I intended to fulfill.

As I lay in my bed that night, I stared at the ceiling and thought about what had happened on our date. I was very aware of a strange emotion stirring. The thoughts triggered a longing. I was torn by the desire of wanting to see her again and the inability to be able to do so at the present moment. It was too late to call and so all I had to satisfy my desire were my thoughts.

I mentally walked through each moment, reliving it, evaluating it, examining it from many angles and perspectives. I began to notice some aspects of myself that I had never noticed before. I had always been a carefree individual, but being carefree had made me into a bit of a self-centric person.

Thinking about the cassette tapes made me cringed. I remembered sitting in the car net to Darcey, singing out loud, totally into the beat, sound up and balanced perfectly:

You got me looking up high

You got me looking down

You got me, I know you know

You got me jerking back and forth

I cringed again.

However, Darcey had been accommodating. My reflections lead me to the inevitable question. What next?

What came next was a phone call, the next day. Darcey and I began to hang out together. Being summer, we were able to hang out all day, every day. It was the start of five months of my first real relationship with a girl. It was pretty smooth at first. It was simple. We were naïve. Things were innocent. Innocence often breeds many mistakes, but it lovingly glosses over the lesser ones so that they can become necessary threads in the fabric of relationships. Only later are the mistakes seen for what they are.