This Nostalgic Life #37
Tales of first dates and young love.
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Welcome to the 37th edition of This Nostalgic Life where Mick and Eric are telling stories of first dates and young love. Valentine’s Day is upon us, so we thought these tales would be appropriate for the the event. We hope you enjoy them and, as always, if you’d like to share your own story with us, just drop it in the comments section at the end!
Wendy’s and Well Fields
by Mick Lee
When I think back on my first date, I usually tend to skip those ones when I was younger and had to have a parent drive us around. While those nights of young puppy love are fun to think back on, I think when talking about a first date it’s more appropriate to talk about my first *real* date.
So to that end, let me tell you about my first. I had just turned 16 and had my own set of wheels, and the young lady in this story is named Tammy (real name changed to protect the innocent). We worked together at the grocery store and were friendly for a while. Soon that friendliness turned to flirting, and it didn’t take me long to ask her out on a date.
She eagerly agreed. Now I don’t know if it was because she was into me, or if it had more to do with the fact that I had a ride of my own when a lot of my peers did not. But either way, she was down and said yes.
Being a man of class and means, for dinner I took her to one of the finest restaurants I knew of at the time…Wendy’s. While you may snicker under your breath, you’ve got to remember that I live in a rural area. Heck, we had to drive to the next town over just to have a place to eat. And you throw in the fact that Wendy’s had those nice atriums at the time and still had the cool tables featuring the old news print, it was a classy joint. Plus their meat was fresh, not frozen.
Those of you who have followed me for a while may be wondering why I didn’t take her to Pizza Hut, but I was saving that for when we were more serious. I would learn my lesson in that regard and start going there on the first date so as to come across as a big spender.
To try and appear to be more mature, I ordered a Taco Salad instead of a burger on that night. Maybe her Mother had spoken to her and gave her some instruction as she ordered the same thing that I did.
We ate dinner and chatted and it must not have been anything memorable because I can’t recall any specifics other than being my overly charming self. Once dinner was finished, we drove back the way we came, passed my town, and headed to the next town where the cheap movie theater was. I could have taken her to the theater at the mall, but it was $4 more per ticket than the rundown one I took her to.
As I sit here and write this, I can’t remember what movie we saw that night. I do remember that the only move I put on her in that theater was putting my arm around her. That was it. I was being a perfect gentleman, and she was being a lady.
When the movie was over we left and were heading back towards her place. She suggested that the night was still young, and asked if I wanted to cruise around her town for a little while. We made those rounds a few times but quickly lost interest. She then suggested that we head over to the area called the “well fields” for a bit. I may not have been the smartest young man around at the time, but I knew that the well fields didn’t have much to offer besides parking in the dark. So of course I was willing to go there.
We hadn’t been there long and chatted ever so briefly before we were all over each other. The whole night of trying to be a gentleman and a lady quickly gave way to being our flirtatious selves that had attracted us to each other in the first place. There had been no reason to stand on attention as we had done throughout the evening. I believe we could have just started at the Well Fields.
While we only had a few more dates and never really hit it off or had much in common outside of wanting to go park somewhere in the dark, she still holds a special place with me as the girl I went on my first real date with.
Hands In My Pocket
by Eric Vardeman
Ah, first dates and young love. Let’s talk first dates, shall we? What counts as a first date? Is it when you spend time somewhere in public with someone, like meeting up at the mall and walking around together? Or is it when one of you "pays" for an activity, like a movie or a meal? Or does it involve a vehicle and one of you picks the other one up? What was yours like? Maybe yours involves a little subterfuge? Your parents thought you were one place but you were really in another. I had every one of those experiences as a young man.
There were several times that my friends and I would “coincidentally” be at the mall at the same time a young lady and her friends were at the mall and our two groups of friends would end up roaming the mall together on a Friday night. Not much of a date but I got to hold a girl's hand or - and I don’t know if this was a thing where you were from when you were young - we’d walk around with our hand in each other’s back pocket. The first time I actually PAID for someone else was a movie date. Her name was Tiffany (more on her later), and we were both fourteen. It was 1984, and we had started “going together” (I’ve never quite figured out what that means) towards the end of our eighth grade year and, early that summer, I paid for us to go see Sixteen Candles. Our parents thought each of us were meeting friends at the theater but it was just the two of us. It was a great albeit short date and ultimately a short lived romance, as she moved away before school started the next fall.
The first time I drove and picked up a girl for a date was right after I got my driver’s license in March of ‘86. Her name was Shari and we went to Pizza Hut for dinner then to the mall to walk around. I was completely nervous picking her up because I had to meet her parents but we ended up having a great time. We spent a lot of time laughing at dinner and then, at the mall, we spent time at the music store discovering how different our music tastes were. I even caught her putting her hand in my back pocket as we walked around the store. I walked her to the door at the end of the evening and, as I kissed her goodnight, one of her parents flashed the porch light. In their defense, we did linger quite a while kissing goodnight. 🙂 Again, it was another short lived romance as she moved away a few months later.
As far as young love goes, I had the biggest case of puppy love ever. Her name was Kim, she was a pastor’s daughter and we started “going together” (I’ve never quite figured out what that means) when we were twelve. When we first became an item, we weren’t at the same school but my family went to the church her father pastored so we saw each other three to four times a week and talked on the phone constantly. We were inseparable at youth events, on youth trips, at camp. Looking back now, I’m truly amazed that our parents didn’t have a problem with how much we were together (and if they did they didn’t say anything). On the days we didn’t see each other, we would write each other notes and letters. The ones she wrote were amazing because they were written in red and pink ink and spritzed with her perfume.
I don’t remember where I got it but I had a silver bracelet (like the one above) that had my name on it. She wanted something of mine to wear so I gave her that and my favorite Ocean Pacific t-shirt. I don’t think she ever took the bracelet off and she wore the t-shirt all the time as well. We made “Rock of Ages” by Def Leppard (don’t ask why) and we both wore that song out. Once we were both attending school in the same building, we saw each other every day. We exchanged notes multiple times a day and I was constantly late for class because I was walking her to hers. She was my first love, my first kiss, and my first heartbreak because, as pastors do, her father took a position at another church in another state and they moved away. I was destroyed. After the move, we tried to talk on the phone with some consistency but eventually it just came to an end and I never saw or talked to her again. Oh, I was devastated, truly devastated.
Until a few months later…when I met a girl named Tiffany who made short work of mending my broken heart and, coincidentally, liked to walk around with her hand in my back pocket…
Thank you for joining us for this issue of This Nostalgic Life. If you have a story of your own first date you’d like to share, we’d love to hear it! Just drop it in the comments below.
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