Shamed

My children were big enough to be out of car seats but still pretty young when I took them to Hammonasset Beach near Madison, Connecticut, on Long Island Sound. Their father was a way for several weeks and I was juggling a full time job with their summer activities in campus. Being a beach lover, I thought a day in the sun, sand, and salt water would be just what I needed to re-energize for another week of single parenting.

We packed up early on a Sunday morning loaded down with a beach umbrella, towels, sand toys, a chair for me, sunscreen, and a cooler filled with drinks, sandwiches, fruit, and cookies. We wore regular clothes with a plan to change into our suits in one of the bathhouses, and then shower and change back into our dry clothes at the end of the day. 

We arrived early enough to get one of just a few dozen coveted parking spots that were close enough to make for an easy trek from car to sand. By noon, the area was packed. It was a gorgeous day—not too hot, low humidity, and a gentle breeze. The kids played in the lapping waves and built a sand castle. We watched yachts criss cross in front of us on their way to and from places like the Thimble Islands, and we saw water skiers and people on jet skis. It was a day just as I had hoped for. Fun!

And then, after changing and loading the car back up, the drive back home began.

We had long separated the kids from one another in the car. My daughter always sat up front as she tended toward bouts of motion sickness; my son sat in the back. With one parent driving, and the other in the back, each child had the undivided attention of one of us. But I was on my own for this trip. They started bickering. 

My son poked at his sister, and she turned around to make faces at him. The complaints began. 

“Mom! He stuck his tongue out at me!”

“Mom! She touched my knee!”

“Mom! He just kicked my seat!”

“Mom! She grabbed at my blankie!”

I responded, trying to keep things from escalating, but realized about ten minutes into the squabble that paying attention to them meant not paying close attention to the road. When a driver startled me as he sped by me on the left, I knew I had to do something to end the distraction of my children’s misbehavior.

Preferring backroads to the Interstate, we were on a two-way undivided highway, with a speed limit of 45 mph. 

“Why does she always get to sit in the front seat?” complained my son.

“Because I get sick,” my daughter answered with barely controlled contempt.

“It’s not fair, Mom!” he further remonstrated.

Possibly feeling threatened over her front seat status, my daughter looked at her brother and said, “You’re just a baby, anyway.”

“Mom!” he screamed.

Saying nothing in response, I looked in my rearview mirror and turned my right signal on. I pulled over into the breakdown lane and brought the car to a stop. I then turned on my hazard lights. The kids were suddenly silent.

“Mom, what are you doing?” my daughter asked as I unbuckled my seatbelt and reached for the handle on my door. I still said nothing.

Both kids were now staring at me, their heads on swivel as they watched me leave the car. I walked around to the passenger side door. Their eyes were wide. I opened the passenger door, and said, “Get out.”

They stared at me in mute confusion. 

I changed the tone of my voice to something sterner. “Get out,” I ordered.

They both unbuckled their seatbelts and slowly, warily, maybe even frighteningly, stepped out onto the pavement of the breakdown lane.

Cars passed us; the people in them curiously looked at us.

“What’s wrong, Mom?” they asked.

I closed the passenger door. They both leaned up against the car.

“Distractions for a person driving a car are dangerous. Do you understand me?” They both nodded their heads.

While gesticulating wildly with my arms, I said, “In a car, it makes absolutely no difference whatsoever where anyone other than the driver is sitting. Got it? The vehicle is for getting from Point A to Point B. That’s it.” More head nods.

“Now. We are going to get back in that car, and you two are not going to say another word until we arrive home. Is that clear?” More head nods. 

Cars continued to pass us.

“Everyone is looking at us,” my son said.

“Good!” I said.

I opened the passenger door. They both scrambled into their seats, buckled up, and sat with hands folded in their laps.

The rest of the drive home was in silence.

To this day, both children recall this day not for the wonderful time we spent on the beach, but for the fact that their mother shamed them on the side of a road in front of the whole wide world.  

Copyright DJ Anderson, 2021

Worst Date Ever

February is the month of love, and even though Valentine’s Day is now in the rearview mirror, I am reminded of my junior year Nifty Fifties Dance date.

I was new to my high school, having just moved 1,200 miles from Indiana to Florida. I was not happy about the move and was doing my best to be a loner. I didn’t want to meet anyone. I wanted to be miserable. I guess you might say I was copping an attitude. But, it wasn’t in my character to keep up the ruse for long as I was too outgoing and social. 

Within a few short weeks of the start of school, posters began appearing in the halls announcing the first dance of the year. It was a themed dance that invited attendees to dress like their parents would have in the fifties. Grease, the movie, was not in production yet, but the Broadway hit musical and songs were already well known. Thus, in the lead up to the dance, there was lots of talk about poodle skirts, saddle shoes, greased back and teased hair, and leather jackets.

I was beginning to meet people here and there in class and through the Drama Club I had joined, but wasn’t expecting to be asked to the dance. So, it was quite a surprise when Dan, who lived down the street from me, stopped me in the hall a few days before the dance and asked if I’d like to go with him. I said yes. 

After agreeing to go with Dan, he disappeared down the hall without explaining whether he planned to pick me up, or whether we would meet at the dance, or anything. I was confused about what to do but decided everything would somehow work out.

On Friday, I was still in the dark about the details of my date, hadn’t seen Dan at all since he’d asked me out, and was beginning to wonder whether I’d made the whole thing up. I also was not feeling well. As the day went on, cold symptoms grew worse, and by the end of the school day, my nose was running, I was coughing and sneezing, and I may have even been running a low-grade temperature. But, I didn’t know how to get in touch with this boy, and was in a complete quandary about what to do.

If COVID has taught us anything it is that if you are symptomatic...stay home. But in the mid-1970s, the thought of staying home from a school dance, unless you were dying, was an anathema to teenagers. 

After school, and still not sure about how I was to meet up with Dan in order to go to this dance, I called my friend Ginny, who I knew was a good friend of his. I explained everything to her, said I really wasn’t feeling well and was thinking I shouldn’t go, but didn’t know how to tell him. Ginny said she’d call me right back. After a few minutes, the phone rang, and Ginny said she wasn’t able to get in touch with him. She told me, however, I had to go to the dance. “He probably assumes you will meet up there because I don’t think he has the use of the car. Older brothers, you know.” I didn’t, but this made sense to me, and Ginny was right. As a new girl, I didn’t want to stand him up. He might say terrible things about me if I did. Ginny went on to say, “Look, I’m on the dance committee and in charge of collecting the entrance fee. If you haven’t heard from him by quarter to seven, call me, and I’ll swing by and pick you up. Then, you’ll at least have me to hang out with so you’re not alone.” I liked this idea.

After taking some cold medicine to stave off my symptoms, I rummaged through my dress-up box. Mom had, long ago, thrown some of her own high school clothes in it for me to use in Make Believe play when I was a little kid. I knew just the dress I wanted to put on—a red and white polka dot print with a full gathered skirt and crinoline. I didn’t have saddle shoes, but I had some white Keds and short white ankle socks. I pulled out some of Mom’s old chunky costume jewelry and selected a necklace and matching clip-on earrings. I then put my hair in electric rollers. I used a teasing comb to add more volume, used a bunch of hairspray, and then styled my hair into a pageboy bouffant. I added a white ribbon, headband style, to finish off my Nifty Fifties look. 

My nose was a little red from blowing it so often throughout the day. I used powder to try and minimize the inflammation. I put some Visine in my eyes to clear them up and checked the time to see if I could take another cold tablet. I popped one in my mouth, swallowed, and then called Ginny.

After paying for my entrance, Ginny instructed me to sit over on the gym bleachers so I could watch the students as they came in and hopefully meet up with my date. Kids arrived mostly in pairs and groups, with the occasional person arriving alone. No sign of my date, and I was starting to feel like that last cold tablet wasn’t working at all. I even felt a bit light-headed. 

Just as I was about to give up and ask Ginny if she could run me home, Dan appeared with a group of four other boys. I sat up a bit straighter on the bleachers and when I thought I saw him look my way, I waved. But there was no reaction. The group of boys sauntered into the crowd and started to mingle. Dan didn’t even look like he was trying to find me. I had to do something, I thought.

I mustered up the courage to walk into the now dancing crowd to find him. He wasn’t dancing, he was chatting with a couple girls I didn’t know. I walked up and shyly waved and said, “Hi.” He nodded and then told the girls he’d talk to them later. We walked back to the bleachers and sat down.

“Did you walk over?” Dan asked. We all lived just a few blocks from the school.

“No, Ginny picked me up,” I said.

He fiddled around clasping and unclasping his hands, and rolling them around in a washing hands motion. I breathed deeply and let out a big sigh. We sat there silently for another few minutes until he suddenly turned to me and said, “Well, enjoy the dance.”

He got up and walked off into the crowd. 

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. As I sat in utter disbelief, questioning, again, whether he had actually asked me out on a date or not, I concluded that I was simply not feeling well enough to care. I dug around in the bottom of my purse, found a dime, and went to the pay phone just outside the gym entrance to call my mom. I told Ginny I was leaving and she said she’d call me the next day. 

Over the course of the rest of the school year, I would occasionally see Dan in the hallway during passing periods. I pretended as if the entire date had never happened, which really wasn’t much of a stretch for my imagination. He never again tried to talk to me. 

When yearbooks get passed around at the end of the school year, sometimes you have no idea who is going to end up signing yours. So it was a big surprise when, looking through the signatures, I found that Dan had written:

I’m glad I got to know ya this year cause your a really cool chick. You’ve been great over the year and I’m looking forward to see ya next year. Have fun this summer (but don’t get caught), and maybe we can do something this summer. Good luck in the future, and be yourself.

Maybe my cold meds sent me into an alternate reality that night of the Nifty Fifties Dance, or maybe he wrote the exact same thing in every girl’s yearbook. But whatever the case, my memory of that night is that it was my worst date ever.

Copyright DJ Anderson, 2021