First Date

Thirty-nine years ago tonight, Muffin and I had our first date. We met on the dorm lawn as I was moving in for my sophomore year at dear old Texas Tech. He was with two friends, one with whom I was supposed to have had a blind date. The blind date fell through, but he came to meet me just before he left town to return to Navy duty, bringing two of his childhood friends along. Enter Muffin, one of said friends. Half an hour after they left, Muffin called to ask me out. “Which one are you?” is what I was thinking. But I accepted and we agreed to go to a university dance the following weekend. The big band playing for the dance was, this is very painful to remember, Strawberry Alarm Clock. You must Google that one to believe it. Anyway, he remembers every little detail of the night and I confess that I do not. I was in my do-not-try-to get-near-to-me-I-have-been-greatly-wounded-by-a-guy mode for about, oh, three years.

We had a lovely time, and I do remember feeling safe with him and that the dance was really, really loud in the coliseum, so we mostly talked outside while walking around. We agreed to go out again, but he broke that date. So, before you form an opinion of that, I’ll say that he was sick. Sick and contagious. Contagious with the chicken pox. Yep. At age 19 he caught them from his then three year old sister, missed a week of the semester that cost him a grade point in one class, and broke our second date. I confess that I laughed quite a lot when I got off the phone, then got a blind date with someone who was a friend of someone, who lived on my hall, who I don’t remember—neither name nor face.

But, Muffin never forgets this date. September 7, 1969. He swears he was McSmitten. I just want to keep him that way for, oh, about another 50 years.