There are no naked pictures in this post

Speaking of old girlfriends, and I was, briefly.  Didn't you read last night's post?  Speaking of old girlfriends, Sunday was the birthday of my high school girlfriend.

I'd forgotten that, although it doesn't matter, because we haven't been in touch since, oh, before you were born, when I still went by the name of Obi wan, so she wasn't expecting a card.  But it came back to me when I was digging out our car after another snowstorm yesterday morning.  Chris turned (mumble mumble mumble cough cough) on January 23.

I can't say remembering this brought with it a flood of romantic memories.

Chris was my first "serious" girlfriend.  She was warm and kind and smart and funny and she looked very much like Scarlett Johansson, except I didn't know that at the time because there was no Scarlett Johansson at the time.  Scarlett Johanson wasn't even a twinkle in her daddy's eye.  But I sure got a shock when I saw Lost in Translation, and the movie had a special poignancy for me because of Scarlett's uncanny resemblance to Chris.  Possibly, though, I was saved from the middle aged pang that most guys my age felt when they saw Scarlett in that movie, especially in her opening scene.  Been there, done that, I could tell myself, or console myself.

So, you'll understand, Chris is worth remembering, but I don't do it often.

For a reason.

I've been a lucky guy.  All my old girlfriends were beautiful.  My first girlfriend looked like Samantha Stephens from Bewitched.  My last girlfriend was the best looking of the lot, to my mind.  She still is, even though, physiognomically, she has more in common with Zoey Deschanel---blonde, big eyes, funny nose---than with Scarlett Johansson.

But even though all my old girlfriends were knockouts---and all but a couple of them very nice people, as well---and even though I need more than two hands to count them on, I swear!---when I look back on myself as a young swain, I do not see an apprentice Sam Malone.

(By the way, clues that Sam Malone is one of my heroes are all over this page, if you know what to look for.)

Nope, what I see looks to me more like Ichabod Crane in love than like Mayday Malone on the prowl.  I see a goofy kid, awkward, hapless, pathetically obvious, and prone to mishap and disaster.  That is, I tend to see myself as being exactly like I felt the whole time I was dating Chris, and we dated for over a year.

Chris herself didn't do anything to make me feel that way.  She was very kind and mature enough for the both of us and she was pretty good at gently steering me away from making too big a jackass of myself.

Nope.  It was her father who did it.

Chris may have looked like Scarlett Johansson, but her looks came all from her mother.  Her father looked like what he was.

An ex-Marine drill instructor.

He acted like it too, at least towards me.

The man did his best to make my life a living hell whenever I was at his house.  He made me feel like the most hopeless, woefully incompetent, stupidest recruit in his outfit.

Ever see Full Metal Jacket?

Ok, that's an exaggeration.  He never screamed, threatened, or even tried to physically intimidate me, not that he needed to try on that last one.  His bullying was of a more subtle kind.

He was excellent at divining his enemy's weaknesses.  He managed to discover all the ways I was foolish, inept, knuckleheaded, immature, contemptible, and otherwise no damn good and just generally unworthy of his daughter and he made sure I knew all this about myself.

He had a talent for getting inside my head, too, so that even when he wasn't around, even when I wasn't at his house, even when I wasn't with Chris, I was constantly looking over my shoulder, as if I was sure that whenever I did something dumb, which was regularly, he would be right there to catch me at it.  He must have developed this trick in the Marines and he was confident enough in his ability that late at night when I was over at their house, instead of kicking me out, he could cheerfully skip off to bed, leaving Chris and me alone in the basement family room where there was a fireplace and a large couch.

Probably he suspected that when he went upstairs, we did not resist the pleasures of the fireplace and the large couch.  But I'm sure that he knew and enjoyed the fact that even if we were secretly insubordinate he had me in such a state of terror and confusion that I wasn't going to enjoy disobeying orders the way I should have.

To give the man some credit, he wasn't really a bad guy, he just had a warped idea of how the father of pretty high school girl should watch out for her.  He was decent enough to everybody else in the world and he was truly sympathetic when Chris broke up with me when I went away to college.  He even seemed to think that she'd made a mistake, although that was probably because he hated the guy she dumped me for worse than me.

So my suddenly remembering it was Chris's birthday wasn't a pleasant bout of nostalgia.  It was more like an acid flashback.  Vivid, hallucenagenic, surreal, shocking, and all too much like time travel.

It was her 17th birthday.  I was over at her house for the family party.  Her mother, brother, and sister liked me, well enough, but they didn't mind torturing me when they saw the chance.  I'm not sure, but I think this was also the night they slipped me a glass of Benedictine and told me it was cream sherry.

Boy, did we all get a laugh out of that one.

No, wait a minute.  They got a good laugh.  I was choking too hard to laugh.

Anyway, it had snowed heavily that night and I had the family station wagon, a Pontiac tank that needed to take turns as wide as a semi and was otherwise not easily maneuverable.  It must have been a school night, because I had to go home early.  Chris's father only left us alone with the fireplace and couch on weekend nights.  So I said my goodnights, snuck a good night make out session on the front steps with Chris, and then set off.

Backed the car right into a snowbank.

When I tried to drive my way out I just buried the rear wheels deeper.

Believe me, rather than go back in the house and ask for help I'd have left the car there until spring, but they were all watching out the window and, after recovering from their laughter---I was very entertaining for them that night.  Life of the party.---they came outside to dig me out.

Chris's dad took the opporunity to tell me at length and in detail how I had messed up and how to avoid messing up like this in the future, of course, and, also of course, made sure I understood that he knew that I would be unable to follow his good advice and would mess up anyway.

Which I did.

As soon as they'd gone back inside, and Chris and I said another long goodnight, I backed the car into a ditch on the other side of the driveway.

I swear, he knew exactly what was going to happen and he was standing there at the front window, peeking through the curtains, waiting for it, because he was outside again as soon as my tires stopped spinning, with a pair of heavy chains in his hands that he hooked to his pickup truck and my rear bumper.

I'm not sure I'm remembering my feelings perfectly, the intense pain of such utter humiliation is too much to bear to recall in every detail, but I think I had no intention of ever returning to that house again after that night, couch or no couch, fireplace or no fireplace.  The only reason I went back is that Chris coaxed me back and made her family promise never to mention that night again.

Well, probably the fact of the couch and the fireplace and Chris's looking like Scarlett Johansson, even though I didn't know that's who she looked like, had a lot to do with my recovering my courage and pride.

And that's why, even though my first serious love looked like Scarlett Johansson, I don't spend a lot of time sighing over the past and my lost youth, and why I wasn't reduced to tears when I was watching Lost in Translation.

And that's partly why I married the blonde or at any rate why I stuck around long enough to finally marry her.

Because her father, besides being a nice, friendly, and charitable guy, right from the first gave every sign of having been in his youth the kind of kid who would have backed his car into a snowbank in front of his girlfriend's house, twice in one night.

Probably three times.

And because by the time I met the blonde I had learned how to drive in the snow.

Comments

[harry near indy]

bravo, lance.

i applaud you.

[honey boy wilson]

isn't lance mannion one of sam's aliases, as revealed (i believe) when sam was hospitalized for a hernia?

[Lance]

Obviously, HB, you also know Sam's other favorite alias.

[mac macgillicuddy]

I can't remember what Samantha on Bewitched looked like, so I can't picture the first girlfriend.

Anyway, the story is funny especially because, in one form or another, we've all backed our cars into snowbanks in front of our girlfriends' fathers. In my case, it took the form of locking my keys in the car -- with HER in it!

[amanda]

everyone tells me that i look exactly like you-it's kind of weeird.

[amanda]

that i look like scarlett johanson. lol

[Matt]

beautiful post.

[blue girl]

Hi Lance, Jeddie Ningo's got an old post up today and I got to this old post of yours!

This is tooooo funny! NO! I don't mean to make FUN of you -- it's not funny that way -- it's cute funny.

My son's got a "crush" right now. Can't say "girlfriend" -- cuz I'm not ready to say "girlfriend" yet.....and I've given him the *dad's are tough on their daughters boyfriends* speech already. Told him to remember to speak directly to him, answer questions, shake hands, etc.....

He was invited over to one of their family parties a few weeks ago -- and boy did he have the stories when he came home! He's like, "Mom! Her dad was drilling me! And her uncles? They were like the mafia!"

Oh well. Great post, Lance!