I told you, I try to forget them.......
....but this one has stuck with me.
The scene:
Wheeling Jr. High School gym, the Spring Dance, 1981.
I was there with my homies, as usual. After all, as a general rule, who goes to Teen Dances with a date, right?
I was wearing too much of my dad's Brut, and the smell of it, mixed with my Speed Stick deo and the hair spray I stylishly used then to keep my flowing locks in helmet-head place, was probably somewhere close to combustible.
Anyway; her name, I'll say, was "Tina"; she was a girl in my class, and I had a serious thing for her. Shoulder-length blonde hair, very pretty face, and she had--ahem--"developed" rather early. In other words, wwwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayy out of my league.
So, there we were, me and my buddies, hanging out in dimness of the gym (the only lights were coming from the DJ's table and shafting in from the hall leading to the lunchroom outside the gym), leaning against the wall and watching the girls dance (guys never danced, unless they were emboldened by a sudden moment of insanity and asked a girl to slow dance), and bopping to the tunes.
My friend "Bill" noticed Tina and her friends standing over by the side door, behind the bleachers, which were pulled out, of course, and casting a darker shadow over that area of the gym. So Bill, true friend that he was, urged me to go over and grab Tina on the ass.
We bickered good-naturedly about it for a few minutes, but my other "buddies", eager for some excitement to be added to the evening, chimed in and egged it on.
Being a typical young teenager, and thusly not of a mind to be an individual, I finally, reluctantly, agreed.
I made my way around the floor, determined to do this thing that would, for all and good, shoot down in flames any slim chance I might have had with this girl. I'd show them!
I got over to the group, sidled up to Tina, and grabbed a nice, big handful of that blossoming Ghetto Booty, as it would be called now.
But it wasn't Tina.
No....it wasn't. It looked like Tina from the back, in the dark; had on the same colored shirt, faded blue jeans and had shoulder-length blonde hair, and but it wasn't Tina. I have no idea to this day what his name was, he didn't go to my school, but whatever it was, it definitely wasn't "Tina".
Whatever his name was, he turned around quickly, and there I was, wide-eyed and quickly very red, my hand still groping his ass.
I mumbled an apology, and turn on my heel, wanting to get back to my crowd. I felt a hand on my shoulder, and a voice said he'd "get me", or something very similar. I wasn't really listening, you see; I just wanted away from there. The loud music, coupled with the blood rising in my head, made it very difficult to hear, anyway.
I went back to my "pals", who had witnessed the whole thing, and were laughing loudly at my predicament. I sheepishly avoided whatever his name was for the rest of the night.
I did encounter him once more, however, as I waited for my dad to pick me up after the dance.
I'm not much of a fighter, anyway; too easygoing, you see. This, along with the fact that I was just too embarassed to fight back, led to him beating......my.....ass.....which led to further embarassment when my dad came, and then on Monday at school.
So Tova, there you have it. An embarassing moment from my past. So many of them seem to happen in school, don't they? I'll try to come up with something else.