Don't let the bad outweigh the good.
I know that sounds like something you'd see stitched onto a pillow at Home Goods. And maybe it takes reaching the point in life where I find myself to be so zen about what a ball-busting bitch Life can be. But when you're on the other side of some complication, when you've successfully dealt with an adverse situation, and you look back on the experience objectively, hopefully you've got the inner strength to separate the good stuff from the bad stuff.
For example, some bad things are learning experiences. In early 1992 my car engine exploded at 2 AM while I was on the highway, a good seventy miles away from home. Once I hiked to a phone, the towing company I called charged me well over $200 to tow it back to where I lived. But because of being shafted like that, a friend convinced me to join AAA. And over the last thirty years, my yearly membership fee has paid for itself a zillion times over. My car dying a painful death taught me a valuable lesson that's improved my life immensely. Out of the bad came some good.
And think about having a pet. If you're lucky, you get to spend a decade and a half with some adorable, goofy furball who brings unconditional love and happiness to your life. But then, one day, they're gone. And that pain... oh man, that pain is something you never want to experience ever again. That's the trade-off, though. Your fond memories of all the fun times you had with your four-footed friend are punctuated by one moment of gut-wrenching sadness. I've had to say goodbye to a dog and almost a dozen cats, and it never gets easier. But all the good that comes from sharing your home with a pet - the silliness, the love, the snuggling - is completely worth that final bad outcome. That's why I keep going back to the animal shelter.
There's been no bigger, more prominent example of the good/bad tug of war in my life than my first marriage. As I described in an earlier installment, that union didn't end well. But that doesn't mean that there was never anything good about it. The painful breakup at the end didn't negate the incredible fun we both had at the beginning. Not in the least. We were in the throes of a new relationship. We scarfed down lots of free pizza. We traipsed through the trees to a secret love getaway. And we shared those magical moments accompanied by the majestic synth pop of...
A-HA.
Growing up, I was not very popular with the ladies. It wasn't that I was un-popular. Somehow I made lots of friends with classmates from every social and economic level. But when it came to landing a special gal, no one wanted me. As a freshman in high school, I was humiliated by a crush when she read my "secret admirer" love letter out loud on her bus. During my junior year a girl laughed at me and slammed her locker in my face when I asked her to "go with me". In my senior year, I found the Valentine's Day chrysanthemums I sent to a cute sophomore sticking out of the trash can used to prop open her homeroom door, my handwritten note still attached to their stems. I was beginning to think that maybe I'd never find love. Or, worse yet, I'd never see boobs. I had begun to prepare myself for a lifetime of loneliness.
All that changed, however, when I went to college.
Over the span of twelve years of elementary, junior, middle, and high schools, I'd grown up with a large number of the same kids. We'd shared the same homerooms, the same classes, and the same bus rides, over and over and over. As time passed, our various childhood social circles coalesced and hardened. And while I vigorously rubbed up against the boundaries of certain cliques, desperate to be accepted, they were not going to let me in. They knew me, and I had been deemed unworthy. (Well, they thought they knew me, at any rate.)
With college, though, the "ew, he's gross" slate was cleared. Erased. Sand-blasted smooth. No one, apart from the three high school friends who also got into the same college, knew anything about me. For the first time since 1972, I had a chance to create a new identity, so to speak.
Over the course of that first semester, I actually began developing the merest hint of "game". I asked out a girl in one of my computer science classes. I found myself talking to, and entertaining, some of the upper-class girls that lived in my dorm. I even initiated my first college kiss, sitting on the old stadium bleachers that were opposite the Design School. Yes, I was making regular friends (many of whom I'm still incredibly close to, four decades on), but this newfound confidence in dealing with chicks I had the hots for... that was all new. And it was intoxicating.
The old Riddick Stadium bleachers, long since demolished, where I made out with a real-life college student. (Photo by Mike Legeros)
Yet here's the ironic thing: after all that "success" with the ladies, big steps that couldn't have happened without resetting my circumstances by attending a college ninety miles away... Wouldn't you know it? I landed my first big fish back home.
I don't know about you, dear reader, but I never had the luxury of lazing by the pool or going on trips during school breaks. I started working my first real job - bagging groceries at the no-longer-a-thing grocery store Food World - at the beginning of my senior year of high school, and almost every cent I earned went into my college fund. Then when high school was over, and all my friends, both rich and not so rich, were headed to the beach for a week or two to celebrate... Did I go? No sir. The day after graduation, I was back at Food World, mopping floors and baling cardboard.
And so it was that, once I'd wrapped up my first round of college finals and headed home for the Christmas break, I was right back at Food World. I worked extra shifts, doing everything I could to cram a few extra dollars into my educational piggy bank. I even signed up for cashier training, so that by having the new hyphenate status of "cash-boy", I could earn a few more dimes an hour.
One evening, a couple of days before Christmas, I was taking advantage of a rare slow moment, with no one queued up at my stand, to give everything a quick cleaning. As I reached out to get to the end of the counter, I happened to look up...
...and there she was. She was petite, just a bit over five feet tall. She had a head full of blond hair. She had sparkling eyes. She had this odd half-smile. She was wearing a Domino's uniform. She was holding two giant bags of ground beef.
She was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen.
I had heard of "love at first sight", but looking back, I can't say for sure it was love. I will definitely admit to being instantly smitten, however. So yes, right then and there, on the spot, it was definitely smit at first sight.
I enthusiastically welcomed her to my checkstand. It turns out her store ran out of ground beef, so that was my in to make some groan-worthy jokes. But she laughed! And that little smile I'd first noticed turned into a beaming grin. I wished her a merry Christmas. She returned the sentiment and gave me a wave goodbye. I watched her exit the store, and continued gawking as she passed by the windows on her way back to the Domino's located in the middle of the mall. Then she was gone. And I was left reeling. I would never again see Pizza Girl.
(By the way, in the interest of preserving a shred of anonymity for the people who don't know I'm writing about them, I identify them with cute nicknames. So this young woman who worked at Domino's shall hereafter be referred to as "Pizza Girl".)
Later, as I was punching out to take a well-deserved break, one of my co-workers (Sally, I seem to remember her name was) casually asked how things were going. My reply was something along the lines of, "I just met the most gorgeous girl ever. This blond girl who works at Domino's." And Sally nonchalantly tossed out, like it was nothing at all, "Oh, I know Pizza Girl. She's one of my best friends. We go to school together."
This next part will sound like I'm lying, but I swear it's true: I grabbed Sally by the arms and looked right in her eyes and demanded that she get me Pizza Girl's name and address! Sally was stunned, but she promised me, she would do it. And she did! The last night I worked before I went back to start the spring semester, Sally handed me a piece of paper with Pizza Girl's info on it. It was the greatest Christmas present I'd ever received.
A year of college under my belt, and ready to get it on with the ladies.
Thus began a long-distance whirlwind romance, a 19th century-style courtship that took place mostly through handwritten letters. Back in the days before cellphones, kids, long distance calls could eat up a lot of precious cash, so I exercised my creativity and tried to express my personality on college ruled paper. After a series of regular letters, I decided to shake things up. I'd scribble cartoons all over the envelopes. I'd include weird photos taken by my friend Simon. I wrapped the letters with risque ads cut out of adult toy catalogs. (Some guy who lived in my dorm room years before I got there had subscribed to all these weird sex toy catalogs. Every couple of weeks I'd get quite a surprise in my mailbox.)
And it worked! Here was a girl who didn't know me at all. A potential girlfriend who had no preconceived ideas of what or who I was. She was from outside the myopic, ossified bubble of my high school social structure. And a result... she liked me. She really liked me!
Eventually, the spring semester came to an end. My first year of college was over and done with. Amazing! I packed my meager belongings into the car, and an hour and a half later I found myself back at home for the summer. Although I was going to be working two jobs to make enough money for the fall semester (full-time at the lumber company where Dad worked, and then three shifts a week at Food World), I was actually going to have the time to squire a real-life girl about town.
I didn't have a lot of experience with the whole dating thing, but I tried. I took her to the newly-opened Mexican place on the south end of town, a sit-down restaurant where I discovered the joys of the chimichanga. We went on day trips to the Appalachian Mountains, driving along the Blue Ridge Parkway and hiking some of the more accessible trails. She taught me how to drive a stick, using her family's vintage Volkswagen Beetle.
And we had relations. Of the Biblical kind.
There are only a handful of women who've had the pleasure of feeling me flop about on top of them like a sweaty googly-eyed trout, but she was the first. And apparently, it didn't repulse her! From that point onward, we added regular sessions of conscious coupling to our simple dating routine. We weren't just dumb kids goofing around, we were a real item.
The last thing women in the 80s saw before their heterosexuality died.
But believe it or not, as awesome as the sexy stuff was, the most fun thing I remember doing with her was also one of the most simple.
Because Pizza Girl's Domino's store was in the same strip mall where I worked, the first night that I closed the store and she was also working, I walked down to Domino's and surprised her. You should have seen her face. She was so glad to see me. We sneaked a kiss, and then she showed me her store's dirty secret. Apparently every evening they had two or three "freebies", orders that either got refused or didn't cook right. So she grabbed us a couple slices of these misfit pizzas, along with a couple of sodas, and we sat on the mall benches right outside the entrance, enjoying a late dinner. Over the course of the next hour, several delivery drivers and other co-workers joined us. We shared stories, we cracked jokes, we ate pizza. And through it all, I was holding the hand of this incredible young woman, my first honest-to-goodness girlfriend.
Since we were all pretty much the same age, the Domino's kids had the radio tuned to our local top 40 station. And in between bites of cheese and pepperoni, in between horrible double entendres, and in between deep looks and big grins, there was this one song that sunk its hooks into my brain, and provided the perfect soundtrack to this perfect moment of time. A pulsing, rousing synth pop masterpiece, with vocals that soared above the playful instrumentation and pulled you right into the song. When Pizza Girl finally clocked out and I was driving her home, that same tune was already back on the radio.
That song was "Take On Me", the first big international hit for Norwegian popsters a-ha, from their debut album Hunting High And Low. For a significant chunk of our inaugural summer together, "Take On Me" was a constant presence. In the car. At the arcade. In the mall. On MTV. That song, and the accompanying classic video, were everywhere. And it never got old. Not to me, at least. (And I loved their second single, “The Sun Always Shines On TV”.)
In fact, for years, every time I even smelled pizza, I flashed back to that one song and that one evening, when the world was still new, and every day held the promise of some amazing experience. I recall holding Pizza Girl's hand in the car as I tapped along to "Take On Me" on the steering wheel. I cringe at the memory of trying over and over to draw us both as lead singer Morten Harket and his lady-love from the video, looking at each other through that magic window. (None of those pathetic attempts at art survive. They were god-awful.) For every one of those happy memories I have of bobbing heads, bubbling soda, and budding romance, the chorus of "Take On Me" plays as the soundtrack. The eternal soundtrack to one of the best, most magical, most free times of my life.
A year ago, I found this in the bottom of a box: the actual name tag I was wearing when I met Pizza Girl. Unbelievable.
If you're a regular reader of this irregularly-published series, you won't be surprised to find out that this youthful dalliance didn't last. In case you need it man-splained to you: Pizza Girl became The Girlfriend, who became The First Wife, who is now The Ex. Like that "Evolution Of Man" graphic that features the silhouettes of humanity's physical development, in a short six year period she went through almost the entire life cycle of today's modern woman.
Even though things between me and The Ex ended on a pretty bitter note, I can honestly say that I never wished her any sort of ill will. What would have been the point? Hanging on to whatever resentments that remained wouldn't have done me any good. She was off doing her own thing. And I was intent on the doing the same.
I didn't wallow in the past. I threw myself into creating the kind of life I wanted, and for the most part, I've been successful. I've had two great careers. (Although this third one taking its sweet damn time to get going...) I've traveled. I've moved across country. Finding an awesome partner took me a little longer than I wanted, but when Suzie and I met, we knew almost from the get-go that it was meant to be. Early into the second date, we could sense that there was an insane amount of smit between us. And twenty years on, sometimes I find myself chin-deep in the amount of smit we've generated for each other.
Thirty years have passed since I was that goofy clueless kid. I've grown up and moved on. But that doesn't mean I can't hear the first few bouncy chords of "Take On Me" without a small smile, as I remember that long-ago time in my life. Those are good times that aren't tainted in any way by what came after.
Cherishing memories of free pizza and young love? That's not bad at all.
BIO
Don Stroud is not the famous actor and world-class surfer of the same name. He is the non-famous California transplant who became an award-winning film editor and - finally - an award-winning screenwriter. He loves cats, sushi, comic books, movies, music, and Cherry Coke. What's that, dear? Oh yes: and his wife. You can follow him on Twitter, where he pops up sporadically, at @DonStroud2.