I didn’t see her myself. Mrs. Charm had the duty and drove him to the movie plex, way the hell out in Cedar Park. He told me she was someone he met at the J and I figured it was one of the two NJGs he was palling with at Camp Tiyul.
Turned out that was a lie. A 13-year-old-boy’s glib lie (rather like our current president who also lies glibly even if he only acts like he’s thirteen). Told his mother he’d met her through school friends. Not likely I said. School has been out for centuries, in relative adolescent time.
More likely he met her on the Internet, at one of the computer game forums he frequents and finagled her phone number and used the Face feature on his iPhone to check her out. And didn’t want to admit any of it.
Mrs. C. said she was pretty (which figures, 13-year-old boys rarely settle for plain), and somewhat demur if you discount the short-shorts that stopped at her crotch. She was not, however, exposing her midriff and/or her pubescent breasts and she has braces like he does.
But it took some wrangling of Mrs. C., who always puts the nicest face on everything, to come up with the detail that the girl’s father (who was there at the theater with her mother to meet Mr. B. and whoever accompanied him, all very responsible parental behavior, for sure) had an armful of fading ink tattoos in a neutral geometric pattern from shoulder to wrist.
Oh, well. That’s reality these days. He did drive a Suburban and they have two other children, which is unusual in itself, having three children, I mean. Suburbans are pretty common “large” family transport hereabouts, though they are more expensive to operate and maintain than a van.
What movie did they see, you might ask? Wolverine. Yup. I figure it was his idea and she acquiesced. The way women do at first, when they’re trying to please you, before you get hooked and they suddenly turn bossy.
So now, with the resumption of school only five days away and her living in Georgetown (miles north of the rancho) and so going to a different school entirely, I give their relationship a month more to run. At the outside. Even with the Internet and the iPhone.
My first date? A secret assignation in the woods not far from home which my parents never knew about. And which I would have casually (i.e. glibly) denied if they had asked. We got there on our bikes and sat and chatted. And held hands. No iPhones, of course, but I did meet her in school and she did live just across the privacy fence in the back yard and it was very easy to climb. Repeatedly.
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 