Captain Pike's Ship Log II

I was pretty old, comparatively, the first time I ever got drunk. Not really drunk exactly, but definitely with a buzz on after drinking beer. Not a lot of beer just maybe 3, 4 or maybe 5. We were out at my parents camp, where I grew up as a kid in the summer. It was pretty warm out that day, but not sunny. The clouds were kind of dark I remember. Anyway, somehow, somebody and I got into our canoe. It wasn't a couple of strokes before, you guessed it, we capsized. That's the boaters way of saying, "we tipped over". It wasn't really a big deal, everybody involved knew how to swim and all. It's just that, during that brief excursion in the water, somehow, I lost my wallet. I think we all began diving for it -- like pirates trying to retrieve sunken treasure. I might've had a $10 bill, but that was where I lost my social security card. It was harmless, obvious, I mean, there weren't any close calls, or anything. But these are the kinds of things that a parent hates to imagine his child doing.

I can just imagine being in the doctor's office, quickly reading through all the magazines and finding this one article about sudden teenaged drowning syndrome, or ST DS for short. "... it's the 61st leading cause of death in American teens this decade" -- no one would even care.

But, back to my parents camp. It was almost as though when the summer came, I became this different person. All through the school year, I was just an ordinary kid: I wasn't a jock or really smart or anything, I never really kissed a girl until I was 20 -- that's something I don't tell just anybody. But I was this kind of smart, weird, respectable druggy type kid. My mother was the librarian and my dad worked for AT&T so I was expected to be respectable. Suffice it to say, my teenage years during the school season weren't very fun. I wasn't very popular. But when the summer came, I was transformed into this cool, tall, blonde haired blue-eyed cool dude from the city. Our camp was on a lake where lots of people from New York City and Connecticut owned property and came up in the summer, bringing their teenage daughters.

I remember this one girl, her name was Elizabeth. She was the cousin of some boys that I knew from a couple of summers ago. They were all Norwegian, I mean they lived in New York City, but their parents had come from Norway. Anyway, Elizabeth and I hit it off right from the beginning. She had long, honey blonde hair and she was very well developed for a girl of only about 15 or 16. I remember she used to wear these white painter's pants. She would stand around with her thumb through the little loop of cloth, I think it's a something you could put a hammer through to hold it there or something. It seemed like the sun was always shining. I had my license but she didn't yet. My parents had a new Pacer. Back then, the Pacer was this kind of weird car that had a lot of windows and maybe the driver side door was bigger than the passenger side door or something very strange like that. I remember, the car had a quadraphonic 8-track player standard with the deluxe model my parents had purchased. This was the 70s, we had already put a man on the moon and it was pretty much sky's the limit. Maybe Elizabeth didn't really like me that much but she loved to ride around in the Pacer. After awhile, she asked me if she could drive. The next thing you know, she was driving my parents new car and I was in love. She probably wasn't really that nice thinking back now. We'd be driving around at night and she would ask me, " can I hit them?" What she meant was, hit them with the high beams. One time, somebody had been driving toward us with their brights on and I had flashed mine to remind them. But she always wanted to flash her bright lights at the oncoming traffic.

One time, we were in McDonald's on Friday night. In the town I grew up in, the McDonald's was the kids hang out. Kids with hot cars would come through the parking lot revving their engines up and stuff like that -- showing off. Elizabeth and I were in the McDonald's getting chocolate milk shakes. The two of us were walking up back and then I saw it. Philip Sullivan coming our way. Philip Sullivan was the biggest jock in our school and all the girls flocked on him. "Oh no", I thought, "it was good while it lasted." I figured Sullivan would swoop her up in one armful and I would be left behind with my face red with embarrassment. We were heading for the exit door in the back of the McDonald's but Phil Sullivan blocked our way.

"Hey baby,", says Philip Sullivan flexing his muscles, "what are you doing with that loser, why don't you come with me for a ride?" I can see now that it was his confidence that got him through. Just about all the pretty girls in town had been his girlfriend for a week or two, so he was pretty sure of himself.

She turned around slowly, with her own confident smile on, she had really sexy lips too. "Kiss off dog dish, I'm with him!", was all she said as she turned back to me, put her arm around my waist, gave me a kiss on the cheek and we walked out of that McDonald's, got in my car and drove off. I was so happy inside, I tried not to blush. Neither of us said anything for quite awhile. I think I eventually said something like how cool it was that she had told him off so well.

It didn't matter what happened after that, no matter what happened, that was the single best summer I ever had. I never even kissed Elizabeth. Sometimes, these days, I wonder what ever became of her. Just the thought of Phil Sullivan's face, shocked beyond all recognition, slighted, thwarted, pwned, as my 15 year old son would say, can brighten up my day. Just that thought was worth more than a kiss, more than just about anything. That next year at school, Philip Sullivan treated me differently. It was all because of the magic of that camp on the lake.