TIME
1972
PLACE
Sunny Hills High School, Fullerton, California (Anywhere outside Southern California an institution named, “Sunny Hills” would be a nursing home.)
PLAYERS
Me (During this phase I ofter signed my name “su.” Grief!)
Doug, my boyfriend, one year older than me
MY STORY
I thought Doug was so cool. He had a bit of a “bad boy” reputation, but when you got to know him well, you found out it was pretty much a facade.
Because of his reputation, my group of close friends–the “arty” bunch– didn’t approve of Doug. I thought he looked like a young Clark Gable. (After all, I spent two years fantasizing that I was Scarlett O’Hara when I was younger.) And he had very long hair, which I knew would bug the heck out of my parents. When it didn’t, I was darned upset.
Like me, Doug wore jeans and t-shirts with beads around our necks. But Doug had pockets on his t-shirts–a box of Marlboro reds poking out of them.
Doug and I became inseparable. Because he had graduated the year before, Doug wasn’t allowed on school grounds during hours school was in session. That, of course, made it all the more fun to meet on the fringes of school grounds at the end of the day, smoking our Marlboros and tempting trouble. This was the point when I became a serious smoker.
Yep, we were pretty darned cool. Puffing away. Totally devoted–until Doug’s parents announced they were moving to the Mississippi coast. Being of age, he had the option of staying in California. Not being quite as cool and independent as his image, he decided to go with them. So much for devotion.
Then they told him he’d have to get his hair cut or risk problems in conservative Mississippi. I was shocked when he agreed to this.
On the evening of the haircut, his older sister (think the older sister in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”) was assigned to drive us to the barber to ensure the correct cut was given.
Oh…those mounds of long, dark hair! We embraced. We wept.
We promised to write. He wrote several times. I wrote once.
Then I met another Doug.
I kept the smoking habit for years.
