My Friend Shelley
She would frequently go out with Steve and me. So would her sister and her friend Gail. Shelley and Karen had a little sister who was about 3 years old. Since their mom and dad both worked, Shelley would babysit her frequently. We found out that if we took her little sister Dee with us, they were allowed to go anywhere. I guess they figured either we wouldn't take her anyplace weird, or they thought she would tattle on them if they did something odd. They were so wrong. Shelley would say we were going to the zoo, and of course, we didn't. But we would drill her to make sure she gave the right answers if mom and dad asked her any questions. For example, we would say things like, "Dee, what did you think of the monkeys today?' And she would answer smartly, "they were funny." She was a smart little girl, and I swear she knew what we were doing, but she played along. All we had to do was take her to McDonald's or get her a Slurpee or buy her candy. We took that child everywhere, and she never squealed on us. We even had a small group of guys over to their house when her parents were gone, and she never spilled the beans.
I knew my way around DC pretty well, and sometimes Shelley and I would go downtown and shop, or we might ride the bus to Arlington and hang out. We rode the bus to Columbia Pike and walked to Arlington Cemetary. We went to Kennedy's grave, Tomb of the Unknown, and then we walked all the way up into Fort Myer to go to the stables. It was pretty neat; there were many Army guys behind one of the buildings, probably fifty guys. We walked past the building on the sidewalk. We heard something and turned around, and all of those guys were following us. I told her whatever you do, don't trip and fall. They were messing with us, like any guys would, calling Shelley "Blondie," and one of them decided I looked like LuLu, so they started calling me LuLu. They wanted to know where we were from, where we were going, did we want a date. It was like being the stars at a USO show. They would have died if they knew how young we were. They escorted us to the stables and went back to whatever it was they were doing. Nice day.
We went ice skating at The Marriot one Saturday. Shelley told me that she skated better on the ice than she did on roller skates. I was pretty sure that I was not going to do well. Once I put the skates on, my ankles just turned inward. All I could do was laugh. And then when I looked at Miss Ice Skating America fighting to keep on her feet, I laughed my tail off. She was holding the rail and was still falling. She fell in front of a man, started laughing, looked up at him, and laughed and didn't realize her nose was running profusely. And she ripped the knees out of her jeans. I think the session was only like two hours long. I was freezing and had laughed so much that my stomach hurt. I was ready to leave. Needless to say, that was the last time we went ice skating.
Shelley's dad played the piano and sang. Every year he went to senior citizen homes and entertained the residents. He asked us, Shelley, Karen, Gail, and me, to sing at one of them. He wanted us to sing 4 songs without any background music. Okay, we said we would. We had about a month to practice our act. I can only remember two of the songs, Michael Row the Boat Ashore and If I Had a Hammer. We sounded good; well, we sounded perfect. On the night of the show, we all wore identical outfits. We were very nervous. Shelly's dad was up first, singing a few songs, then he introduced us. You could hear our hearts beating. We got ready to start, and then some of the people started talking loudly in their animated voices, "oh, aren't they cute? They are such pretty little girls." It struck me funny, and I started laughing, then the other girls started laughing, we lost it. Tears running down our faces, we had to turn our backs. When we finally regained control, we started to open our mouths, and one of them said, "oh, they are just nervous little girls." I lost it again, and so did my compadres. We had about a 15-minute delay trying to regain our composure. When we were finally able to start, we were fine. They loved us. But that was the beginning and end of our career.
We had so much fun. I could hardly wait until she started high school. Time was flying by now. I watched both Shelley and her sister change into pretty and delightful young ladies. We were all constantly changing and evolving. The entire group of kids living near us all changed so much; we all became so much more than we had been.
On the first day of high school for Shelley, I thought she was going to burst. Even though she was a lowly sophomore and would be teased by the seniors and juniors, she loved it. She had told her dad one night before school started, "Sherrie and I are going to be the 2 biggest horrors in school." What her father heard was, "Sherrie and I are going to be the 2 biggest whores in school." He almost ran off of the road. "What do you mean, Shelley?" When we realized what he thought he heard, we died laughing. As it turned out, we were neither of those things.
Life in high school went on. Clothes, music, guys, friends, gossip, growing up, time was flying by. We went to all of the football and basketball games. We went to the mall and hung out at Jr. Hot Shoppes. We went out with Steve and his friends. We were always doing something.
We were now at the point where I broke up with Steve. We were grounded for a while. None of us had a car yet. We were once again dependent on Shelly's parents for transportation. What a comedown. We had given up skating and would go to the movies about once a week. And then, when school was out for the summer, we would take our place at the pool.
I dated another guy from Virginia for about two months. That was how I had found out that Steve was married and David too. David had married to try to avoid being drafted, but that didn't work. He was in basic training and would be going to VietNam soon. I stopped dating Tommy, he was cute and nice, but my heart just wasn't in it. I was getting ready to start school as a senior and start working half a day. I was almost an adult.
When school started, I started working and going to school. I was drifting away from Shelley simply because we were on different paths. She was going to go to college, so she took advanced courses, I was just trying to get away from home, so I started working. We remained friends, but now Judy and I became more in tune with each other, and that difference between being a junior and a senior was very significant. But we still had some good times ahead later in my senior year.
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