This series of stories will be titled 'I'm surprised I turned out as well as I did, given my childhood ...' 63

michelle.gent (74)in #life • 7 years ago

To shake off the gloom and despair of the last episode, I'm taking us back in time to before I started going out with Trev. Before I got the CB Radio... the only thing I had was a paper round and a dish-washing job on Sundays at the restaurant.

I was invited to my friend Sara’s 15th birthday party. She was a few months younger than me and her birthday was in May (mine in December).

I’ve mentioned before that she was from a different school and she had lots of different friends and they all thought she was cool too. That’s why her party was gonna be the biggest thing of our young lives! Well, mine… her life was pretty exciting anyway.

You hope it's going to be:

And worry it's going to be:

And it turns out to be:

“You’re coming, aren’t you?” she asked.

“Oh yeah! Try and keep me away!”

Well… she may not have been able to keep me away, but other factors could…

The obstacle I had to overcome was permission from my parents. It was NOT going to be easy. First of all, I was their babysitter and if I had a ‘night off,’ a babysitter would have to be found and paid. Why on earth would they pay someone to babysit when they had me?

The fact that I was fifteen didn’t help either. Fifteen, a party at my friend’s place (whom they didn’t like - she wears too much make-up and she’s just…) Yeah, that was it. “She’s just…” Never mind the fact that I’m not a sheep and I didn’t wear make-up, no matter how much she wore (plus she never encouraged me to wear it, either.)

Then, the fact that Sara lived quite a way from our house and I had no way of getting home from there.

I asked if my father could perhaps fetch me… not a chance. He couldn’t get out of work to fetch me (remember this point in a little while).

That conundrum was mulled over at school.

“I’ll ask Dave to take you home!”

Who’s Dave, you may well ask – I certainly did, he sounded awesome!

She told me all about him. He’s great-looking but not her type (which meant he had a job and was single usually). He was also stable, not prone to bomb-making in the garage (more on that one soon), not gay or bi, a non-smoker and he was a nice guy – one more point against him in Sara’s eyes unfortunately. Plus, she’d known him all her life and he was more like an older brother – he’d do anything for her.

She would ask him if he’d do her that favour and she’d let me know the next day.

“Dave will take you home from the party!”

“Perfect!”

Not so perfect.

“You’re not being brought home by someone we don’t know. You’re not going!”

So here’s the parents’ dilemma, they forbid me to go to the party but then, they go out because they work. I’m certainly rebellious enough to sack the babysitting gig off and bugger off to the party anyway without the parents’ knowledge.

They may as well say yes, make me be all responsible and know about it than me get into trouble and be too worried to say anything about it – read into that what you will – trouble covers a multitude of sins…

The proviso was that Dave brought me home as long as Sara was also in the car.

“Yes! That’s exactly what will happen! I don’t want to be in a car with someone I don’t know! How ridiculous would that be?”

Yes, you’ve guessed it, at that point, I would have agreed to any condition in order to gain permission to go – well… within reason. I didn’t want my grandmother coming to fetch me home at 9:30 for example.

The week leading up to the party, Sara told me ALL about ALL of her friends who would ALL be there.

Dave – obviously! He was such a catch, there was one little issue with him… he had an obsessive ‘stalker’ – one girl who hung around with the crowd was a little possessive about Dave and threatened any girl that went out with him – but it’s ok, I’m not going out with him, he’s only giving me a lift home. – Sorted!

Then there were two guys who were utterly cool and awesome – and if Sara described them thus, they were Gary Numan and Adam Ant all rolled into one (please don’t ask, we had just arrived in the 80s, remember).

Those two were off-limits (don’t worry, I had no assumption that any of her really cool friends would be taking a fancy to me.)

Source

Then there was the guy who liked making bombs in his garage. What the hell?

He doesn’t do that anymore… not since he blew all the fingers off one hand. Yeah, well, that would cure me too, I guess.

And a strange, sickly kid, good friend of the mad bomber would be there too. Plus some kids from school and her sister… you know…

Next problem PLEASE!

Ok… I had nothing to wear – Haha… no, really.

I wasn’t about to show up at the equivalent of the Oscars ceremony in the hand-me-down or second-hand stuff from the 60s my grandmother sent over for me.

I took some of my money from my paper-round and working washing dishes on Sunday at the club and I went into town.

I found nothing. I swear, every pair of jeans in the town in my size had been sold!

I ended up buying a pair of really wide ‘Oxford Bags’ style trousers. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

Mine were black

Off I went to the party of the decade.

Dave wasn’t there yet. Sara’s mum had gone out but big sis would be along later. No one else had arrived and Sara started stressing that no one would turn up.

Well, she stressed for no reason and soon the party was jumping.

One of my friends showed up with her boyfriend and I was puzzled why she had been invited. I found out she hadn’t, her boyfriend had – Sara’s sister liked him – wow… talk about devious.

I met a few of the ‘celebs’ Sara had told me about – those she had been telling me about ever since I’d made friends with her. She had stories about everything and most of them revolved around that crowd.

I started flagging a little and sat on one of the chesterfield chairs, leaning against one arm, my legs over the other arm.

Two guys came to sit on the floor and talk to me. No biggie…

I got a little fed-up of their banter after a while and went to get up and leave, but one guy put his hand across my stomach and wouldn’t let me up. His friend stopped me from leaving via the chair arm. Eventually, I decided two guys weren’t enough to stop me and they backed off.

I went to find Sara. We were chatting and I told her about the two guys that were bothering me.

The skinny one came into the front room where we were.

“Oh, that’s one of them,” I said.

Suddenly, a really attractive guy (my ‘type’ – dark hair, white t-shirt, a little muscly) grabbed hold of the skinny guy and held him a little above his head, pinned against a wall.

Not quite, but you know...