Last week I ended in the middle of a story.  My friend Jerry borrowed Ken's convertible to take his girlfriend to the ball game.  He dropped Ken off at our house and said he would pick him up at 10:00. Of course, he was late coming back.  My folks eventually went to bed, Ken laid down on the floor to watch TV, and I curled up on the sofa to wait for Jerry.  This story is very embarrassing to me but I'm going to share it with you anyway--but you have to think like a 17 year old teenage girl.

It's humiliating to tell you how silly I was, but the only thing I could think about was what my girlfriends were going to ask me when I got to school on Monday.  Ken and Mom and Dad and I had gone to the ball game.  My friends would probably think I had a "date?"  Which of course I didn't.  But I knew they would ask me a zillion questions.  The first one would be, "Did he kiss you?"

I would then have to admit that he spent the evening talking to my folks, and that he not only didn't kiss me, but he didn't hold my hand, look at me with any particular interest, or anything else.  It wasn't a date, it wasn't much of anything.  But.....since he was leaving the next morning to go back to Pensacola to the flight command, and  I would never see him again, the wheels in my head began to turn.  The stupid wheels.  So....

When Jerry drove up, I got up off the sofa, (remember--I would never see this guy again) I leaned over where he was lying on the floor with his hands under his head and kissed him.  All I was thinking was what I could tell my girlfriends--"Yes, he kissed me"--which wasn't true at all.  (I'm really embarrassed to tell this story--but I was stupid, I was 17.)  Well, Ken didn't move his hands from under his head, or respond.  Nada.  He stood up, got his coat and walked to the front door, stepped outside, stood there a moment and then turned around and said:  "Young lady, you don't ever wake a sleeping tiger."

Abashed--but I would never have to face him again.  Where I got the nerve to do something so stupid I'll never know.  He was 25 years old.  A Korean war veteran.  A grown man.  The only good thing was that when I got to school on Monday, everyone was buzzing about him and his car and the fact that I had gone to the football game with him.  And of course all my 16-17 year old girl friends asked me what he was like, etc., and...did he kiss me?!!!  I just smiled, and said, "Yes."  (Continued.)