The Brown-Eyed Girl
The Brown-Eyed Girl
or how my life forever changed after one kiss
A pretty little girl with dirty blonde hair in a braided pigtail gave me my first kiss. We walked home together after school most days, and on this particular afternoon, she dive-bombed my face with her lips and then scurried up the concrete steps of her yellow saltbox house, disappearing behind the front door. I stood where I was, dumbfounded
.
My first KISS-kiss 😗 😘 😜 🤯 was in sixth grade. It was the first school-sponsored dance that I ever attended. It was kind of like catching a fish on your first cast. You think, “Oh this must just be the way it’s supposed to go.” She was new to the school and by far the prettiest person I had(have) ever seen. She had long curly brown hair, big brown puppy dog eyes, and most importantly, she smiled when I was around.
We found ourselves in a hallway after dancing for a bit and when I leaned in, she did too. Now, it’s a little strange to talk about a couple of twelve-year-olds making out at a middle-school dance, but just hang with me a minute. If my first kiss was akin to Kevin heading to the Big Climbin’ Tree at the end of the pilot episode of The Wonder Years, then this was a little more Jordan and Angela from My So-Called Life, at least in my version of the story.
There was a skip in time. It was literally just me and her for a moment. Everything else just faded from consciousness. It was like we were standing on a soundstage in a Hollywood studio with a single spotlight on us. Nobody else is around. Nobody else mattered. This month we celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary.
Surprisingly, we didn’t get married in sixth grade. As it turns out, that middle school romance only lasted two weeks. In true 90s fashion, I got a call one evening on my semi-private phone line which I shared with my little sister. As a teen in the 90s, having a phone line in your bedroom was of utmost importance! Her best friend informed me that I was no longer her boyfriend. I think her friend relished twisting the knife in that poor boy’s heart a little too much.
I remember laying on my waterbed staring up at my ceiling fan, watching the little mallard duck from the Ducks Unlimited catalog waggle on the end of a chain over my bed. The world had ended in a single ring from my clear Swatch phone. There was a solid three months of pining over the loss of the brown-eyed girl. I distinctly remember drawing her name in the sand and then wiping it away so I could write it again. Cliché I know, but they exist for a reason so lay off. My reaction seems ridiculous in hindsight for a number of reasons, but I had have some separation issues for a variety of reasons.
As we moved on to junior high and eventually high school I always kept in touch, most of the time to her dismay. However, in our sophomore year of school, I found an opening. I was working backstage for a production of Double Door, a play originally produced in 1934. It’s a melodrama, but I’m sure it was performed as a straight drama because teenagers aren’t the best with nuance. I remember the high school class of 1993 was suuuuuuper excited to see the show 🙄.
The play closes with a wedding in the fifth act. The married couple excitedly walks off the stage through the “front door” and on to the rest of their happy lives. If the gears are coming together properly up there, it was a real, “everything works out in the end” moment. The brown-eyed girl played the groom’s little sister, and she had the final line of the play. On stage right a large picture window had been constructed. She approached the window, appropriately clutching her broach while watching her brother ride off in eternal happiness, and says, “Oh, what a beautiful sight!”
I had a plan. I worked the light panel (yes, panel), a fifteen-foot wide wall of switches that sparked and growled like it was possessed by a sinister supervillain. Her window looked off-stage directly at this panel. So, each night I watched her deliver the final line. She couldn’t help but see me.
Now, this next bit may be a bit controversial, and I’m certainly not advocating this practice. I’d lose it if my daughter came home and told me this story today. However, you have to remember it was the 90’s.
Closing night I ask a friend of mine to write a message for me to deliver to the brown-eye girl. Nothing overtly eloquent came to mind, and since I was having them write the message on my ass, it didn’t seem necessary to be overly classy. As the moment approached, a number of the other cast members had heard about the plan and had begun to gather near to see if I would have the guts. Thankfully she didn’t notice the growing crowd.
The final scene played out as it always did. Perhaps she noticed the real excitement of the newlywed couple RUNNING off stage to get to a good viewing location, or someone could have spilled the beans, but she seemed apprehensive when she came to the window. Putting one hand on her broach while the other hovered near the fake window pane and looked out to see the white cheeks of my ass with the message, “Will you go out with me?” It had been written with a Sharpie in permanent ink. I was serious, or at least committed to asking the question. Oh, and she said yes … eventually.
It’s easy to see how we’ve been married all these years. We still find ways to make each other laugh, and I’ve gotten pretty good at doing it while keeping my pants buttoned. People recently started asking, “What’s the secret?” which sounds like one of those questions you ask when you really don’t know what else to say, but there is a secret, at least for me. Whenever we are together, we can still turn down the lights on everybody else and find each other on that stage.
See, Kevin found Winnie, and Angela found Jordan, but Austin and Laura, we found each other.
