Firsts – a Meme

 

 

 

1. Who was your FIRST prom date?

Ken, HS star baseball player, senior. I was a sophomore. He was really cute but had the IQ of an Irish setter.

2.  Who was your FIRST love and do you still talk to him/her?

Mark of the red couch makeout sessions. Off/on, up/down romance for years; set the tone for relationships the rest of my life. Was halfway to losing my virginity with him New Year’s Eve senior year – are you with me here? – when the phone rang, I was sure it was my parents, and I leaped up to answer it, tripping on my pants which were still hanging from one ankle. I said it counted as actually having sex. He said no. His mother hated me.

3.  What was your FIRST alcoholic drink?

Red Mountain from a gallon jug at a huge party. An hour later I had locked myself in the only bathroom and passed out on the floor. Learned that lesson well.

4.  What was your FIRST job?

Gift wrapper at men’s store for Christmas season. Was so talented, they hired me as a cashier nights and weekends. One slow rainy night another part-timer and I were playing frisbee with a stack of berets that had been in the store for years without a single person even thinking of buying one -(I think everyone thought they actually were sort of oddly soft frisbees) -and I flung one just as the manager came back in from his dinner break, which caught him squarely in the face. First and only time I was ever fired from a job.

5.  What was your FIRST car?

Used 1962 Renault, black, on its last legs. Had three flat tires in the first month, all on the way to school in the morning. I swear to god. The attendance office lady didn’t believe me either. Had no idea it was pronounced “Ren-oh.” We said every one of those seven letters.

6.  Who was the FIRST person to text you today?

Stacy the yoga woman.

7.  Who is the FIRST person you thought of this morning?

Now, that would be telling, wouldn’t it?

8.  Who was your FIRST grade teacher?

Don’t remember. The first teacher I remember is Mrs. Moe, third grade, the most wonderful teacher ever in the history of humanity.

9.  When and where did you go on your FIRST ride on an airplane?

1955, flying with dad, mom, brothers in Navy plane from Oahu back to the mainland. We had gone to Hawaii on a Navy ship two years before, every single one of us throwing up nonstop for four days. Even as a five-year-old, I would have flown to California on a duck to avoid getting back on that ship.

10.  Who was your FIRST best friend and do you still talk?

Melissa L.  She was the younger daughter of the CO at the secret Navy place in Nevada where my dad was stationed when I was in first grade. She had rheumatic fever, and I got to go stay at her house every day after school and all weekends because she couldn’t get out of bed for months. I fell in love with her big sister’s boyfriend, a lifeguard named Peter. They had a cook who would ask us what we wanted her to fix us for dinner. We asked for things like lamb chops (something I had been unaware that people ate). I never wanted to go home. But, alas. Her family moved back to an estate in Connecticut, and my parents went on to alcohol abuse and divorce. Somehow they lost touch.

11.  Where was your FIRST sleepover?

At Melissa’s.  We were six.

12. Who was the FIRST person you talked to today?

My hubs.

13.  Whose wedding were you in the FIRST time?

My own.  The first one in 1972.  I was in the second one, too, in 1988.

14.  What was the FIRST thing you did this morning?

Moved to a cooler part of the bed.  My husband is a heat-seeking missile. Which my daughter used to think was “heat-sinking missile,” which for some reason still cracks me up.

15.  What was the FIRST concert you ever went to?

Tom Jones, thanks to my roommate Darlene with the then-horrific taste in music. After that she loved Neil Diamond. I can’t even talk about it.

16.  FIRST tattoo?

Nope. My body is a temple. Well, sort of.

17.  FIRST piercing?

Ears. I think I was 19. Wouldn’t let Darlene do it using the needle/ice cube method. I bought these tiny gold circles that had one sharpened end and a spring device. They were deceptively labeled “self-piercing,” I think, to appeal to abject cowards. They effectively rotted their way through your earlobes. It took about a week. It’s a miracle I didn’t end up with gangrene and have to have my ears removed.

18.  FIRST foreign country?

Mexico, Tijuana, the bullfights. I shudder to think…nearly died in a cab on the ride back from the Plaza de la Playa or whatever the hell it’s called. Our driver just had to pass 15 other cars going 60 mph on this two-lane road. I think the name of it, translated roughly from the Spanish, was Camino of a Million Potholes. I think he thought we were going to barf in his back seat and he wanted to get rid of us ASAP. We had been drinking wine out of bota bags. The back of that cab smelled like a barrel of dirty socks. Who could blame him?

19.  FIRST movie you remember seeing in the theater?

Can’t. There’s nothing there.

20.  FIRST detention you had?

The one and only (time I got caught). Sarah H. was supposed to pretend to be my mother, calling the attendance office to say I was sick and wouldn’t be in school that day. I had already done it for Laurie, Laurie had done it for Sarah; we later won Oscars for our performances. Sarah was, shall we say, not convincing. Detention was taught by the same guy who did the Drivers Ed. class, and we were trapped, listening every day for a week while he explained why the U.S. needed to be in Vietnam to stop Communist domination of the entire world, aka the domino theory. This was 1967. I disliked him even more intensely the next year when a couple guys I had graduated with were blown to pieces there.

21.  What was the FIRST state you lived in?

Missouri. Born in Kansas City, lived on the Kansas side of the river, hospital was on the Missouri side. Then California, Hawaii, Maryland, Nevada, California. All by the time I was six and all by car, except the Hawaii part. My early life was a little like part of The Great Santini.

22.  If you had three wishes, what would the FIRST one be?

To have a thousand more wishes.  Is this a trick question?