First Date

We quickly realized that there just wasn't much we could do about Cradeau. Cradeau completely resisted the idea of seeing a doctor in Cody.

"You dumb bunnies," Cradeau told us. "All my wounds are superficial. Nothing is bleeding, and there are no broken bones. If every cop and his brother is out looking for me, seeing a doctor is one of the quickest ways to get me arrested."

"He's right," agreed Pointer. "So we keep him away from doctors unless we have no choice." The rest of us nodded our agreement.

"You have to start getting better right away," Pointer told Cradeau. "Also, we need to cut your hair really short and shave off that mustache." Cradeau agreed.

Pointer and Madden quickly had Cradeau in a chair outdoors. Madden did the honors of shearing Cradeau. His short curls fell to the forest floor. Madden also trimmed Cradeau's mustache as close as possible with the scissors. Then Cradeau was off to the staff shower area, where he took a shower and carefully shaved off the stubble on his lip.

It looked to the rest of us like Pointer and Madden had things under control. So we proceeded with the shutting down of camp and with the plans we had already made for the weekend.

I was headed into Cody to see a particular young lady. I gave Sloan and his two roommates, Stafford and Phillips, a ride to Cody. They left their sleeping bags in my trunk, and we agreed to meet in the park late in the evening. Then I drove over to Amy's house. Amy and I had been bumping into each other for two years at different high school music festivals. There was a natural attraction there, I guess. At first I just knew her as 'that girl' from Cody, and she knew me as 'that guy' from Casper. Then we had an impromptu meal together where we introduced ourselves. I told her I worked at camp and that pretty much sealed the deal. She agreed that we definitely should date the next summer. I'd never met anyone in her family. Driving up to the house, it looked like everyone was home.

Amy greeted me at the door and ushered me into the living room and had me sit in a chair. Then she disappeared. When she reappeared she had in tow a boy about eleven years old. She introduced him as her little brother Ted, short for Theodore, then she disappeared again.

Ted looked like something that had just crawled out of a nearby cave. He had dirt lodged everywhere a human body can have dirt. His hair was matted with dirt. His shirt was spotted with cracked dried mud. There was a dark rind of dirt around each nostril, and a ring of it around his mouth. He looked like he'd been eating and breathing the stuff. His pants had big brown swathes down the side of each leg where Ted had conveniently wiped his abundantly dirty hands. Sweat had trickled down his forehead and the erosional effect had formed channels in the dirt there. One look at Ted and you knew he was the real thing, a boy's boy. He looked like someone I would have grown up with. Hell, he looked much as I must have looked just seven years earlier.

"Been digging a fort?" I asked Ted.

"How'd you know that?" he wanted to know.

"Just a wild guess," I reassured him. "From the look of you, I'd say you're down about four feet."

"How'd you know that?" he demanded.

"See that spot there?"

"Yeah."

"Well it's a bit darker, a touch bluer than the other dirt," I explained. That means you've gotten into the hard pan clay, which around here is about four feet down."

"How do you know that?" Ted asked.

"I have cousins here in this part of town, and I used to dig forts with them," I revealed. Then I gave him some instruction on digging underground forts. I told him what kind of lumber to use for beams, how to build a roof, how to cover the roof with dirt, and how to disguise the bare ground so the fort would be hard to find. I explained to him how to make a small fireplace and chimney out of good thick clay, and how the heat from the fire would harden the clay. His eyes lit up when I explained to him that with a fireplace built, the fort would be more comfortable to use at night and in the winter. I also cautioned him to sink some diagonal ventilation shafts into his fort so the fire would not use up all the oxygen in the place and kill him.

"Cool," was Ted's response to this.

About then Amy's mom appeared and discovered Ted in his deplorable condition. There was nothing I could do to save him from the watery fate that awaited him upstairs. Amy's mom quickly introduced herself when I rose and then she hustled a protesting Ted off for his well deserved ablutions. I think Ted wanted to hang with me, an expert on digging underground forts.

Then Amy's dad appeared. He is an architect by profession. If you've ever known architects you know that it is more passion than profession. It is a passion that, fortunately, I have never developed. There is an air about architects of preoccupation. In the really hard core cases, like Amy's dad, the preoccupation is so pronounced it is as if they live on a different planet and only discover this one on occasions when they are confronted by it.

Mr. Schultz didn't introduce himself. I found that both odd and unsettling. Even so, I introduced myself to him. We sat in chairs opposite from each other.

"Who are you again?" he asked with a puzzled expression. I introduced myself again even as Amy's mom reappeared behind Mr. Schultz with a frown on her face. At first I thought she might be unhappy with me. But then I realized she was just concerned about her husband's behavior, or potential behavior. She put her hand on his shoulder.

"Why are you here?" he asked me in mystified seriousness. "I'm here to pick up your daughter Amy, sir," I explained. "We have a date tonight."

"What?" he exclaimed in a loud voice. "Marge, why wasn't I told about this?" he demanded of his wife at the top of his lungs, as if she were at the far end of the house.

"We discussed this at lunch, dear," Mrs. Schultz explained calmly.

"We did? Oh yes, I guess we did," he admitted in a confused voice. Then began a round of what seemed like fifty questions. "What do you do for a living young man?"

"I'm a student, sir. I just graduated from high school in Casper. I will be attending Casper College in the fall. After that, I will probably head to UW in Laramie," I explained.

"Then," he concluded, "you're 18 and a senior. Amy's only 17 and a junior. Oh no, this won't do," and he rose to his feet. "Marge," he demanded, "throw Mr. Smith here out of the house," and he pointed at the door.

I began to rise. Mrs. Schultz motioned for me to keep my chair. I heard a muffled giggle coming, no doubt, from Amy in the hall.

"Now Glen," Mrs. Schultz said soothingly, "You and I dated in high school and we're two years apart."

"On yeah, I guess we did," Mr. Schultz said, somewhat mollified. "What does your father do for a living? What does your mom do?"

On and on it went until Mr. Schultz knew most of my family history, who my relatives in Cody are, the ages and status of my three brothers, who my grandparents are and who my great grandparents were, what I thought of modern architecture, how long I'd worked at camp, who the camp director was, whether or not I'd ever been arrested, what kind of driving record I had, whether I'd ever had a drink of alcohol, whether I'd ever used a controlled substance, how many pets my family had and their names. I told him the truth because I simply had nothing to hide. Up to that point in life, I'd lived pretty cleanly.

Then he paused for effect before he asked the blockbuster. "Mr. Smith," he asked, "do have on clean underwear?"

I didn't hesitate, I didn't blink an eye. I zapped him. I lied and told him, "yes sir, I do have on clean underwear."

At that Amy broke down completely. I heard her laughing uncontrollably as she banged against the walls in the hall and fell down to the floor.

Mrs. Schultz's reaction was quite different. She was simply stunned by her husband's question. She sat frozen for a few moments, just staring at him. Then she bolted into action. She gave him a few short words meant to curb his outrageous behavior. In almost the same breath she apologized to me, and began calling Amy, trying hard to rescue the date, in case I might be of mind to take exception to the treatment just handed out by her husband.

I kept my face completely free of any emotion. I'd already learned that it's often best not to take exception. It is usually better to get even in a different way. I would start by being the perfect gentleman, so that Amy would be able to see a clear contrast between my behavior and his. But I owed the old man one, and I vowed to do something 'nice' for him someday. I already knew that 'someday' seems to come quicker than one has a right to expect. Wyoming is just one big small town, and in a small town, opportunity for rich revenge abounds.

Mrs. Schultz, to her credit, got Amy up off the floor, the two of us together, and hustled out of the house quickly. I was really starting to like that woman. She had a lot of class.

Amy was still giggling. "Oh, that was wonderful, just wonderful," she gushed.

"I don't think so," I disagreed in a purposefully calm and reasonable voice.

"You're not mad, are you?" she asked before we got to my car.

"No, I'm not mad," I told her as I opened the car door for her, "he's your dad, and you love him, and so you see him in a different light than someone who is not his daughter. You probably see him as a big brilliant teddy bear. You probably see his behavior tonight as 'eccentric', and as wildly funny. I see him from a different perspective." Amy began to protest, and she hesitated with the car door still open. I held up my hand so she would let me finish. "With no cause or provocation, he was rude to a guest in his own house, and that is something I have been taught to never do." Amy didn't know what to say.

"Look Amy, I really like you," I told her, "and I've been looking forward to this night. Let's not let this spoil our evening. Let's just agree that we disagree about this. It's OK to disagree about something," I told her with a smile. "Differences of opinion can be the spice that makes a relationship work. Besides, I wouldn't want to date a woman exactly like me. She probably wouldn't be very pretty would she?" I kidded.

"No she wouldn't be very pretty, I'm sorry to say," Amy admitted with a laugh. She sat down in the seat and I closed the door. "You're right, Smitty," Amy told me after we were buckled in and I was ready to pull away from the curb, "let's just go out and have some fun tonight. I'm ready to do that."

We cruised the main drag a couple of times, a popular thing to do in Cody. Then we headed for the theater. Amy sat all the way over against her door in the car. At the movie she didn't seem to want to hold hands, so we didn't.

After the movie we cruised by the park downtown. It was a summer Saturday night in Cody. Great crowds of tourists strolled along the street. At the park Sloan was playing a round of miniature golf with Stafford and Phillips. Amy wanted to meet them, especially Sloan, after I explained that he worked with me at the pond. So I pulled in and parked. We walked over to the young staffers and I made the introductions.

"I have an idea," Amy told me suddenly. "I know a girl, a friend of mine, who is just Sloan's age. He's fifteen isn't he?" I confirmed that Sloan was, indeed, fifteen. "Why don't we pick her up and double date?" I could not find anything to object to in that plan. It might even help loosen Amy up if she were a bit more relaxed. So I agreed. I informed Sloan that his plans, if he had any, had just been changed by Amy.

"That's what women are for, Sloan," I told him with a wink. "Men need to have their plans changed." Amy reacted well to this ribbing. She looped her arm in mine and whacked my shoulder a couple of times with her fist. On our walk back to the car, Amy kept her arm in mine. We both enjoyed the innocent contact. I couldn't help but think how truly delicate relationships can be, how quickly they can change, particularly at their beginnings. Sloan followed us to my car like the good soldier he is. He was scoping out Amy from behind. I couldn't blame him for that. Amy was a seriously cute young woman. Like her mom, she was going to be a seriously beautiful adult woman.

Once in the car, we headed straight to the Dairy Queen on Cody's main drag, where Chelsea was just finishing her shift. Amy ran in to get her. Soon both girls came out. Chelsea was using Amy's cell phone, talking to her mom. Her mom wanted to talk to Amy. Amy reassured Chelsea's mom that everything was cool and we'd get Chelsea home long before midnight. Sloan was scoping out Chelsea with wide eyes. Like Amy, she is gorgeous, but blond, while Amy has rich dark brown hair. Chelsea's mom gave her permission and the two females joined us in the car, Amy in front with me, Chelsea in back with Sloan.

We cruised back through town commenting on the tourists, particularly the middle aged men in their shorts. The girls and I agreed that men with the legs of chickens should not wear shorts.

"Well," Sloan piped up, "I guess I should be banned from the whole short-wearing population. I mean just look at this leg." With that he raised his pant leg up over his knee and held his leg up in the air. The girls looked at his skinny calf on display and agreed that Sloan should be careful where he showed his legs off, and they laughed.

'Well done, Jeremy,' I thought to myself. 'Humor is rule number seven.'

We drove several more blocks. Then Amy began to shuffle closer to me on the seat. Closer and closer she came. Our hips and thighs touched, and then she molded her body to mine. I could feel the heat of her. I was very alert to her presence, to her every move and motion. Her left arm went around my neck. She began to play with my left ear. It was getting more and more difficult to focus on the job of driving. She began to play with my right ear with her right hand. Then I sensed her head getting close to mine. Her lips just barely brushed my ear and the effect was electric.

"Pizza," she whispered in my ear. She definitely had me going. She could have said gold at that moment and I would have tried to find her some. Pizza was a lot easier.

We turned around and drove to a local pizza parlor. There we took a booth, ordered two pizzas and a pitcher of Pepsi, and we began telling stories.

I told them a story my oldest brother, a young professor at a college, had told me. He was lecturing in biology one warm fall day to a room packed with a hundred college freshmen. He was pacing back and forth as he usually does, when he felt a breeze. He didn't look down, but continued his pacing and lecturing trying to confirm what he had felt. It was confirmed. His zipper was down and he was 'trolling'. It was an embarrassing thought. But, he thought, perhaps no one had yet noticed.

Still lecturing, he scanned every row in his audience. He was in luck. There was no sign that anyone had noticed, no staring, no snickering, no nothing. If anything, the students seemed a bit distracted, and weren't paying him very close attention. Under the circumstances that was just fine. But what to do? He formed a plan.

'I'll pick up a marker as if to make a note on the board,' he thought. 'I'll drop the marker just as I reach the lectern. The lectern should hide me from the waist down. Then I'll bend over to pick up the marker with my left hand and my back to the class. As I straighten up I'll reach down with my right hand and zip up. No problem.'

"So that is exactly what he did," I told the other three. "He picked up the marker and dropped it just as he walked behind the lectern. He turned away from the class and bent over, picking up the marker in his left hand. His right hand found his zipper and he zipped as he began to straighten up. And that's when all hell broke loose."

"What happened?" the girls wanted to know.

"He forgot about his tie," I said. "He got his tie caught in his zipper. So there he was, hopping around in front of the class, kind of hunched over, with his tie firmly in the grip of his pants zipper. One second it was a normal lecture; the next second it was a spectacle. The class went crazy. He said it probably only took him twenty or thirty seconds to free his tie. But it seemed like forever.

The story of that moment spread all over campus. As a joke, at the next faculty meeting, two Native American professors called him up before the assembled faculty and gave him a Native name: Man that Hops."

The other three laughed hard imagining my brother hopping around in front of class with his tie caught in his zipper. Amy laughed really hard. Chelsea laughed but seemed relieved that the story had not gotten truly risque. Her relief was short lived.

"Did you ever stick your tongue on something metal when it was twenty below?" he asked. Both females said they had done that. "Did you pull your tongue loose?" Both young women said they did, and talked about how badly it hurt. "Well, that pain was nothing compared with what sometimes happens to guys," Sloan revealed.

'Oh no,' I thought, 'he's not going to go there. Please Jeremy, don't do this,' I begged mentally. It did no good.

"Every guy I've ever known has done this," Sloan began. "But it's not something we like to talk about." That got Amy's and Chelsea's full attention. "Once in a very great while, usually when you're urinating and you're also in a big hurry to do something else, you won't get your Johnson stuffed all the way back into your underpants after you're done and you'll zip up hard anyway and get your little buddy caught in the zipper. Yeow. Now that's pain." Everyone on staff called a little buddy a Johnson in honor of a former President.

"Is that true?" Amy wanted to know.

"Yes," I confirmed, "it's true. I've done it."

The girls looked embarrassed and dumbfounded with this new piece of unsolicited information. But I noticed that they also seemed to be utterly fascinated. It is probable that no guy had ever talked to either one openly about a Johnson. And that gave me an idea. The pizza's arrived then and I waited until everyone had some pizza before I launched into my story.

"Did you know that a guy's Johnson has some unique sensory capabilities?" I asked boldly. Now it was Sloan's turn to do some mental begging. Amy looked at me. Her face was a picture of horror.

"I'm not being outrageous for the sake of it," I assured the other three, "and I'm not suggesting anything of a sexual nature at all. I'm quite serious."

"OK," Amy said, "go on. But this better not be anything disgusting," she warned.

"I was all of nine years old," I began. "I was spending half a summer at my aunt's place in Kalispell, Montana. She and my uncle owned a house at the edge of town. All the lots there were a hundred feet wide, but they were very deep, probably an acre in size. Behind her house was an alfalfa field, beyond that the back yards of equally big lots. I was out in the field early one morning.

Now you have to realize that I was raised in Casper, which is a city. Like most guys in Wyoming I get out into the country a lot. But I'm still a city boy, not a country boy. Up to that time, there was nothing in my background that could have prepared me for what happened." I could tell the girls were getting interested in my story.

"It was a beautiful morning. There was a heavy dew all over the alfalfa. I had to go bad. I was afraid that I would not make it back to the house. I looked around and no one was around. I was standing next to a fence. So I whipped out my Johnson and I began to urinate on the fence. But it was not an ordinary fence, it was electric. Up to that moment in my existence I did not know there were such things as electric fences.

"Zzzap, the upper wire got me. It seems that urine, with all its salts and impurities is an excellent conductor, and with all the dew around, I was well grounded. I moved to get away from that intense pain. The stream fell to the lower wire. Zzzap, I got it again."

The other three at the table began to laugh at this.

"I jerked up to get away from the pain, only to get grabbed by the upper wire again. Down I went, zzzap. Up I went, zzzap. Down, up, down, up, zzzap, zzzap, zzzap, zzzap. I can tell you now that a guy's little buddy is one hell of a detector of electrical current.

I don't know how long I went up and down like that before I realized that I wasn't running out of urine. It was as if my kidneys had moved into warp drive and were producing urine at an astounding rate. Much to my horror I realized that my stream was not diminishing in the least. Worse, the pain was no longer confined to my Johnson, it traveled up into my bladder and made it burn. I realized that I had to do something to end the horror.

Between zzzaps, I slowly rotated ninety degrees so that eventually my stream no longer fell on any wires. Oh, blessed, blessed relief. You can bet that I really studied that fence after that. You can also bet that I've always been a little weird about electric fences since then. And you know what they call me now?" I asked.

"No," Amy was able to blurt between bouts of laughter, "What do they call you now, Smitty?"

"They call me Man who Aims Up and Down, or sometimes ... I'm called The Sizzler," I told her with a straight face.

Well, that capped the evening. The girls laughed so hard they cried and had to wipe their tears. They laughed so hard their sides hurt. And Sloan knew he'd never be able to top that one. We had a great time after that. The girls really loosened up.

Soon, far too soon, it was time to take Chelsea home. On the ride to her house I looked into my rear view mirror and saw Sloan and Chelsea holding hands. Then we dropped off Amy. The girls made it evident that they had enjoyed themselves and would welcome future dates. They said so in plain English. We swung by the park and picked up Stafford and Phillips. They'd had some positive experiences themselves with the opposite gender.

Then we all drove over to a house owned by a family named Jackson. Kay Jackson is my age and had dated several staffers over the years. She seemed to have settled on my roommate Mike Smolinski and they were dating for their second summer. Cradeau once pointed out that young women in a small town like Cody form their own small society. For a guy, the best possible entry into that society is a good report from a member in good standing. Kay must have given all staffers two thumbs up because just mentioning that you worked at camp brought about an immediate and positive response from the young women of Cody.

The Jacksons are an extremely generous family. Staffers were always welcome at the Jackson house, no matter what time of day or night. Kay's mom was kind of a surrogate mother for all of us. She worked at the Cody hospital as a surgical nurse. I've never known a kinder soul.

I was surprised to find Cradeau in the kitchen talking to Mrs. Jackson and Kay's little sister Kathy, who is Sloan's age. I could tell they'd been having a very serious talk. I could already guess the topic. Pointer and Madden had driven Cradeau into town late in the day and had purchased a new pair of jeans for Cradeau. Those two pulled up to the house, loaded Cradeau up in Madden's car, and they headed back to camp that night. We four got our bags out of the trunk and rolled out on the Jackson's back lawn to sleep. There were already four staffers sacked out there.

I lay there on the grass contemplating the stars and the strange twists that life takes. Sloan rolled over in his sleeping bag to face me.

"I can't believe you told that story tonight," he said to me. "And I really can't believe you got away with it. You're a real pervert Smitty."

"You opened up that door. I just walked through it," I replied. "Besides, I was a pervert long before you," I told him. "I've had a lot more practice."