(a story by Greg Chambers, July 21, 2025 creative writing group)
It's 3:30am and I'm sitting in the basement, looking at bookcases full of books. Most are good, some are classics, and others are set aside with the promise of being read. The best of intentions, they say. I should jump in, but I should do a lot of things. Life is full of choices.
Fifty-six year old me is not used to being up before dawn. My sleep schedule gets thrown off each summer, as the heat peaks. A few minutes earlier I tossed and turned, going in and out of a dream about a must see television event I can't quite remember the title of. It had Sandy Duncan and her husband Mike telling viewers intimate details of their family life. The event's title screen, in a brown, bubbly font is perfectly 1980. It's making me crazy I can't remember the font's name. I have it here somewhere because I used it for a mood board in 2008. I clumsily push items around. I hid it somewhere clever but can't quite put my finger on it. I turn back to the TV.
The reason this old show is in the news is because Sandy's son is going to recreate the program. This time from his adult child's perspective. He will talk about growing up Duncan and how he is handling life in the 2020's. This is important because the Duncan boy is my age. What he's going through is what I'm going through. Although my mom isn't the aging face of Wheat Thins, she's aging. Some of her choices bother me. The Duncan boy's kids are the same age as mine too. One of mine is making a life choice I question, but he's an adult. Every choice, every step into the future, changes where we end up.
The last thought is with me as I roll over, searching for the cool side of the pillow. I put one foot under the covers and keep one out. This sometimes gets me back to sleep, but not tonight. Sorry Duncan family. Maybe I’ll see you another night.
The problem with being alive and awake and feeling great at 4am is it's not my routine. Even the pets are thrown off. The morning is off kilter and at risk of ruining the day.
The pets curl back into their sleep positions, and I do chores. I choose the basement because it's the least likely to disrupt anyone else. Rearranging the bookcase, I think about a game we used to play. First, Best, Worst, Last. Kiss is in my head. Not the band KISS, the lip one. First kiss, best kiss, worst kiss, last kiss. I'm guessing Sandy Duncan put kissing there. I saw her on TV as Peter Pan. I may have been 6 but it stuck with me. She played a girl pretending to be a boy, and that stirred up feelings. I wouldn’t call it a sexual awakening, I was too young for that, but something happened. Since that moment I was attracted to her. Not like a pinup fanzine kind of way, but in a I-don't-care-if-she-has-a-limp-a-pixie-cut-and-a-glass-eye-that’s-my-girl kind of way. This morning, she reminds me of kissing.
As the game requires, I mentally catalog kissing moments. What comes to mind is my first official girlfriend. In grade school it was en vogue to pass notes with check boxes asking "will you go with me" with a Yes or No. It was through this courtship ritual that I was betrothed to Shelly Sanderson, the little redhead, official girlfriend number one. Though I haven't visited with her in over a decade, she is a dear friend. The kind of friend I can call and catch up with in under 2 minutes. We’ve known one another since second grade. It was in seventh grade when she checked the yes box.
First Fridays were half days at my Catholic grade school. We were latch-key kids, so this meant once a month we had an opportunity to do something adventurous like go to an afternoon movie. The closest theater was Tamarac Square, but the cheapest candy was at Walgreens, in a strip-mall across the street. To get between the malls, one could hike all the way up to the crosswalk and traverse 6 lanes of traffic, but you risked being seen by a parent. The best bet was to use the giant culverts under the avenue.
These big, galvanized, ribbed tubes were just long enough to be dark and scary. Between rains, Goldsmith Gulch was little more than a trickle, but it wasn't water we feared. It was high schoolers. If there were no high schoolers in the pipes, we could run under the road to Walgreens, get candy, then sneak it into the movie, avoiding concessions and stretching our allowance. On this day we were three couples. A group date of sorts. The girls were all staying at one house, the boys at another. The discussion among the boys was about kissing, as in, are you going to kiss her? We were a group of first-born kids with zero kissing experience and no one to model off. One couple in our class held hands at school and kept to themselves, so we were pretty sure they were kissing, but my group had no experience. Yet, somehow, despite this limitation, we just knew the best place to kiss girls was straddling trash, weeds, and moss in the culvert.
After collecting candy, Shelly and I fall behind the group, leaving us alone in the culvert, about 2/3 of the way through. Just as I imagined. It’s dark, but not too dark. My hands are wet, my throat dry, and I’m not sure what comes next. The guys will want to know what happens next, so I’m taking mental notes. It turns out Shelly's group has been having similar conversations because we start talking about it. Talking about kissing. We admit this will be our first real boy-girl kiss. I am pulsing with excitement, hormones, but filled with dread.
Two years later, in our freshman year in high school, I will go to a dance and see Shelly making out on the bleachers with Tommy Ginnis, a sophomore. I will take note of this despite slow dancing and doing the same with her best friend, Amy.
Our senior year in high school I will be across town at a party and find myself in the bathroom with an exciting stranger, when someone will barge in, flip on the light, and say, “Oh! Sorry! Sorry! Sorry. . . Greg?” Yep, Shelly.
Our junior year of college, over a few too many beers, she and my soon-to-be best man will let slip that while they regularly hook up to enjoy sex experiences they aren’t dating.
Months after we graduate college, she’ll be one of the first people I talk to in depth about my unplanned pregnancy.
Two years after my wedding, Shelly will marry someone from my little league baseball team. Little Scotty Bredehoft, now big Scott Bradehoft.
When that doesn't work out, a few years later she will marry a nice guy who owns a dozen office printer companies, her red hair turning everyone’s head at our friend’s wedding.
Decades later, at the funeral of our friend's mother, another friend will tell me that marriage didn’t make it either. She lunches with Shelly and will say hi for me.
But on this day, back in the damp culvert, Shelly holds my sweaty hand. I have no idea what I'm supposed to do next. I don’t want to let anyone down. I don’t want to be made fun of. My heart is racing. I glance around, swallow, and force myself to face her. Shelly looks me in the eye, gets a sly smile, and giving my hand a squeeze, pulls me away saying, c’mon, let's go to the movie.
Greg Chambers – July 2025
Story in the style of “The Moth Radio Hour”
