Feels Like the First Time (5 page)
Read Feels Like the First Time Online
Authors: Shawn Inmon
On the way to the dance, I swung by Dawn’s house to share my misery with her. When I got to the front door, I could see Walt and Colleen sitting in their chairs. Dawn was on the couch, looking comfy in jeans and a sweatshirt. Sure enough,
The Love Boat
was on TV. It all looked so homey and relaxed that it made me feel even worse, if that was possible. I nearly turned around and walked away, but I was made of sterner stuff than that. I knocked on their door, and explained my miserable circumstances.
I made a pretty easy target for ridicule, but Colleen and Dawn both took the high road and commiserated with me. After a few minutes, with me constantly flashing yearning glances at Dawn, I started to head to the dance.
Out of nowhere, Colleen had an idea. She said Dawn had been initially asked to the dance as well and they had bought a dress for her. But something came up, and she was also stranded without a date. It was acceptable for a senior boy to go stag to the dance, but not so for a freshman girl.
“Would you,” Colleen wondered aloud, “be willing to take Dawn to the dance with you, as a favor to us?”
I didn’t need much convincing–she was saving me from the misery of going stag.
“Ummm, sure.”
This was such a saving grace, I was caught off guard. Colleen nodded at Dawn, and she shot up and off the couch.
Less than five minutes later she was back, shining and lovely in a floor-length antique white dress with a ruffle on the bottom. It had three-quarter sleeves and a small rose embroidered under the neckline. Colleen seemed to be glowing too, at the sight of her daughter in her lovely gown. She looked me square in the eye and said “Is this Dutch?”
At that moment, I was looking at Dawn and having a little difficulty breathing, let alone speaking or understanding the English language. Compared to the
Hookers R Us
formal wear that girls wear today, the dress Dawn was wearing was demure, but she took my breath away. At first, she looked uncertain, but when our eyes met and she saw the impact she had on me, I saw a small smile of satisfaction.
I thought to myself,
how the hell am I supposed to know if that dress is Dutch or not? I don’t know anything about dresses!
I said “Yeah, sure, I guess so…”
Obviously disappointed when I didn’t properly grasp her question, Colleen turned to Dawn and said, “Go get me my purse so I can get you some money.”
Her meaning finally became clear and I was able to blurt out, “Oh, I thought you meant her dress! No, I already have our tickets to get in.” I shut up to avoid doing further damage to myself. Colleen looked pleased that I had caught on. Dawn smiled at me, and Walt narrowed his eyes. He didn’t seem to like the neighbor boy being dumbstruck by his daughter. I didn’t blame him.
Dawn and I walked across her yard to the Vega. I held her door open and watched her tuck her dress inside the door. I closed the door and stood with light-headed awe. Twenty minutes earlier, I had been emotionally devastated. Now I was escorting the girl I’d had a crush on for months to the Homecoming dance.
The excitement leading up to it made the dance anticlimactic. Many of Dawn’s friends were there, and mine were too, and that was two different groups of people. I realized right away there weren’t going to be any
Stairway to Heaven
moments that night. We danced, laughed and drank punch, but there was no real romance. Before the night was over, we posed for our Homecoming picture with the usual hokey autumn background, and had a really good time.
The drive home was less than a mile, which was way too short. I was enjoying a little alone time with Dawn as we cruised home. Kenny Nolan was on the radio, softly singing
I Like Dreamin’
. I pulled into my parking spot between our two houses and jumped out to open Dawn’s door. I was hoping for a goodnight kiss, but I have a hard time keeping my mouth shut at appropriate times. Between the Vega and her front door, Dawn told me that Jeff, another boy from my class, had asked her if she wanted to go outside and smoke a joint. Both Dawn and I were so innocent I was actually surprised.
I made a connection in my brain and said, “Wait a minute. Isn’t that a guy you went out with? You really know how to pick ‘em.” She narrowed her eyes and tossed her hair.
“He is, and I sure do,” she said, shutting her front door softly but firmly in my face.
I’d like to say I eventually learned my lesson about when to keep my mouth shut, but a lifetime of evidence says otherwise. Considering my state of mind a few hours before, when I had trudged dejectedly over to Dawn’s house, the whole night had turned out great.
I walked across the yard to my room and lay quietly down on my bed. I had just said goodnight to Dawn moments before and I was already figuring out when I could see her again.
Just a Song Before I Go
In mid-October 1977, I headed back to Auburn, where I had spent the summer living with Terri, my oldest sister. Auburn isn’t much of a city, but it was many times the size of Mossyrock. It was only another half-hour to Seattle, so I grabbed any opportunity I could to go there. As an early graduation present, my sister Terri bought me a new suit and paid to have my senior picture taken by a photographer she worked with.
Sunday morning, I woke up with the intention of watching the Seahawks play the Miami Dolphins with Tommy before I drove home. Just before kickoff, though, I felt like I might be coming down with something, so I left early. On the drive home, I felt worse, and by the time I rolled into Mossyrock, I was feeling awful.
I went straight to bed and slept from mid-afternoon until it was time to get up and go to school the next morning. I didn’t feel any better when my alarm went off, so there was no way I could make it through a day of school. I ached all over, felt pain in my eyes, and my neck was so stiff I could barely move it.
Dr. Mom took my temperature and diagnosed a case of the flu brought on by standing in the rain getting my picture taken over the weekend. That seemed reasonable. I was sick all week, but by the time Friday arrived, I was feeling a lot better and knew I’d be ready to head back to school on Monday.
By Sunday I felt like my old self, and convinced Mom I was well enough to hang out with some friends at Craig Landes’s house. Craig was a year behind me in school and was a good guy. It was a typical get-together, with a little music and lots of friends fooling around.
Eventually, we planned a snipe hunt. In a snipe hunt, the victim is stationed in a cold, wet environment outdoors, armed with a gunny sack to catch the snipe. Everyone else scatters and promises to drive the snipe toward the victim. Instead, everyone goes in and gets something warm to drink and waits to see how long it takes the victim to figure out what’s going on. I was still feeling a little under the weather, so I passed on those festivities.
As the party was winding down, Jerry was messing around with his practice nunchuks. They were made out of hard foam plastic, but they packed a wallop on anyone taking a direct blow. Jerry and I decided to do a mock battle. As a finale to the play fight, Jerry swung the nunchuks hard at me a couple of inches off the ground, where I could easily jump over them.
I had either been slowed by my recent illness, or I was just slow, period. Whatever the reason, I missed the jump and the nunchuks slammed into my ankle. I felt a blast of pain and fell face first to the carpet. The pain was so incredible I thought I might turn to see my foot facing the wrong way. But when I looked, my ankle seemed normal.
Once I stood up to shake myself off, I realized my symptoms I’d had all week were back with a vengeance. It felt like the blow to my ankle aggravated my sickness, which made no sense.
The 40-mile drive to the doctor’s office was an endless fever dream in the backseat of her Chrysler. Once there, he gave me a thorough examination and asked to speak to Mom privately. They came back into the room with grave expressions, and the doctor told me I had viral encephalitis. When I told him I had no idea what encephalitis was, he told me it was commonly called “brain fever.” I had never heard of that either.
Mom wanted to know what would help me recover. The doctor shrugged and said there wasn’t really much in the way of treatment for encephalitis. I could be hospitalized, but that would mostly be for observation. I would either get better or I wouldn’t.
“Well, I’m glad I spent $30 on an office visit to hear that,” Mom said. She packed me in the car for the ride home.
I returned to bed when we got back to our trailer, and I didn’t get up again for a long time. One of the symptoms of encephalitis is sleep. Each day I slept more than the day before. Eventually, I slept a mind-numbing 20-plus hours a day. There was no change in the other symptoms. Light of any kind sent a searing blast of pain into my brain, and turning my head was so painful I decided I didn’t need to see anything that wasn’t right in front of me. After six weeks, I was sleeping for several days at a time without waking at all.
After I’d been in bed for weeks, Mom brought Dawn over to my bedroom. Through the haze of sleep, I recognized Dawn’s voice and swam up through layers of consciousness to try and talk to her. She had come to deliver my copy of our Homecoming picture and to see if I was still alive. I squinted and saw shadowy forms standing behind her.
“Who are all those other people with you?” I asked. Dawn looked over her shoulder and looked back at me with concern.
“I’m alone.”
“Yeah, but…” I couldn’t finish my sentence. Dawn’s troubled brown eyes were the last thing I saw. I fell asleep and didn’t want to wake up.
I experienced the oddest sensation of being awake but trapped inside my body. I spent hours walking around inside my own body, trying to find a way out. Eventually, I found a door at the top of a stone staircase leading deep inside myself. I decided to follow the staircase and see what I would find. It felt like it took days to descend those stairs. By then I had completely lost all sense of time.
Finally, I reached the bottom of the stairs and found a door identical to the one at the top. I didn’t want to walk back up all those stairs, so I pushed open the door.
My elf-self looked up from her book and smiled. I sensed that she was expecting me and her smile soothed me.
“You can ask me anything you want,” she said. I looked at her and thought for a moment.
“Why is there so much pain?” The act of speaking led to this question. I hadn’t planned to ask it.
“Because your true self is perfect and cannot be harmed. You choose to put yourself into an imperfect vessel and live this life so you can experience pain. That’s how you learn, change and grow.”
“Uh-huh.” I didn’t have an answer for that. I turned and looked back toward the door when my elf-self spoke.
“I have another present for you before you go.” She smiled warmly and opened her hands to me. “Perspective is everything,” she said.
She turned back to the book she was writing in before looking at me one last time. She nodded toward the window. Beyond the window I could see green grass, flowers, and heavy branches of moss-covered trees reaching for the ground. I felt the peaceful embrace of the outdoors and the perfect light waiting for me there. I wanted to go there and rest, but she shook her head and said, “They’re waiting for you.”
