So here we were one week away and my girlfriend had been asked to work the Kissing Booth at the Emerson Elementary School Ice Cream Social. I had multiple issues to deal with here. As a sixth grade member in good standing of the Basketball team I had a reputation to up uphold.
The way the Kissing Booth was supposed to work was pretty simple in theory. The booth was built usually out of old crates with a sign on top that advertised Kisses for 50 cents. There was a counter between the customer and the girl donating the Kiss. The booth rotated Kiss givers about every hour so that there was what seemed like a parade of new opportunities. All transactions at the Emerson Ice Cream Social were strictly monitored by chaperones in the event a young man’s hormones were to surge and he lost all sense of propriety when he wanted to involve the use of his hands, which was strictly forbidden.
The girls were chosen from the student body and were presumably the most popular and the most desirable to kiss. The problem with this theory is that in practicality most of these girls had never been kissed, except by their little brother, which did not render any sense of expectancy. In other words, neither the Kissor nor the Kissee knew what to expect when two sets of lips collided in broad daylight, in front of a hundred or so people. Inexperience aside, there was the matter of coming up with the 50 cents and the inevitable delima of, did you want to get back in line as a repeat offender?
In my case there was another layer of complication. I had never been kissed by my girlfriend; in fact, I had never been kissed by anyone’s girlfriend. I had laid awake many nights wondering how I could make it happen, but life keep getting in the way. We both had curfews and had to be in on school nights by 8:00. I had finally worked up the nerve to hold her hand on the way home from school. That act itself came with its own set of problems. It takes coordination to hold books, while connected to another human being, and dodging uneven concrete and low hanging branches. It was more of a physical exercise than an act of romantic intent. Not to mention we would occasionally encounter some of our friends coming from the other direction. This added more depth of complication, in that some of my buddies would whistle or giggle and I would instinctively withdraw my hand to look for something in my pocket.
The other major obstacle was the biggest hurdle of all. I didn’t want the whole basketball team kissing my girlfriend. She, on the other hand, moved toward her Ice Cream Social debut like an actress in a starring role. She announced that it was an honor to be asked and confessed no problem with her lips coming in contact with big fat Tommy Tucker. I was in agony and decided it was time to make a philosophical stand. I would forbid her participation. However, like most life altering decisions when you are 12, it was not well thought out in the planning department. To make matters even worse, Mrs. Wampler, one of the school’s teacher/chaperones asked me to help build the Kissing Booth. Now I was at the corner of walk and don’t walk. If I helped build the booth, I was condoning the act, which I was actually ok with, just not with my girlfriend. I did what every self-respecting sixth grade male would do, I asked the guys on the basketball team what to do. Big mistake, I found out one of my best friends said he planned to be first in line and would spend all of his newspaper route receipts for that week for as many visits as possible. He would even forgo Cotton Candy for this opportunity.
I decided to help build the Kissing Booth with help from several fathers and a couple of my buddies. It was a work of art and included a very wide counter over which the Kissor would have to stretch to connect with the Kissee. It seems that one of the girls Father, who were participating, supervised the width of the counter. My girlfriend sailed along to her kissing destination with professed indignation at my misgivings and dismissed my concerns as thoughts grown out of immaturity on my part.
The opening day of the Emerson Ice Cream Social arrived and I was a nervous wreck. I still had not specifically said how I felt about this whole social experiment and my girlfriend had her mom’s eye make up on for God’s sake! The booth stood empty waiting for its occupant to arrive to dispense momentary excitement at 50 cents a pop. A few guys were hanging out eating popcorn, but no one wanted to be first in line until they saw who they were going to get to kiss. Then she appeared, my girlfriend was going to be the first to bestow her charm on the masses. Up she stepped to the stool in the booth and turned the sign, hanging on a string, to open. She was open for business, and I did not want to watch was going to happen next, but I couldn’t help it. As fast as the sign flipped over, her mother stepped up behind her, crossed her arms and fixed a stare that melt that would melt chocolate off your M&M. All my potential rival kissers scattered like they had been shot with a BB Gun. Then her dad stepped up, plunked down his 50 cents to kiss his daughter and received a round of applause from everyone watching. All of a sudden it seemed like half of Muncie Indiana was looking in my direction. My hand was in my pocket squeezing my two quarters harder than I have ever squeezed anything. I stepped up to the booth, put down those two quarters, closed my eyes, (so I didn’t have to look at her mom) and puckered up. The next thing I remember was my girlfriend saying, loud enough for the whole school yard to hear. “Wow, these quarters are really hot.” At that moment I learned a lesson in life that I have never forgotten. Circumstances seldom work out as planned. I think I got a kiss, but I don’t really remember, I was busy heading for an ice cream cone.
As we learned later, the Kissing Both was one of the most profitable ventures of the evening. Largely, based on 5-dollar donations to the booth from fathers to make my buddies keep their distance.
I also learned, that when dealing with affairs of the heart, growing up in the sixties was going to be confusing and without a road map, but I could not wait to make the trip.