He Fell off the Bike

As summer passed, JK continued to wow me with his mad bike skills. I wore the ring he gave me until my finger had outgrown it, which took awhile as it had a convenient adjustable band.

One day he yelled at me and Mama as we were outside trimming the lilacs. "Mrs Rorabaugh! Tammy! Look what I can do!" He  raced down our unpaved road with playing cards in his spokes making a clickety-clack sound with each turn of the pedals. As he approached the bottom of the hill, he slammed on his breaks and spun the handlebars with a hard turn.

Instead of spinning and stopping as I believe he intended to do, he flew over his handlebars. landed on the ground, cut his lip open and cried.  I yelled "That's okay JK! I think it was a really good trick even though you fell!"

That was the last day he ever did bike tricks for me.

I passed his house every week on the way to my 4-H meeting, and he'd wave, but would not make eye contact- his head would droop to the ground and he'd lift his hand in my general direction. I told Mama I didn't understand why he was mad at me, and she said he wasn't mad at me, he was mad at himself. I didn't get it and she said that's because I was too young to understand the male ego.

In Jr. High, I ran into him at a party and he told me he had started smoking pot, and that all the colors were brighter when he was high and that I should smoke pot, too. He indicated he might want me to be his girlfriend again if only I'd smoke some pot.

But I had a science teacher named Mrs. Brees who did an experiment where she pumped marijuana smoke into the classroom aquarium and all the fish swam into the glass and died, so as cute as JK was, I didn't want to swim into glass or die in order to hang out with him so I passed on the weed.

End of relationship #1.

He Gave Me a Ring...

Not every girl gets an engagement ring at the age of 5, but I did. He lived at the corner of our street. He had dark hair and eyes and dimples galore. He could do tricks on his bike and, being that I was 5,  I was easily impressed.

He would ride up and down the hill all day and shout "Watch THIS Tammy!" and then he would pop a wheelie or spin around super fast, or slam on his breaks without flipping over the handlebars! I thought he was the most awesome thing ever.
One day at the bus stop, he sheepishly reached into his pocket and pulled out a ring with one red stone and one mint green stone still cocooned inside the bubble it came in when it dropped out of the gum-ball machine. "This is for you!" he said. "Does it fit"?

It did fit because it was a ring whose size you could alter by squeezing the sides of it together. I put it on and beamed and he said "That's for when we get married someday."

That was the first time I fell for a line from a boy. That was the first time I believed that everything boys said to me was true. I was certain I would grow up and marry him. After all, I had a ring.