My Third AND LAST Boyfriend!!

Three days before Valentine’s Day in 1987, a series of coincidences and circumstances met up and formed my future. It was like, totally cosmic, man. It was destiny. I mean, it was density.

I had switched to a high school in the nearest (somewhat medium decent sized) city, because I’d been very sick in the fall and missed the first half of my Grade 11 year.

My friend Biddie had just returned to Ontario from a year and a half in Nova Scotia. We were very relieved to know that we’d be going to the same school in January.

A guy I didn’t know yet had blown off his Grade 12 year because he was going to be a rock star. Instead he ended up eating a lot because there weren’t any gigs, maaaan. Guess what school he planned to go to.

Biddie and I met up in the hallway. She asked me if I knew this guy from her hometown, who hung around with her brothers. Lives behind the mill? Plays guitar? Fixes cars? I didn’t know him, but his name sounded familiar.

She decided that all of us had to meet, what with having Smallburg in common. It was pretty strange that I hadn’t met him. Turns out he’d gone to Rural District High School the entire time I’d been there.

Biddie and I walked through the maze of hallways that made up Middle of City High School to meet up with this buddy. She introduced us.

I remember details among blur. Biddie was wearing her black mini skirt and her very cool flat pointy toed black shoes with the little zippers on them. I think she may have been wearing fishnets too. She was killer hip.

I was wearing a long black shaker knit skirt- it was like a tube- and a blue plaid flannel shirt. I marched to my own drum, kids. I was hick- chic already back then.

The tall young fella was leaning against his locker with the laminated parking permit in one hand. He was wearing jeans, a blue sweatshirt with FLORIDA on it, a denim and khaki jacket, and giant huge canoe sized white Converse sneakers. He was kinda round in the middle, which was directly related to the demise of the rock star career and short but intense TV watching career. He had shoulder length dark hair, professionally cut into an incredible shag haircut. All spiky on top, longer around his face, and long at the back. He had that long oval British face, and tear drop shaped eyes.

Of course, I noticed immediately that his eyes were green and framed by those loooong eyelashes. He was cute. He was cool and casual and I liked him.

It was not love at first sight though. I was still deeply tangled up with boyfriend #2. There was no thought that this guy would have any place other than as a new buddy.

I asked him about his car. He said it wasn’t on the road yet. He was bunking at his sister’s place in the city until he got his car plated.

“What kind of car is it?”

“Oh... you wouldn’t know. It’s old...” he mumbled.

“No tell me! I love old cars!”

“It’s a Strato Chief...”

I yelped. “The one under the snow bank!”

He looked surprised.

“My dad was gonna buy that car, but when he called Buddy Byner somebody else already bought it!”

Well that was enough. I had proven myself as a cool chick in his eyes. I didn’t realize at the time that under his obnoxious attitude, he was shy. When this nutty girl told him that he’d bought her car he had a nice little ice breaker.

There was that boyfriend thing though. Danny was getting quite the nasty reputation around town. He’d moved in with a friend and all kinds of stuff was going down there. We fought constantly and it was getting ugly.

But I had a new friend. He never took a wrong step, never said a bad word, just stood by smiling. He offered to drive me home from school so that I wouldn’t have to take the bus for over an hour. It was only another ten minutes out of his way. He and Biddie and I spent our lunch hours together. The weather warmed up with spring and I slowly, painfully disentangled myself from Danny. My new friend hung around calmly, just kind of .... there. Smiling away, being a steady presence in my rolling boil of a life.

Being in his space was wonderful. He made me feel good about myself, after months of feeling all black hearted and cruel.

As we got to know each other, we discovered some interesting things about our parallel lives. We had so many mutual friends. We’d been at many of the same parties (like that bush party I keep promising to tell you about). I remembered looking out the window of my typing class and seeing his goofy red Chevette with the ridiculous high rise hood scoop. Our paths must have crossed over and over again.

Chances are I might not have liked him as much if I’d met him a year earlier. When he was 16 he started apprenticing to be a mechanic. Being raised by a total gear head of a dad, I would have been cool with that. I would have been cool with his rock band gigging too. But in those days when he was bombing around in his 4x4 pickup truck, finishing off a 24 case of beer all by himself, and getting free weed from his buddies, he would have been just another weed puffing beer guzzling 4x4 driving gear head. I mean, honestly, there were so many of them and I think any of us girls could have had our pick!

He’d had time to think. He’d come close to wasting a year of his life and decided to smarten up a little. Just a little. He was still obnoxious. But he was putting one foot in front of the other and getting it together.

So was I.

Spring turned into summer and everything was changing. He’d been out jogging every morning before school. He was getting good marks, and playing his guitar every day.

I was no longer somebody’s girlfriend.

I wasn’t taking the bus home from school anymore. Sometimes I got to drive the big ol Strato Chief. I got to put my foot down on the 283, and wait approximately five minutes until the Two Speed Powerglide finally clunked into second gear. The cassette player bolted under the dash provided us with tunes. Iron Maiden, Seventh Son of a Seventh Son. Diamond Dave’s solo record, because we were mad at Eddie for firing him. Aerosmith’s Permanent Vacation. Lots of Dio. Rush’s Hold Your Fire. Black Sabbath. Ozzy Osbourne’s Randy Rhoads tribute. And of course, copious amounts of Led Zeppelin!

Nobody’s ever accused the Artist Currently Known as Jethro of being a flirt... but he had his ways. Leaving the school one afternoon, walking across the green lawn, he said, “Hey! Let’s play follow the leader!” Then he grabbed the bottom of his T shirt and yanked it up to his chin. I had mine up to my ribs before I started laughing. He got me laughing a lot.

Everybody else saw something happening. I really didn’t want a boyfriend. Not again, not yet. I just wanted him to be there all the time. I got off the bus in the morning knowing that he’d be at school by lunchtime. I loved the half hour drive home from school and wished it was longer. It started taking a long time for me to get out of the car at 4:00. He started hanging around at the farm, checking out my Dad’s collection of interesting vehicles in various states of decay and reconstruction, and eventually, letting my mother feed him.

I met his wacky English parents. I sat in his room while he played guitar. He had the best T shirt and Hawaiian shirt collection I’d ever seen.

School ended. We started hanging around at the local quarry to go swimming. He’d drop me off at home with a little hug. Just a hug, because we were just friends. But the hugs got longer. We’d stand at the door just hanging onto each other.

Then he gave me a nice friendly peck on the cheek. And he’d get in his car and drive away while I stood there feeling his lips on my cheek for minutes afterwards, afraid to move and forget what it felt like.

By the time he finally kissed me, after the Canada Day fireworks, I thought I’d stop breathing, I thought the top of my head was gonna come off, I thought my toes were on fire. I thought my chest would burst open.

I was in looooooooove. Deeply, strongly, permanently, furiously, crazily, happily, insanely in love.

And that could only lead to a wedding and like, babies and stuff.

But as I come up on the exact 20th anniversary of the day we met, I’m still stunned by the way it all fell into place.

If I hadn’t been very sick, I would have stayed at Rural District High School while he went off to be a rock star.

Or if his rock star career could have led to some good gigs, and eventually writing and recording, and I never would have met him, other than possibly having posters of him on my wall, because he was pretty like Kip Winger. (But not as self-serious and less hairy.)

If Biddie hadn’t come back to Ontario, she wouldn’t have been there to innocently introduce two of her friends to each other.

If I hadn’t gone through the wringer with Danny, I might not have been ready for this guy.

And what if Buddy Byner had sold the Strato Chief to my dad????

It could get silly from here on in. I mean, like what if a young man hadn’t sailed away from England with his violin on his back and his middle finger in the air and landed in Canada, that sort of silly wonderings. But the point is, when all of these events swirled together and landed us in the same building, none of us knew where it would go.

Thank God.

(and Biddie.)