A few weeks after the Steve Miller band show ended better than I
expected all of the juniors at our school were supposed to take the
ASVAB test. The ASVAB is a military aptitude test which the
government uses to find out which kids would be best at killing
people, helping get supplies to a person needing to kill someone, or
getting someone else to kill someone. My problem was that I was late
that morning and I had also forgotten that the test was that day.
Additionally, I was not remotely interested in plunging into the MIS
unless they offered me a free trip to a leadership camp with girls,
which they actually got around to doing a little later. I turned up
just in time to be told that I was being locked out of the test with
none other than the girl that I had a crush on since eigth grade. We
were told to go away and so we did. We decided to go on a drive in my
car up the canyon, over the top and down the other side on a road
called the Nebo loop. It was late fall and it was beautiful. She sat
on the bench seat with me closer than the outside seat but not cuddly
close and I was wondering what a spacing like that might indicate. We
talked about school and my sister who had been dating her brother
when she ran away and shaved her head. We talked about how she had
recently broken up with her boyfriend, a topic I was most interested
in. As we drove I started to weigh the idea of making a move with
this girl and maybe, just maybe, finally getting with the girl of my
dreams. I don't know if it was wishful thinking or if it was actually
happening but she seemed to be leaning in closer to me and laughing a
bit more than usual at what I was saying. I was terrified. I wanted
so badly to give a hand hold, or a cuddle, or even -should I dare –
a kiss. I agonized and re-agonized because I could not bear the
thought of rejection if I was misreading the situation. I tried to
think of a smooth way to put it out there without risking outright
rejection but she was the kind of girl who would only respect
boldness, or so I thought. We had been driving for an hour when I
stopped the car to pretend to look at some rocks that I thought might
be good to climb. When I was done pretending some other reason to
have stopped the car I got back in and we talked in the parked car
for a bit while I tried to work up the courage to bust my move. She
just seemed right on the borderline of maybe being into it and maybe
not and I couldn't force myself to take the chance. I still deeply
regret not even trying, who knows right, who knows? I guess I could
just ask her now that we are both married and adults with nothing on
the line what would have happened that fall day. But I am honestly
still nervous that the answer might have been that she was not at all
interested or even worse – that she had been. Maybe I will never
know and maybe that is a good thing. She finally told me that she
needed to be home by three to go to work and it would take about that
much time to get back so I cranked up the car and drove out the
bottom of the canyon in a town 20 miles from our high school and we
talked all the way home. When we got to her house she gave me a hug,
got out and said she had a really good time and that we should hang
out more. We didn't, we stayed friends but I never came that close to
even thinking about the possibility of making a move. She got a new
boyfriend and I got a new girlfriend and the stars never aligned for
us to be alone and single again. I may have done better on the
military test and had less regrets about that.
