That night I went the ten miles south to pick up my beauty queen date
and take her out for a night on the town. I took her to an upscale
restaurant that I knew impressed women. She was impressed. I took her
out to a stadium style movie theater which was a quite new concept
at the time. We watched something and during the movie I made my move
to hold her hand and she held back. That is to say she participated
willingly in the hand holding without any of the colloquial
connotations of the idiom 'to hold back'. The date was going so well
I decided to take her out to a river walk park and feed some ducks
and go for a walk and talk about cute stuff until she fell for my
tricks and kissed me. We went and bought some day-old bread and went
to the park and walked and fed and walked some more. We were laughing
and talking and not paying too much attention to the time. I knew it
was late, I assumed close to midnight which was her curfew but I
didn't check the exact particulars until we got into the truck. When
I started the truck the dash clock read 1:45 in the ante meridian and
that was not good. She started to get really nervous about being that
late and still being 30 minutes from home. I told her I was sorry and
we drove back quickly. There was no hand holding on the way home and
a good night kiss even seemed like a distant possibility. When I
pulled into her driveway at 2:10 she leaned over and told me she had
a good time and kissed me, then I tried for some more kissing and a
little tongue action and she was not really in the mood for that so
she pushed back and headed in. When I got home my normally not even
up to care parents were both up and pretty mad. They asked what had
taken so long and where we had been because my date's parents had
been calling every 15 minutes since midnight to try and find their
daughter. I tried to calm the situation but when my dad who normally
had little to do with me had a stranger involved he had to show good
face and punish me ignominiously. The punishment he chose was that I
should bake her family a cake and go and apologize personally. I
don't know how common the 'I am sorry I kept your daughter out late'
cake technique of discipline is but I can tell you if making me feel
awkward was the goal then mission accomplished. After church the next
day I baked and decorated a cake and then drove down with my dad to
there house and asked to speak with the lady of the house. I gave her
the cake and told her I was really sorry that I had lost track of
time and kept her daughter out so late. She was as embarrassed as I
was and had no idea what to do with the cake or the apology and just
said, 'Okay, thanks'. I walked back to my dad's car and her then laid
in with some very special message or another while I mentally
squirmed in post embarrassment embarrassment.
