My 12th birthday party was to be an epic event, unequalled in wonderfulness by any other event of the Emerson 6th grade spring social season. It lived up to the hype.
We went to Elm Skating Rink for the afternoon. Do kids still do this? A handful of boys went in Dad’s Chrysler and the girls came in Mom’s Fairlane. “On a Carousel” by the Hollies was playing on the radio. We were sooo excited. Maybe a boy would skate with us.
I remember Susie Smidl, Cindy Stewart, Raza Lynn Smith, probably Jeanine Besch and the Meegan twins were aboard. In the boy’s car there was Chris Rich, Mark Adolph, David Stewart, possibly Terry Danuser and definitely Steve Barrow.
Raza and Cindy forced Steve to skate with me. Forced him. I didn’t know that at the time, all I knew was that he skated with me and held my hand. WOW! I remember nothing else from that day, except that we had Kraft pizza in the basement when we got back to the house, and Steve asked if we could find a broom to use to play limbo. We were ALONE in the back of the basement when he asked me about the broom. I had never heard of limbo, so I had no clue what he was talking about.
So that takes care of that story. I didn’t take the decorations down for a year. They reminded me of Steve Barrow. There was the “survey” of who is the better band, the Beatles or the Monkees; green and yellow streamers; a ‘Happy Birthday” sign and a few other items that remained until I entered my teens.