Don’t Get Cocky, Kid!
On the night of June 15, 1977, there was a disturbance in The Force.
I even described it in the next day’s diary entry: “I had a very strange dream last night: that the world was being completely annihilated and there was an escape (a world directly after). Strange, eh?”
It was officially summer, the school year done, and I didn’t have a job. But I busied myself with a short story I’d started in Creative Writing class, based mostly on the story Pete Martin told me about the Swedish girls he’d met many years before.
Mom even popped for rental of an electric typewriter from an office supply store in Wayzata. Typing at the desk in my bedroom, I was never happier.
And I was still hoping for a reconciliation with Kim, especially when our family joined my brother at the Lake Koronis summer camp he and Kim attended at the end of June.
Meanwhile, Steve, Skeeze and I had been hanging out with Sara Berquist and her family at the Tipi-Waken apartments in Spring Park.
That’s when I took a keen interest in Sara’s younger sister, Michelle.
Michelle had long brunette hair and a mischievous smile. She was playful and smart—had to be, since she was dead center on the Berquist family tree, between older sister Sara and baby brother Eric. Her personal charm worked slowly on me, however the diary doesn’t refer to much about her prior to the last entries of June.
Maybe I was sensing something new in the air, feeling the powers of a young Jedi knight—even putting Yes’ “Sweet Dreams” on the turntable before falling asleep guaranteed I would have vivid dreams that night.
Uncanny new powers were emerging.
The day before leaving for Lake Koronis, on Thursday, June 23, our gang threw a surprise birthday party for Sara at the Tipi-Waken party room. Michelle had just returned from a trip to Mexico, so along with her mom, brother Eric, Steve, Skeeze, Baibi, Jeff, Greg, Eric Miller, Vinces Olmstead and Marshall, Charley, Lori and Kristi, we all packed into the party room by 10 p.m.
“Michelle and I talked quite a bit,” I wrote in the diary. “And I guess my liking her showed a bit.” We made plans to see Star Wars when it opened July 1st at the St. Louis Park Theatre.
While The Force was nearly with us, I first had to deal with that she-agent of the Sith: Kim at Koronis. I was going to give the “relationship”—for all intents and purposes flatlining—one last shock of the defibrillator paddles before writing up the death certificate.
It was an odd start to the summer holiday. Mom and Dad rented a cabin on the campgrounds, and that weekend I slept in its loft. I played piano in the Tabernacle Hall, and walked the beach down by the lake. The weather was perfect.
But by Sunday the emotional clouds shoved in and, by the time we’d headed back to Casco Point, it was all over between me and Kim—for good.
Mom’s parents came for their annual summer visit the last week of June. Michelle and I talked on the phone and, on Friday, July 1, in time for the 7:00 show, we had our first date, going to see Star Wars. I picked her up in Mom’s car, “the Dartillac.” At the theater, we saw Connie Conklin with her date, Greg Maertz, and even spied my English teacher, Mr. McHale, standing in line for a ticket.
Michelle had a headache, and I worried the date was going to be a complete disaster. We snagged some good seats, sat close together, and got entirely lost in the movie.
On the drive home, Michelle said her headache was gone. In the apartment parking lot, we made out in the Dartillac. “There was a beautiful full moon, starry sky,” I wrote later in the diary. “I think I love her?!?!”
I couldn’t believe it. The afterglow burned well into the next day. I got her! I got her!
Great, kid. Now don’t get cocky.
Completely in the Dark 
Reblogged this on Completely in the Dark and commented:
Yet another reblog, since I had to shelve a previous draft for a wholesale rewrite. 😦 So, since I’m halfway through Chris Taylor’s marvelous Star Wars book, here’s a blast from the past. Enjoy. 🙂
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