Magnificent Melanie, episode 2

Magnificent Melanie, episode 1

It was the spring of 1978, and new friends Melanie Robinson and Jason Lundgren were gripped with Spring Fever.

Melanie and Jason saw each other for the first time since their Saturday Pizza Hut date at school Monday morning, although they talked on the phone for over an hour on Sunday. She was a grade ahead of him, they didn’t have any classes together, so they didn’t have a whole lot of opportunities to see each other in school. Mornings before classes started were usually the best time. She hugged him and they chatted, as Jason ate something from a small plastic sandwich bag.

“What are you eating,” she asked.

“Apple Jacks cereal,” Jason replied. “I like to sleep in as long as I can, so I don’t have time to make breakfast, so I’m eating my breakfast now. Plus, it makes me look tough. If I take a bunch of them and put them inside my cheek like this…I can look like a bad ass dude with a plug of chewing tobacco.” Then he said, with his right cheek bulging out, pretending to be such a character, “Yew don’t scare me, Mister!”

Melanie laughed, and said, “ACK! Chewing tobacco! Gross!”

The other kids in school were noticing. Until then, nobody ever linked the two, but now the story was going around (thanks to Wendy and Tami) that they went out together.

Melanie enjoyed the newfound attention but was coy when asked about it out in the student smoking area behind the school. “Hmm…maybe,” she’d say when asked if there was anything between them, or “Wouldn’t you like to know!"

Jason (who wouldn't go near the smoking area) didn’t think it was anyone’s business but tried to handle it with humor. “I will not answer on the grounds that it might incriminate me,” was his response to such questions.

*****

The following Saturday, late in the morning, Melanie called up Jason and asked if he wanted to do something that day. “I have to babysit at six but I have the afternoon open,” she told him 

“Well, a friend of mine, John Rafferty, is going to be broadcasting live from the Goodyear tire store on Bellington Avenue on KPRA this afternoon. I was thinking of seeing him. We could do that.”

“A tire store? How romantic!” Melanie responded jokingly. But she knew who that disc jockey was and said, “Sure, and maybe we can check out some of the other stores around there.”

Melanie came over, her brown hair in a ponytail tied with a white ribbon. She was wearing a short-sleeved top she purchased from Casual Corner, jeans and sandals, with her ever-present leather purse over her shoulder, which she had also purchased from Casual Corner, while Jason was wearing a white T-shirt with a red Levi’s logo, non-Levi’s jeans and his blue and yellow Kinney NBA sneakers.

They walked to the tire store. The blue “920 KPRA” van was there with John Rafferty talking to people casually when he was between live cut-ins on the top-40 station. Jason came up and said, “Hey John, how’s it goin’”

“Jason! Glad you could make it,” he responded and they did a high-five. Jason introduced him to Melanie, who seemed impressed that they knew each other so well. Jason explained that he used to call in on John’s “Boogie Check” joke line segments when he used to be on another station, G/106.

“I used to call in on Boogie Check,” Melanie told them. “I was ‘Magnificent Melanie.’ I was usually babysitting and would tell some silly joke from the joke books I’d bring to my babysitting jobs. The kids just loved hearing me on the radio.”

“YES, I remember you,” John told her. “I could hear the kids in the background.”

“THAT was you?” Jason asked. “Oh wow, I never made the connection. Did you say, ‘What’s green and sings? Elvis Parsley’ one time?"

“Umm-hmm,” Melanie responded, nodding her head.

“Then I called up later and told the same joke but with the punch line ‘Frank Sin-ot,’ which sounds like snot.”

“That was YOU?” Melanie replied. “Okay, I’m going to have to give you girl germs for that!” She put her arm over his shoulder and kissed him while purposely stepping on his left foot with her sandal, over his sneaker.

“Wow! Glad you two found each other,” John Rafferty said 

“It must have been fate,” Melanie replied.

*****

After leaving the tire store parking lot, they wandered around the area, stepping into various shops, mostly just looking. Then they came to a Woolworth store, which still had a soda fountain inside.

“Hey, do you want to share an ice cream sundae with me?” she suggested. “I can’t eat an entire one myself, or at least I shouldn’t eat an entire one myself. My treat.”

“Sure,” Jason said, and they went to the counter and sat down.

As they consumed spoonfuls of ice cream and chocolate syrup together from the same glass, Jason commented, “That’s wild that you were ‘Magnificent Melanie’ on Boogie Check. I feel like I’m in the presence of a celebrity.”

Melanie laughed. “Oh, shut up! And anyway, you actually know John Rafferty. That’s pretty impressive.”

“Well, maybe we have more in common than we realize,” Jason replied. “I’m surprised you listened to G/106. I’d peg you more as a soft rock person.”

“I like all kinds of music,” Melanie told him. Then she confided, “The thing is, I don’t at all consider myself magnificent, I’m not. It’s something I made up to sort of be a character on the radio and to entertain the kids I was babysitting. I’d like to be special but I’m not. I’ve never been popular even though I try to be nice and try to please people and fit in. I think I’m reasonably smart but I’m always told I’m a ditz or an airhead or whatever. Or a goodie two-shoes.”

“I don’t give a shit about being popular with those assholes,” Jason said. “If they don’t like me, fine, I don’t care. They can just leave me the hell alone and I won’t bother them. But some of them won’t leave me alone and they harass me every damn day and I’m sick of it. So I kinda get what you’re saying. I’m only in school because I have to be.”

“I generally like school,” she said. “I like learning, I have some good teachers who have been really helpful and encouraging, and I want to go to college and learn as much as I can. But I’ve had some teachers who are just as condescending to me as some of the students are and I don’t understand why. Because I’m too nice? I’ve actually been told that.”

“You’re Magnificent Melanie. The hell with what they think,” Jason told her.

Melanie laughed but was taken aback for a moment. “Hmm. I guess that’s one way of looking at it." 

*****

As the flirtatious friendship between Melanie and Jason continued to blossom, Melanie’s girlfriends seemed to be getting a little jealous, or something. When they were together in Melanie’s bedroom one day, Wendy commented sarcastically, “Well, she doesn’t have a picture of Jason on her nightstand anyway.”

Melanie responded, “Hmm, I hadn’t even thought of that. That’s a good idea. I do have a couple of pictures of him I could put in a frame and set there.” The girls weren’t sure if she was being serious or sarcastic.

“Jason’s my younger brother,” Tami said. “There’s just something weird about it.”

“Well hey, some day we may be sisters-in-law. Can I call you Sis?” Melanie retorted.

Tami opened her mouth, stuck in her finger and went, “ACK!” Then she asked with a bit of disdain, “Do you really think you’re going to marry my brother?!”

“Anytime soon? No. In the future? Who knows. Never say never,” Melanie replied. She dragged hard on her cigarette, exhaled and said, “Anyway, you’re the ones who set me up with him. You’re the ones who kept saying I needed a boyfriend…”

“We set you up with him as a joke,” Tami replied.

“Well I guess that joke backfired on you,” Melanie shot back. “He’s nice, he’s funny, he doesn’t push anything with me, he’s not offended that I’m usually babysitting on Saturday nights, he even enjoys hearing my babysitting stories, and I enjoy being with him. If you’re bothered by that, oh well.” Tami and Wendy looked at each other, stunned. They had never seen the usually passive Melanie get that bold.

Finally, Wendy stepped in. “Okay, girls, can we, like, talk about something else now?”

“Fine with me,” Melanie said.

“Whatever,” huffed Tami.

Melanie cracked a smile as she thought to herself, “I’m Magnificent Melanie. The hell with what they think!”

Magnificent Melanie, episode 1

When Melanie Robinson was in high school in the late 1970s, she was torn between wanting to fit in with the crowd and wanting to be her own unique self. She was considered cute with her brown hair and eyes, and her five feet, two inch stature. She had a few girlfriends but didn’t really date. Guys she knew wanted something more serious than she felt ready for and besides, she was often too busy babysitting. She was creative and artistic, and something of a kid magnet, so she got called on a lot to babysit as she saved up money for her own car. 

Her personality tended to be upbeat and positive, which annoyed some of her more cynical peers. She learned to take criticism in stride. If somebody called her “weird” or “strange,” she’d retort, “I’m just slightly unusual, okay?” She was smarter than people gave her credit for, and she had a great sense of humor, so she’d often have some hilarious comebacks to petty criticism, always with a smile and without viciousness.

She was the youngest in her family with a married sister named Donna, who was in her mid-20s and had a tendency to be a bit condescending to her, and a brother named Mark, in his early 20s, with whom she felt closer. Her father was a somewhat grumpy cigar-chomping factory foreman who dismissed her as a “goofy teenager with her head in the clouds all the time” and her mother was a homemaker who smoked a lot and tended to be aloof. She was much closer to her paternal grandmother who encouraged her artistic side and was often accused of “spoiling” her when she was growing up.

Her bedroom was her refuge. She had her bed and her vanity table, and a wicker chair she liked to sit in while reading or listening to music on her small stereo or the radio. There were candles and a soft pink bulb in her lamp and plants by her window. There was a John Travolta poster on her wall along with a few drawings she made and pictures of actors and pop stars cut from the pages of teen fan magazines. Her bookshelf still had the Little House and Nancy Drew books she grew up reading, but one of the books she was reading in high school was “It’s Okay If You Don’t Love Me” by Norma Klein. She also had stacks of Seventeen, Glamour and Vogue magazines in her room. 

As a teenager, Melanie was trying to figure herself out. Outwardly she seemed like a really nice girl, positive, upbeat, vivacious, idealistic and attractive, with an almost angelic voice. Inwardly she had a lot of insecurities and self-doubt. 

She started to come into her own in the spring of 1977, around the time she turned 16. Her hair used to be long and straight, usually pinned down with barrettes, but she got a more fashionable fluffy and bouncy hairdo around that time. She also started wearing more makeup and perfume, maybe even overdoing it a little, and she started to experiment with smoking to fit in more with her friends.

Her best friend was Wendy Jenkins, a blond, blue-eyed popular girl who was protective of Melanie. She befriended Melanie when they were in third grade. Melanie tended to be picked on and Wendy stood up for her. The boys “hated” the girls at that age and the two girls realized “girl germs” to them were like kryptonite to Superman, so they would chase after the boys, grab and kiss them on the playground, which landed the girls in trouble at school. Over the years, “girl germs” continued to be a running gag between them.

One of Wendy’s other friends was a girl named Tami Lundgren, who wasn’t all that crazy about Melanie. She thought Melanie was too much of a goodie-goodie, a little too nice and cutesy, which Melanie found rather perplexing, but took it in stride. Tami had a brother named Jason who was less than two years younger, and the more she complained about how much she couldn’t stand Melanie at home, the more curious he was about her.

Jason had his own “uniqueness.” In school he was considered a cut-up, a class clown, a smart-ass who didn’t give a damn about popularity or school for that matter. But he was actually shy and had endured a lot of bullying himself growing up. Being a class comedian was a way to endure it. At home, if he wasn’t watching TV he spent a lot of time in his room playing records and reading everything from Mad magazine to books about beer can collecting. His small group of friends were also beer can collectors, with pyramid-shaped displays of old empty cans in their bedrooms.

***** 

Melanie and Jason crossed paths for the first time on a Saturday afternoon on a winter day in early 1978. Jason was in the living room watching TV when Tami, Wendy, Melanie and a couple other girls came through the front door, talking and laughing loud, making a lot of noise. Jason was annoyed by the intrusion and turned the TV up louder so he could hear it over them. Then one of the girls came in and said “hi” to him. Jason returned the greeting but was taken aback. Tami’s friends almost never acknowledged him. Just then Wendy said, “Come ON, Melanie!” as the girls made way to Tami’s room.

“So that’s Melanie,” Jason thought to himself. The lingering scent of her perfume made him continue to think about her. About an hour later, as the girls were getting ready to leave, he tried to get another glimpse of her but they were out the door before he could say or do anything to get her attention.

But it wasn’t long before Melanie came over again as she tagged along with Wendy and the group. When she saw Jason she would say hi or at least wave to him, and sometimes they would chat briefly before “the girls” dragged her away. “The girls” thought her interest in that “kid” was another example of her weirdness.

“So, do you like him?” Tami asked, somewhat incredulously.

“Yeah, I guess so. He’s nice and sort of cute.”

The girls busted out laughing. “Oh, my god, really?! He’s too young! And anyway, girls mature faster than guys,” came the responses.

“He’s only a year or so younger and he seems more mature and smarter than most of the guys our age,” Melanie retorted. The girls didn’t have much of a comeback to that.

*****

On a particular weekend early in the spring of 1978, the girls were in Tami’s room and Jason was in his room playing records on his small stereo. On this occasion he was playing his old 45 r.p.m. singles that he had been collecting since he was six years old. 

Meanwhile, Melanie excused herself from Tami’s room to go to the bathroom. After some 60 seconds she emerged from the bathroom but instead of returning to Tami’s room she was drawn to the closed door of Jason’s room where she heard a song from about a decade earlier, “Bend Me, Shape Me” by the American Breed. When the song ended, she knocked on the door.

“Yeah?” Jason said through the door.

“Hi. Um, this is Melanie. Can I come in for a minute?”

Jason was a little taken aback. “Sure…”

“Can you play that again? I haven’t heard that song since I was, like, a little kid!”

“Okay,” Jason said and he put the needle back on record.

As the song played, she asked to look through his stack of 45s. She went through the stack, occasionally pulling one out saying, “play this…play this…play this…”

Meanwhile, after about fifteen minutes, the girls started wondering where she went. Wendy came out to investigate. She saw the bathroom was wide open, and then heard Melanie’s voice coming out of Jason’s room while the music played. Wendy went to the door, almost knocked, but decided to return to Tami’s room.

“Melanie’s in your brother’s room,” Wendy told Tami. “They’re listening to ‘60s music.”

“Ugg! Should I get her,” Tami asked.

“No, she’s okay.” Wendy responded. “I think she’s in love.”

Tami, who was sitting on the floor, busted out laughing and started to roll over. “They deserve each other!”

Shortly, Melanie returned. “So, did anything happen,” Wendy asked sarcastically.

“Hmm…maybe,” Melanie responded with a smile. “I think I need a cigarette,” she added, going for her purse. Both of the girls busted out laughing again.

“Oh, it was that good?!” Wendy chided.

“Did you know Buddy Holly wrote and recorded ‘It’s So Easy’ back in the fifties,” Melanie asked. “I had no idea. I thought that was a Linda Ronstadt song. It’s like he knows everything!”

A few days later when the girls returned to Tami’s house, Jason wasn’t there. Melanie held off a bit before finally asking, “So where’s Jason?”

“I don’t know. Out with his friends or whatever,” Tami responded.

“Oh.” Melanie said no more but her disappointment showed.

Later that evening, after Jason was home, Tami told him, “Melanie was here and she was asking about you. I think she likes you. I don’t know why, but she does.”

Jason smiled and said, “Wow, really? Cool!” It was the most interest any girl had shown in him, let alone an “older” one.

*****

On a Saturday in April 1978, the girls were once again at Tami’s house, making plans for an outing to Pizza Hut with their boyfriends. Melanie didn’t have a babysitting job that night so she was invited by Wendy to come with, but she was the only one who didn’t have anyone to go with.

Tami said sarcastically, “Maybe we should set her up with Jason. I’m sure he’s not doing anything.”

Melanie perked up. “I’m open to it! Do you think he’d want to go with me?”

“Well we could ask him!” Tami got up and walked in the direction of his room, where he was playing the “Desolation Boulevard” album from the British hard rock band Sweet. Melanie put her hands over her face and just said, “Oh-my-god, oh-my-god…”

Tami returned and Jason followed, not sure what any of this was about.

“We’re all going to Pizza Hut but Melanie doesn’t have anyone to go with. Do you wanna go with her?” Tami announced to Jason. He looked over at Melanie, who was turning beet-red and still trying to hide her face.

“Yeah, right,” he said as he turned around and started walking back.

“No, really! She wants to go with you!”

Jason looked over to Melanie skeptically and said, “Really?” Melanie nodded her head in the affirmative.

“We’re friends, right?” she asked. “It’s not like I’ll ask you to go steady or anything. But I do have a reputation for giving girl germs so you better be careful.”

She totally disarmed him. Jason started laughing and now he was the one blushing a little bit. “Okay, then. Sure. But I don’t really have any money.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Tami told him. “I just HAVE to see how this is going to turn out!" 

At about twenty after six (they were supposed to be there at six), Lenny and Chuck, who were Wendy’s and Tami’s boyfriends respectively, pulled up in Lenny’s bright orange van. They didn’t bother coming to the door, they just honked the horn.

Jason followed the girls to the van. As they piled in the back, Lenny saw Jason, and asked, “What’s he doin’ here?”

“He’s Melanie’s date. Can you believe it?” Wendy told him.

“Oh. Okay.”

Jason, who was already wondering what he was getting himself into, had a worried look on his face, wondering if he should just bow out, but Melanie took his hand as they squeezed into the back seats and sat close to him. “Count On Me” by Jefferson Starship came on the radio as they made their way to Pizza Hut.

The six teenagers walked in to the restaurant, and sat down at one of the larger tables with the checkered tablecloths. Soon a waitress brought out their soft drinks in red plastic tumblers with straws and took their pizza order.

As they waited, different conversations were taking place around the table. Lenny and Chuck mostly talked about sports, particularly football. Wendy and Tami tried to engage them in other topics but soon just bantered between themselves. Meanwhile, Melanie was attempting to break the ice with Jason by telling him stories about antics she and Wendy had gotten into and some of her adventures while babysitting.

Being the youngest and the only non-smoker at the table, Jason felt a little out of place. He was a bit surprised to see Melanie light one up. (There were ashtrays right on the tables in those days.) She told him, “I only started fairly recently and I don’t smoke all that much, not nearly as much as those girls,” as she gestured toward Wendy and Tami.

Wendy chimed in. “Oh, shut up, Melanie, you smoke up a storm and you know it.”

Melanie retorted, “Oh, shut up, Wendy, I do not!” They made faces at each other and laughed. “She’s been my best friend since third grade,” she told Jason.

Jason started opening up a little more. He told her of how he had gotten into trouble a couple years earlier when he was in eighth grade for the “Bicentennial poem” he wrote. He put his hand over his heart and recited, “In seventeen-hundred-and-seventy-six, we kicked the shit out of the Brits. A nation was born, it was made clear, from George Washington to Paul Revere.”

Melanie busted out laughing. “You should write a poem for me,” she said. “On second thought, maybe not!”

Finally the pizza came. Everybody got slices on their plates while Lenny, Chuck and Jason all sprinkled hot peppers on their slices, much to the repulsion of the three girls.

*****

At the end of the evening, Lenny and Chuck dropped everyone off at Tami’s and Jason’s house. Wendy and Melanie lived within walking distance, but Wendy said to Lenny, “Hey, you could drop us off at our houses!”

“We’ve got shit to do,” he told her, and away they went in the orange van.

Before going in, Jason told Melanie, “Thanks, this was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed it, more than I thought I would actually. Well, see ya.” He waved his hand and started to walk away.

Melanie grabbed his arm, pulled him back and planted a kiss on him.

“Now you’ve got girl germs,” she told him.

Magnificent Melanie episode 2