Magnificent Melanie, episode 1
It was the spring of 1978, and new friends Melanie Robinson and Jason Lundgren were gripped with Spring Fever.
“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!”
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