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.
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