EPISODE 4
On New Year’s Day, 1978, 16-year-old Melanie Robinson proclaimed at a family party just after midnight, “1978 is going to be my year! Something tells me it’s going to be a great year for me!” She tended to be optimistic by nature, but she also had her first glass of champagne that night. (Her brother Mark offered her a hit off a joint, but she turned that down.) Many years later, she still looked back fondly on 1978.
Jimmy Carter was president, but she didn’t care much about politics at that age. She didn’t even know who her parents voted for. They didn’t talk openly about such things. The most she knew about President Carter was that he had something to do with peanuts, he had a young daughter named Amy and his brother Billy liked to drink beer. Her parents also had different religious backgrounds so she wasn’t raised in any religion but she was open to different views, willing to accept the occasional invitation to someone’s church.
It was the era of disco, and she liked the disco music she heard on the radio and thought the features she saw on TV about the disco scene and the excerpts from “Saturday Night Fever” looked like fun, but as a high school junior, she was too young to get into any of the discos in the city, at least without a fake I.D. And she wasn’t inclined to get one of those.
The all-American suburban teenage life in 1978 was an entirely different world than it would be decades later, and it wasn’t just the popularity of disco. Kids that age were encouraged to grow up and become independent young adults. One got their learner’s permit at 15, driver’s license at 16 and perhaps saved enough money from various jobs to purchase a rusty but still-running used car, offering some autonomy from home. Gasoline was around 65.9 cents a gallon and climbing, and was not considered cheap.
Age 18 meant adulthood and one was expected to either go to college, join the military (at least the draft had ended with the Vietnam War) or get a job and move out. Drinking ages were 18 or 19 in most states, smoking was commonplace among the population as a whole, and while 18 was the legal age to buy cigarettes, many younger teens had no problem getting them and picked up the habit, while society at large barely batted an eye, except maybe to point out the health hazards that were becoming more widely known.
The high school setting had all the stereotypes; jocks, nerds, geeks, burnouts, brains, popular types, loser types, goodie-goodies and everything else, but who they really were as individuals wasn’t all that clear when one got down to it.
Melanie generally had a mature attitude about things. She wasn’t always a straight-A student, she did better in some subjects than in others, but she tried her hardest and took pride in what she could accomplish. If she got into trouble for anything, it was talking or laughing in class. She liked to say "shut up" a lot, but it was always in jest, never out of disrespect (and certainly never in class). She liked boys and she liked to flirt and was considered “cute,” but she had a problem with guys who got too pushy or demanding with her.
She’d tactfully discourage guys who went beyond her comfort level by saying “Down, boy” like she was talking to an amorous dog, but one guy who crossed a line with her in the school hallway got slapped.
She was usually too busy babysitting to date anyway, and that was fine with her. She knew of girls her age and even younger who became pregnant and she figured she’d rather babysit other people’s kids, make a little money and stay out of trouble.
She had been babysitting since she was 12 years old and she was popular with both kids and their parents and was in high demand. To them, she was “Magnificent Melanie.” She chaperoned a few birthday and slumber parties and outings. Sometimes she was even recognized for making a difference. One afternoon, her guidance counselor Mrs. Schuster called Melanie to her office.
“I thought you might like to know that I was talking to Mrs. Horton, a fifth grade teacher in the elementary school, and she noticed one of her students, a girl named Becky, was taking much more interest in reading lately. Becky told Mrs. Horton that it was her babysitter Melanie who encouraged her,” the guidance counselor told her.
Melanie was a bit taken aback by that, initially just saying, “Oh wow, really?” She thought for a moment and explained, “She loves the Little House on the Prairie TV show. When I was her age I read the Laura Ingalls Wilder books and loved those, and I just told her about how the books are a bit different from the TV show, and started bringing some of mine over and reading excerpts to her. She started asking if she could borrow them and she really enjoyed them. Now I’m getting her into Nancy Drew, and those books are by far better than the TV show!”
Melanie was particularly close to her Grandma Dolores. From the time Melanie was a chatty, inquisitive toddler, Grandma Dolores took a special interest in her youngest grandchild, teaching her arts and crafts and encouraging creativity, which Melanie in turn passed on to the kids she babysat.
Dolores wore a heart pendant necklace similar to the one worn by Arlene Frances, whom she admired, on TV panel shows. On her 13th birthday, Dolores gave Melanie a smaller and more fashionable heart necklace because “you’re a teenager now.” It was one of Melanie’s most prized possessions. She also introduced Melanie to the joys of coffee and soap operas.
Dolores was a factory worker during World War II and Melanie was fascinated with her stories of life on the home front during that time, as well as her memories of her childhood in the ‘20s and of the Great Depression. The knowledge she gained from her grandmother’s stories helped her a lot in her history classes, where she tended to do well.
One time when she was smoking with her friends Wendy and Tami, Tami observed the “lady-like” way she was doing it and commented sarcastically, “God, Melanie, are you trying to give it a blow job or something?” which made Melanie bust out laughing, causing her to inhale wrong, and sending her into a coughing fit with tears coming down her cheeks.
She was aware of the lingering odor and when it was convenient she’d wash up and add a spray of Love’s Baby Soft or a dab of Daisy L that she kept in her purse, and would also refresh her lip gloss. “I don’t think I’ll get addicted because I don’t have an addictive personality,” she’d insist, but worried, “If I quit I’ll probably gain weight and I don’t want to do that.” (She eventually did quit and in later years spoke to youth groups about the hazards of smoking and the marketing tactics of Big Tobacco, but that’s a whole other story.)
EPISODE 5
Everyone from her classmates to her guidance councilor Mrs. Schuster wondered why she was so enthralled with a tenth grader named Jason Lundgren. Schuster met with him a couple of times (not for anything having to do with Melanie) and she was not impressed with him (and the feeling was mutual). He was indifferent about school and he saw nothing special about authority figures. He would challenge teachers and rules, and would get sent to the principal's office and to detention. In detention, he'd take the opportunity to draw "underground comics" in his notebook and pass them around to his friends.
One thing he knew, he was only there because he had to be. But in spite of his aversion to the restrictive school environment, he was actually quite intelligent. He had a lot of knowledge of the things that interested him. A couple of his teachers saw that in him and were frustrated that he didn’t apply himself more to what they were teaching. The others just wrote him off as a smartass or a class clown or a troublemaker with a hopelessly bad attitude. “He’ll never amount to anything,” they told themselves.
Jason had dark blond scraggly hair and gray-blue eyes with a little bit of fuzz growing above his lip, and he always wore blue jeans, sneakers and T-shirts usually advertising something, like radio stations, gas stations, pop, beer, things like that. And he wasn’t really a troublemaker. In his spare time, he wasn’t breaking windows or stealing hubcaps, he was often just in his room playing his rock ‘n’ roll records, thinking and imagining. He tried to avoid fights but was willing to scrap when attacked. He was something of an introvert but he had a few friends and associates that he hung out with.
In spite of the rebellious “too cool for school” attitude, he didn’t smoke. “I don’t see what’s so ‘rebellious’ about doing something our parents, grandparents and all their friends do,” he’d say. "And besides, it smells like shit." He liked to drink beer when he had the opportunity, though, just like his parents, grandparents and all their friends. And just as cigarettes were Melanie's social crutch, beer was Jason's social crutch.
Melanie became aware of Jason long before he was aware of her. She first noticed him when they were in the same lunch period during first semester of the school year. He’d always bring a small bottle of hot sauce “to spice up the shitty food they have here,” and he had a group of friends that he sat with, all dudes, and he kept them entertained with his commentary and comedy, which would range from rants about how much school “sucks,” which Melanie didn’t think much of, to some tongue-in-cheek bits that she found amusing.
In one such bit, he held up a soda pop can he had just purchased for 35 cents from the school vending machine. “It says ‘Canada Dry Tahitian Treat.’ Nowhere on the can does it say it’s a product of Canada or Tahiti. It says it’s a product of Chicago. What’s up with that?” He then held up a Danish roll in a printed cellophane wrapper. “And why do they call this a Danish roll? It says ‘Product of USA,’ not ‘Product of Denmark.’”
He would also entertain his small audience with imitations of Gong Show host Chuck Barris and comedian Rodney Dangerfield (from material out of a Rodney Dangerfield joke book he had picked up for $1.75). He would tug on his T-shirt the way Rodney tugged on his tie and say, “It’s the story of my life, no respect.” Melanie would "tune in" to him, finding his lunchroom antics more amusing than the typical schoolgirl conversation and gossip going on at her table.
He also came up with an alter-ego he called Tony Davinni, which was based mostly on stereotypes he saw on TV shows. He’d speak in a working class New York City accent, swaggering and moving his hands around, saying, “I’m Tony Davinni, I’m an Italian Jew from New York, okay? My dad’s Italian, my muthah’s Jewish and I’m from New York. Ya got a problem wit dat or sumptin’?”
That bit made Melanie totally lose it. The girls at her table looked at her puzzled, saying, “God, Melanie, what is so funny?”
One way to Melanie’s heart was to make her laugh, and for whatever reason, she found him hilarious.
At that time, she was not aware that Jason was her classmate Tami’s younger brother, as they were relative newcomers to the district. When the semester came to an end, Melanie was assigned to a different lunch period from Jason, and that might have been the end of it. But then on a Saturday afternoon in early ’78, Melanie decided to go with her friends to Tami’s house, where she was surprised to see Jason sitting in the living room, watching TV. Melanie was convinced it was fate.
She was further convinced when she came over later on, ostensibly to be with her girlfriends, and visited with him when he was in his room playing records. She too liked popular music and collected records, but he seemed to know everything about the songs and the artists with trivia that he could just rattle off. She also got to see his “world,” with posters, road signs and a beer can collection along the walls, plus other artifacts he collected that he could tell her all about. She became fascinated with him, rough edges and all.
His sister Tami thought it was "strange" but conceded, however sarcastically, "You deserve each other." (One of the things Melanie realized was both Tami and Jason had similar sarcastic senses of humor.) When Melanie asked her best friend and occasional protector Wendy what she thought, Wendy told her, "If I had a problem with him, you'd know it. And so would he!"
Jason was quite happy to get this unexpected attention from an attractive girl who was a little older than him, but he wasn’t sure what to make of it. The girls his own age had no interest in him, finding him too “weird” or just too cynical and off-putting. He wasn't looking for a girlfriend anyway, finding the whole "Establishment teen dating scene" something repulsive that he wanted no part of. She wasn’t really looking for a boyfriend herself (or was she?), and so they found each other. He slowly grew to trust her as the one girl who actually seemed to ‘get’ him, at least a little bit.
There were a couple of current radio hits that made him think of her. “Ebony Eyes” by Bob Welch, because she had rather striking brown eyes, and “Count on Me” by Jefferson Starship, as that song was playing the one time they went to Pizza Hut together. Although he was too shy to tell her that, he did bring the song up to her in a roundabout way by telling her, “The lead singer and composer is Marty Balin. Interestingly, he got the shit beaten out of him on stage by the Hell’s Angels in 1969 when Jefferson Airplane performed at the infamous Altamont Free Concert…” He was trying to impress her with his knowledge of trivia, but she really would have liked it if he just told her the song made him think of her.
They both loved “Sweet Talkin’ Woman” by Electric Light Orchestra, and would sing the line “Insufficient data comin’ through” together when they heard it on the radio. Then there was "Jungle Love" by the Steve Miller Band.
"When I first heard this, I thought he was singing 'Chug-A-Lug is driving me mad and making me crazy,'" Jason admitted to her.
Once again, Melanie completely lost it. "Oh my god! So did I! In fact Tami told me it was 'Jungle Love' and thought I was such a doofus."
She wasn’t that much older than him but they say girls mature faster than boys, and if he could be a little immature at times, she was okay with it. After all, she had been babysitting immature boys since she was 12 years old, and learned early on she needed to have a great sense of humor. But she really did not want to be his babysitter. She had somewhat higher expectations of him.
He could be opinionated and sometimes she’d challenge him. One example was his affinity for the late 1960s that she didn’t entirety get. She liked the music and some of the cultural stuff she recalled from her childhood memories, but he seemed to romanticize the whole anti-establishment, youth rebellion thing of a decade earlier that seemed to have faded in a few short years. From her late 1970s perspective she could understand ‘50s nostalgia, but ‘60s nostalgia?
“People don’t give a shit about anything anymore, except ‘boogying down’ and all that crap,” Jason told her. “I’ve heard stories that there were several student protests at our high school back in 1969 and ’70 that even involved confrontations with the police! Do you remember that?”
“Hmm, no,” Melanie replied. “Let’s see, in 1969 or ’70 I was 8 or 9 years old and Wendy and I were probably playing with Barbies and listening to Bobby Sherman records. What were you doing, burning your draft card and getting the crap beaten out of you by riot police?”
“Yeah, I wish,” Jason retorted.
“Why would you wish that,” Melanie asked him incredulously. “At least you don't have to worry about being drafted and sent to Vietnam like my uncle and Wendy’s older brother were.”
Other times, if he was saying something particularly nasty about someone, such as a teacher or counselor she happened to like, she'd just say, "Be nice, Jason."
EPISODE 6
When June 1978 rolled around, school was out for the summer. Come September, Melanie would begin her senior year in high school, followed by a future she hadn’t yet decided on. In the meantime, she took on a new babysitting job for a 9-year-old son of a divorced mother, which would keep her busy most weekdays.
Jason was a little disappointed. He was hoping he’d get to hang out with her all summer. She promised him that they’d get to hang out together on days when she wasn’t so busy, and finally, about two weeks into summer vacation, she suggested they should meet up for lunch at the Burger Chef on Annandale Boulevard.
Over burgers, fries and soft drinks in paper cups with plastic straws, she told him about her new babysitting job.
“Basically he’s either at baseball practice or out running around with his friends. I make his lunch, make Kool-Aid and make sure he stays out of trouble. Otherwise I can drink coffee, smoke cigarettes and watch ‘Ryan’s Hope’ and ‘All My Children’ every day, just like a real mom.”
“Hmm, do you smack him around like a real mom,” Jason asked sarcastically.
“No. First of all, he’s not a bad kid at all. He’s really well behaved. But I don’t hit. Even if I’m told I can do it, I don’t feel it’s my place as a babysitter and I try to handle situations like that with more positive redirection.”
“Yeah, but you hit me all the time,” Jason retorted.
“Shut up, I do not,” Melanie exclaimed as she slapped his arm. Jason laughed. “Really, the only time I ever seriously hit someone was Troy Frischman in school when he cornered me by the lockers and grabbed me.”
Jason busted out laughing. “That dickhead? God, I hate him. So he grabbed your ass or something?”
“NO! He grabbed me here,” she told him, gesturing toward her left breast. “I just hauled off and slapped him across the face as hard as I could. He was kind of stunned and I was able to get away from him. He called me an effing bitch or something, but whatever. Somebody told me I might get into trouble because he’s such a hotshot jock or whatever, and he’s a senior, but nothing was made of it. Mister Big Stuff wasn’t going to tattle on the five-foot-two girl who slapped him across the face.”
“Hooooly shit! Wow!” Jason exclaimed.
Melanie smiled. “Don’t mess with Magnificent Melanie. I can be feisty when I need to be.”
“Wow, yeah, I guess so. Was this before or after we met?”
“Um…it was last fall, so it would have been before. We met in January, although I already sort of knew who you were,” Melanie told him, explaining how they were in the same lunch period during first semester and how much she enjoyed his lunchroom antics such as his commentaries and celebrity impersonations.
“I used to do a great Woody Woodpecker until my voice changed when I was 13,” Jason told her.
Melanie laughed. “The funniest character you did was the ‘Italian Jew from New York.’”
Jason slipped into the character. “Oh yeah,” he said in the New York accent, moving his hands and shoulders around. “Tony Davinni. My dad’s Italian, my muthah’s Jewish and I’m from New York, okay? You got a problem with dat or somptin’?”
Melanie busted out laughing again, then said, “What’s funny is I happen to have both Italian and Jewish heritage. I’m not from New York, though.”
“Oh…shit…” he said, thinking he just stepped into a major controversy.
Melanie grabbed his hands. “No, it’s totally cool! I mean, it’s like there’s something almost cosmic about it, like you somehow knew something about me before we knew each other. Not that I believe in astrology or fortune telling or anything like that, but certain things are too weird to be coincidence.”
After some laughs and a hug from this nice, Italian-Jewish girl, Jason suggested that her surname Robinson didn’t sound like any of those ethnicities.
“I’m Italian from the Fellini side, not the Robinson side. The Robinsons tend to be blue-eyed blonds and I’m a brown-eyed brunette and so are my siblings. My Grandma Dolores is Jewish but she married a Gentile. So basically I’m a mutt,” she explained.
As Melanie and Jason finished eating, they got up, tossed all their trash into the trash can, stacked their plastic trays on top and walked out of the Burger Chef. Pointing to a store up the street, Melanie said, “Oh, let’s check out Waterbed Concepts. I love looking at waterbeds.”
Jason said okay and she grabbed his hand as they walked over there. “We could pretend we’re a young couple thinking about buying one and see what they say,” she suggested, adding, “just as a put-on.”
“O…kay,” a skeptical Jason responded, wondering where this was going.
Waterbed Concepts had its own unique atmosphere. In addition to waterbeds spread out in bedroom-like settings throughout the store, there were plants galore, colorful walls, lighting that conveyed a “mood,” a stereo system playing an FM “mellow rock” station and a subtle aroma of sandalwood incense in the air. The store also sold furnishings, bedspreads, accessories and other stuff. A young salesman with a mustache and a wide tie greeted them.
Melanie, pretending to be a prospective customer with her fiancée, said “Hi. We’re thinking about getting a waterbed. We’re not ready to buy yet, at least not until we’re married, if that’s okay? But we just want to look at a few as we consider our decision.”
Jason said under his breath, “Oh my god…” and chuckled a bit uncomfortably, and Melanie elbowed him.
“Not a problem at all,” the salesman assured her. “First of all, two things are better on a waterbed. One of them is sleep.” Melanie giggled. The salesman then went into his sales pitch about the bed they happened to be standing near and the one next to that.
“Oh, this one’s really pretty,” Melanie said as she sat down on one of them and invited Jason to do the same. The bed made waves as the “couple” bounced on it.
“Can we see what it’s like to lay down on it?” Melanie asked the salesman.
“Sure. Just remove your shoes first, please.” Melanie and Jason took off their shoes and piled them together next to the bed. Melanie took Jason’s arm, bringing him with her as she lay down. The salesman told her he’d be back as he went to tend to another customer. “Fantasy” by Earth, Wind & Fire was playing over the stereo system.
“Earth, Wind & Fire. I get them confused with Blood, Sweat & Tears,” Jason commented. “I wonder if they ever toured together…”
Melanie briefly rolled her eyes and said softly, “Shut up, Jason,” as she put her mouth on his to shut him up.
Our voices will ring together
Until the 12th of never
We all will live love forever, as one
It seemed like an hour went quickly by but it was only about 90 seconds or so before the mildly amused salesman returned.
“I see you really like this model,” he remarked.
Melanie and Jason quickly sat up. Melanie was laughing and red-faced, while Jason muttered, “Oh shit…”
Melanie kept up the façade as they put their shoes back on. “Yes, this one’s really nice. But as I say, we’re not ready to buy quite yet, as there are a lot of things to consider…”
“I certainly understand,” the salesman assured. “When you’re ready to make the purchase, we do accept Visa and Master Charge.”
“Visa used to be Bank Americard, right?” Jason asked. Melanie slapped his arm.
“Yes. If you still have a Bank Americard that hasn’t yet expired, we’ll still accept that as well,” the salesman assured.
“Do you give S&H Green Stamps?” Jason asked. Melanie laughed, and then slapped him again.
“No, sorry we do not,” the salesman said.
“Thank you,” Melanie exclaimed as she and Jason shook his hand.
“Hope to see you again,” the salesman said.
As they exited Waterbed Concepts, Melanie, having refrained from it all afternoon, reached into her purse and said, “I’m sorry, but I need a cigarette, like, right now!”
Magnificent Melanie, episode 1
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