my first boy-girl dance in junior high was a sock hop. i went with a group of girlfriends. we wore bobby socks and poodle skirts and generally looked like dorks.

i remember wanting to dance with this boy named casey who i basically had a crush on through all of high school and junior high and probably still today if you want to know the truth. what’s so great about him was: i don’t know. he wasn’t that cute, really. he was, however, really smart and he made me laugh. a lot.

i was always a good girl in school. i left the getting up to no good to my sisters and brother. they did enough of it for all of us and then some. but the one time i got in trouble in class — my one fit of rebellion? it was in biology and it was all casey’s fault. he and i sat next to each other and he kept making me laugh till i thought i was going to wet myself. when the horse-faced teacher who wore her jeans way too tight warned us to be quiet we stopped talking. but then he started passing me notes and little doodles drawn on paper. i don’t know if they were really all that funny or if i was just giddy from the attention and closeness of what i perceived to be the perfect male specimen for nearly 50 minutes, but i just couldn’t stop giggling. the more i giggled, the more encouraged he was. the more encouraged he was, the more slips of paper were slid across the table to find their way into my hands. and sometimes, our hands touched! could you die?? i nearly did. but i pushed it too far. horseface got fed up and moved me all the way to the front of the class. miles, miles away from casey and his hands. he felt bad. he continued to pass me conciliatory notes, but they had to go through 15 people to get to me now. still, it was alright. he was making the effort. i just couldn’t laugh anymore. stupid horseface biology teacher with the bad bleach job who we all know was boppin’ the phys. ed teacher. i hated her. this happened my sophomore year.

the sock hop was in seventh grade. he didn’t know i existed yet, never noticed me. well, he did, but only in that “let’s go play tetherball during lunch, you wanna?” kind of way. not in the way i noticed him. so i was trying to get up the nerve to ask him to dance when this guy named chris came up to me and asked me. so chris was alright. i mean, he was cute and funny in his own way, but he was no casey. chris had blonde hair and blue eyes and really, that’s all i ever really noticed about him. until we started dancing. first we danced to…don’t you dare laugh, it was a million years ago.. we danced to “shot through the heart” by bon jovi. don’t ask me why they were playing bon jovi at a sock hop. they just were. it was a progressive sock hop. then the next song came on and i tried to go sit down, rejoin my girlfriends. but he wasn’t having it. “one more song!” he said. i tried to argue cause, really, what if casey were looking for me? plus, it was a slow song. and who in their right mind dances to a slow song with a guy they don’t have a crush on? i mean, really. you may as well go ahead and slap the “SLUT” sticker on my forehead right now. but he wouldn’t take no for an answer.

so there we are. all dancing slow on the gym floor. awkward. graceless as a pair of giraffe on roller skates. then i notice his hands. he’s got the biggest hands on the planet. his hands are freakishly large. he’s like, all of 13 years old and he’s got the hands of a man of 45. and they’re everywhere. it was grope-a-palooza out there on that floor. i kept trying to get away, untangle myself from his grasp. but he was like a mighty, starving squid, gripping his prey like his life depended on it. it was sort of comical, really, looking back on it. but not so much at the time.

when i finally managed to get out of his freak-hands i ran, not walked, but RAN back to my girlfriends and called an emergency meeting in the bathroom where we all vowed to start a campaign against boys with abnormally large circus freak hands and libidos to match. right then. right there. that very night. no longer would girls of the world suffer at the hands (pardon the pun) of boys like pervy chris thompson. we were on a mission.

this lasted all of five seconds. until i exited the girls bathroom and found casy leaning on the wall waiting for me. he asked me to dance. then my eyes glossed over and i waved the girls off behind me. absently. they’d have to deal with chris and his man-hands without me.