AND THAT’S EXACTLY what happened on November 1, 1970. The night before, I had covered my face in green makeup with dark circles around my eyes and gone out trick-or-treating with my six-foot-tall friends, still idiotically excited about free candy. This on the eve of my first date with the woman I would end up marrying. Again, the push-pull of adolescence.
But that Sunday afternoon, I combed my hair neatly and forswore my usual T-shirt and letterman’s jacket, opting for a shirt with a collar and a V-neck sweater. I drove to Evergreen Street to pick up my date. Cheryl looked beautiful—she was wearing a lightweight white sweater, a navy blue skirt that was a few inches above the knee, and pantyhose that, because she was so skinny, bagged at the knees. Her long, lustrous red hair was held back by a hairband.
At the Cinerama Dome, I touched Cheryl for the first time, cupping her elbow in my hand to guide her into her seat. I had seen gentlemen do that in old movies.
At Barone’s, we talked nonstop over our pizza, downloading the better part of our life stories to each other. Cheryl’s parents were divorced and she lived with her father, an aerospace engineer and licensed pilot who flew a single-engine Cessna. Cheryl, too, knew how to fly and was in the process of receiving her certification. She was outdoorsy, she told me, a tomboy. She and her dad went camping a lot.
I told her that my dream was to direct movies. I yammered on excitedly about a screenplay for an independent picture that I was writing with my friend Craig Hundley. That’s right: I was such a film nerd that doing a story pitch was my way of trying to impress a girl.
Being a gentleman, I moved to serve Cheryl a slice of pizza, maneuvering it from the metal tray to her paper plate. In my nervousness, I screwed up and flipped the slice so that it landed toppings down on the table, the tomato sauce splashing and just missing her skirt.
But Cheryl just laughed. I was utterly besotted. In my mind I couldn’t believe it: Wow, my ideal actually exists on this planet. Henry Winkler later joked that I must be some kind of monstrous narcissist, because to him, Cheryl and I looked like twins.
I dropped her off on Evergreen Street, stood with her in front of her house, and bade her good night. I decided that I wouldn’t try to kiss her, not this soon. But I wasn’t sure about this. I worried that perhaps I wasn’t being as forward as she wanted—maybe I was blowing my chance. It turned out not to matter. Cheryl strode purposefully to her door, opened it, and then, safe on the other side of the window screen, smiled at me and said, “Thank you.” Perfect!
I drove home on cloud nine. A few years later, as Richie Cunningham on Happy Days, I would celebrate my dating triumphs by suggestively singing, “I found mah thrill . . . onnn Blueberry Hill!” I was possessed by that kind of giddiness that November night. I wanted to figure out a way to convey it to my parents and Clint.
Andy Griffith had a tendency, when he was in a good mood, to speak in loud, declarative sentences: “Well, that was out-standing!” I remembered this and literally did an Andy imitation. I walked into the house, leaving the front door open behind me. My folks were sitting in the living room. They looked up at me expectantly.
“Now that’s a date!” I said. I reached behind me and swung the door shut with a loud slam. Then I bounded upstairs to my bedroom without saying another word.
I can only imagine what they thought had happened on this date.
15
Dating Games, Real and Staged
RON
Cheryl and I had a few more chaste movie dates like this, with me curating the programming. We next saw WUSA, a political thriller starring Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman. And after that, Airport. She did not object when I held her hand and put an arm around her shoulder.
Still, I couldn’t summon the nerve to kiss her. But on Burroughs High School’s homecoming weekend, I sensed an opportunity. There was a dance scheduled for the evening after the football game. I went to the game as a spectator. Cheryl was there with the drill team. She had on her red-and-white Burroughs uniform, which included a short, fringed skirt that did disorienting things to my brain.