Getting into Trouble

Recall an occa­sion when you got into trou­ble with your par­ents. Why did you get into trou­ble and how did your par­ents han­dle the sit­u­a­tion? Look­ing back, do you agree with their approach? How would you han­dle the same sit­u­a­tion dif­fer­ently with your own child(ren)?

His name was Reg­gie and I had never known any­one like him.

It was early 1978. I was 21 years old and liv­ing in Fuller­ton, Cal­i­for­nia. Away from home for the first time, my col­lege work was not going very well. I was hav­ing a lot of new and unique expe­ri­ences, but they were def­i­nitely not the kind my par­ents wanted me to have. Although I left Lodi in the fall of 1977 and was resid­ing in Fuller­ton to study at the Cal­i­for­nia State Uni­ver­sity cam­pus sit­u­ated there, I was doing very lit­tle that resem­bled study­ing and amass­ing few units toward my declared major: Marketing.

My very first night in Fuller­ton, I met one of my upstairs neigh­bors at the local Ralph’s store. His name was Dave and he was from San Jose. A com­mu­ni­ca­tions major, he lived on the third floor of our quasi-dormitory build­ing with three room­mates. I had been assigned to a first floor apart­ment with three other girls, none of whom had yet arrived. Dave was very tall, had an extremely out­go­ing per­son­al­ity, and I was instantly smit­ten. Unfor­tu­nately, it was the late 1970’s. And Dave, like so many other young men I knew dur­ing that time period, was very con­flicted about his sexuality.

As the months passed, my crush on Dave inten­si­fied. We were extremely good friends — or so I thought — but he had a crush on a blonde soror­ity mem­ber who also lived in our build­ing. I can still pic­ture her. She was a quin­tes­sen­tial South­ern Cal­i­for­nia surfer’s dream girl. And I was … well … me. She served as a per­fect decoy for a young man des­per­ate to prove to every­one, includ­ing him­self, that he was not gay. I never got to know her, although I would see her walk by our apart­ment every day with her equally well-coiffed, well-dressed friends. I actu­ally watched Dave escort her past our liv­ing room win­dow en route to the Christ­mas party to which he invited her at the Ana­heim hos­pi­tal where he worked part-time as a switch­board operator.

Dave encour­aged me to apply for a job at that hos­pi­tal and, in fact, pro­vided me a ref­er­ence. Yvonne, the man­ager of the switch­board, ini­tially hired me to work the week­end day shifts. That’s right. Every Sat­ur­day and Sun­day from 7:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., I sat in a lit­tle room fac­ing the hos­pi­tal lobby answer­ing calls. “Canyon Gen­eral Hos­pi­tal; how may I direct your call?” I also answered inter­nal calls, pag­ing doc­tors, ther­a­pists, and other per­son­nel. And used the loud­speaker to announce “Code Blue” or “Code Red,” fol­lowed by the loca­tion to which emer­gency teams should respond.

And that’s how I met Reggie.

He worked in the cen­tral sup­ply depart­ment, per­form­ing a vari­ety of duties. I used to see him wheel­ing patients through the lobby as they were dis­charged. He would smile and say “hi” as he passed the win­dow behind which I sat answer­ing phone calls. He was hand­some, but I was not inter­ested in him … for many rea­sons, not the least of which was my crush on Dave, as well as my lin­ger­ing, con­fused and con­fus­ing feel­ings about some­one with whom I had gone to high school.

But Reg­gie noticed me. And before I knew it, he was stop­ping reg­u­larly in front of the win­dow that sep­a­rated the switch­board room from the lobby, lean­ing on the counter to chat. He asked me about my classes, where I lived, where I was from … and I couldn’t help but feel myself being attracted to him. I knew that it was a mis­take, but I couldn’t resist, espe­cially since no guy had ever before paid so much atten­tion to or seemed so gen­uinely inter­ested in me. Soon, I found myself watch­ing the ele­va­tor doors, hop­ing that every time they opened I would see him emerge into the lobby. Every time he exited the ele­va­tor, he was look­ing over my way with a big smile on his face.

His dal­liances at my win­dow did not escape Yvonne’s notice. Or her wrath. She called me into her office and lec­tured me sternly about allow­ing Reg­gie to dis­tract me from my respon­si­bil­i­ties. And as our meet­ing drew to a close, she advised me that it was not “appro­pri­ate” for me to be seen with Reg­gie and if I did not stop engag­ing in con­ver­sa­tion with him, my “rep­u­ta­tion” through­out the hos­pi­tal would be ruined. More than 30 years later, I can still hear her tinny, whiny screech­ing and envi­sion the way she scrunched up her face with revul­sion as she spoke to me about my behav­ior. Even all these years later, I remem­ber the way my stom­ach con­vulsed and my head began pound­ing as the import of her words took hold of me.

Because at that moment, I real­ized that Lodi and Orange County were not so dif­fer­ent, after all.

To be continued …

Next week’s topic:

What one char­ac­ter trait of your father’s do/did you admire most?

Tech­no­rati Tags: Writ­ing My Life, Writ­ing Prompt