When You Were Young And Your Heart Was An Open Book 1

It was the summer of 1973, I was fifteen. I saw my first James Bond movie. Live and Let Die. Roger Moore. Very scary. And there was a guy named Ken. He was a cousin to my friend, Jan. We were all meeting at the theatre to see Live and Let Die. I stood in the pre-arranged meeting place and waited for Jan and Ken to arrive.

I had limited information about Ken. I knew he was from "up north." Jan said he was popular, a year older than we were, and he was going to try to kiss me. Sure, I was scared but with my sixteenth birthday right around the corner I was a little tired of hearing that "sweet sixteen and never been kissed" crap and I was anxious to get this kiss ordeal done with so whenever the cliché was mentioned I could just laugh Inside My Head at their expense. Wasn’t I the clever one?

Anyway, what Jan eliminated from the description of Ken was that he had one leg two inches shorter than the other and as a result he walked with a very obvious limp, not that there is anything wrong with that but even thirty-five years later I still don’t understand why Jan would not have worked that into the conversation before introductions.

Ken was also significantly shorter than me. Not that there is anything wrong with that either, but this was the kind of short that people would mention to their friends. I think he was as tall as my shoulders. As an adult, I maxed out at five feet four inches tall, I have no clue how tall I was that summer, but I do remember that Ken was what short people would call "really short".

In addition to these unfortunate shortcomings, Ken seemed to have the longest trunk of any human being on our continent. Certainly there is nothing wrong with this, but I’ll never know why Jan wouldn’t mention these things to me.

Now, the truth is I am not even sure if Ken had thighs. He might of had just had a trunk and then some knees. I am not sure. Back then handicapped parking hadn’t been invented but this is the kind of guy that would certainly warrant it.

Now I understand all of those things were beyond Ken’s control. So as Ken approaches me at our meeting place in front of the theatre, he smiles and says, "Carrie, you look just like Jan described." All I could say back to Ken was, "And you have kind eyes," and it was at that point I noticed the left eye wandering.

So Jan had explained to Ken how I looked? I just could not comprehend this. Well, perhaps because Ken was the older cousin, he may have few years of suave-ly-ness under that extremely low slung belted trunk of his and told Jan to describe me in more detail than I had ever asked about Ken.

There were many things going on with Ken, and through no fault of his own he could not do much about his appearance. He was certainly chipper and in my defense, both eyes were kind even though they rarely focused as a team.

Ken offered to buy me a soda and I accepted his offer. In hindsight (with my eyes looking backwards in the same direction) , I might have agreed to do just about anything Ken was asking because I was so desperately trying to be sure my attention was directed to the correct line of vision.

Once we got in the theatre, the true Ken literally rose to the occasion. Because of his extraordinarily long trunk, he gave the illusion of being remarkably tall. I felt protected, safe just being in his shadow.

This theatre has recently been renovated as part of our Historic Downtown. At the time we were there to see the movie it was just plain old run down downtown. I am sure there are tremendous theatrical terms to describe the ceiling; however I am not privy to them so I will describe the ceiling to the best of my ability.

The ceiling was meant to be beautiful. There were tiny holes punched in jagged shapes that gave the illusion of twinkling stars. You knew you had to take your seat when the over head lights went dim and the stars became very bright. The next phase brought the stars dimmer and dimmer and eventually almost completely invisible. Romantic, right?

Except that in our city’s pre-historic days, we had bat problems in our downtown theatre. When the over head lights were dimmed, it signaled the bats to begin their swooping. Which made me shiver and shudder and obviously that was a signal for Ken to make his move.

Remember describing how safe I felt in his shadow? Well, as he raised that arm to move up and around me, my nose came directly parallel with Ken’s armpit. I have no scenario to describe that odor except to wonder if he lived so far up north that they were unable to deliver deodorant during the off season.

I can sympathize with the wandering eye, the internationally award winning elongated trunk, and the short leg, but a man’s got to keep himself pretty tidy to overcome those strikes.

I leaned as far away from Ken as I could while his arm was perched up on top of the back of my seat. We drank our sodas in silence as the starlight diminished and the theatre hushed. Jan smuggled in Ju Ju Bees and I declined. Ju Ju Bees were not going to make up for this fiasco.