I was pretty nervous.  I’m not sure why though.  We had spent many hours on the phone with each other, and had several outings and school activities together.  We weren’t strangers.  In fact, we had already agreed to be a couple. 

But this was different.  It was just the two of us out together, in public. Other people would see us.  I wasn’t ready to be seen by others doing something I didn’t know how to do.  I had never been on a date before. I was 14. It was 1984.

But you can’t have a girlfriend if you don’t go on dates, so I was determined to do it.  I mean, I wanted to do it; I just didn’t want anybody else around in case I made a fool of myself.

One of our parents drove us to the movie theater.  The other would pick us up and drive us home afterward.  I don’t remember any details about that.  

The first thing I do remember is going up to the ticket booth and ordering two tickets for The Initiation.  It was a horror film.  Neither of us were really into those types of movies, but from what I saw on TV, horror movies were really good to watch with a date.

As soon as I said the words, “two for The Initiation”, I felt everybody stare at me- or so I thought.  Surely they must have stared, I was clearly clueless about dating and they knew it.

We slid over to the concession stand and decided to share a small popcorn and a drink.  As I looked over the sizes, I imagined how embarrassing it would be to run out of snacks in the middle of the movie.  I couldn’t risk it.

When it was my turn at the counter, I ordered a large, family- sized tub of popcorn, and two extra large sodas.  When they gave them to me, I immediately felt everyone staring at me again.  

“What an idiot!”, they said.  “He ordered way too much!” I didn’t actually hear them saying those things, but I knew they were thinking them.

The theater was less than half-filled, which was fine with me! We took seats toward the back and settled in to watch.

It wasn’t long before we realized that the film was absolutely terrible!  We couldn’t even stay interested in it enough to follow what was happening.  And no- it wasn’t because of teenage-movie theater-make-out stuff; I was too shy to attempt that with all the strangers in the theater.

So we sat there.  For a long time..

But not everybody did.  In fact, many people left.  The movie was that bad!

I ate as much popcorn as I could, and drank a lot of soda. But I couldn’t down the usual “teenage boy portion” because I was still nervous.  I was embarrassed too.  I had exercised terrible judgement in choosing this movie for a date and now everybody in the theater knew I was in way over my head with this girlfriend thing.

Looking for some kind of amusement, I put my arm around her and pretended to fall asleep for a few minutes. When I “woke-up” and stretched my legs out, my foot kicked over one of the massive sodas and launched a Niagra-esque cascade of Coke, down the slanted floor toward the screen.

The movie was still so bad it was starting to make me a little mad! There was nothing left to do but to make fun of the damn thing until it was over.  From the looks of things, everybody in the audience who was old enough to drive themselves, had already left.

At least they weren’t around to judge how badly I had botched the date and to wonder why she even agreed to go out with me in the first place.

At some point the movie ended. Parents picked us up and took us home. The dates got better from there, and 7 years later we got married.

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