I've known Amber since the third grade and when I first started to be interested in girls she was the one I was interested in. But Amber wasn't interested in me. At least three times in the sixth, seventh and eighth grades I'd asked her for a date and had gotten a no every time.
In the ninth grade I finally got a yes which led to a second, third, fourth and fifth date. I got a kiss on the third and by the fifth we were making out. I had big plans for our sixth date, but a day before it was to happen she broke the date with me. When I asked her why she told me Ronnie Holbrook had asked her out.
Three weeks later she asked me I was avoiding her and I told her I didn't want to interfere with her relationship with Holbrook and she told me she wasn't in a relationship with him. It had just been one date.
"No it wasn't just one date. It was a date you broke with me. If you want to date other guys go ahead, but you don't break a date with me to do it!"
She promised it would never happen again so I asked her out, she said yes, and we picked up right where we left off.
Six more dates and then it was a repeat of the Holbrook incident with Billy Neubert. That time I only had to avoid her for a week because summer vacation started and every summer I go out to my Uncle Brady's farm to work. I saved the money he paid me so I could buy a car when I was old enough to get my driver's license.
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Summer over and I was back to school. I saw Amber around and she was always with some guy I'd never seen before.
About a month after school had started I was having lunch in the school cafeteria when Amber sat down at my table and asked:
"Why haven't you called me?"
"Does the name Billy Neubert come to mind? And even if I was of a mind to your time seems to be taken up by the guy you have had with you since school started up."
"That's my cousin Rory; he moved here and I've been showing him around. As far as Billy goes it was only a one time date."
I just looked at her and didn't say anything, but she must have read my mind because she said "I have to date other guys. My mother won't let me date just one boy. She won't even let me go steady with a boy until the eleventh grade. She says I need to know what different guys are like before I can get in a steady relationship. I go on four or five dates with you and then I date another guy once or twice and then another four or five with you. You are my guy and I am yours if you can put up with what I have to do to keep my mother off my back."
It sounded reasonable to me so I asked her for a date and the cycle started. Four or five dates with me and then one or two with someone else and that's the way it was all the way through the tenth grade.
Summer came and it was off to Uncle Brady's farm. I turned sixteen in August and was looking forward to getting my driver's license and buying a car when I got home. Then Uncle Brady surprised me. He asked me if I would rather have the farm truck instead of my summer's wages. It was a no brainer for me. If I took the truck I would still have all the money I had saved up to by a car. I of course said I'd take the truck and Uncle Brady laughed and said:
"Somehow I was pretty sure you would say that" and then he said it was also a birthday present and then he handed me a birthday card. It was from my parents and it had a short note in it. It said:
"Drive safe on your way home and your uncle has your birthday present from us."
I asked Brady what it was and he told me it was the money for plates and insurance.
The truck was a nine year old four wheel drive long bed Chevy Silverado, but it was in pretty good shape and I'd been driving it around the farm for the last four years. That�s right. I'd been driving it since I was twelve. I'd been driving the truck and Uncle Brady's John Deere every summer I'd worked for him. I found out it wasn't at all uncommon for farm kids and kids who worked as summer help on farms (like me) to start driving on the farm at an early age.
It wasn't always on the farm either. You had to get out onto County 6 and drive three miles to get to other acreage and one plot had you taking County 6 to Elk Road and then left for two miles.
A week before I was to go home Uncle Brady took me into the small town that was close to the farm, plated and insured the truck in my name and then took me to take the tests and do the paperwork to get me my driver's license.
I found out later that it had been a hell of a lot easier getting things done while at Uncles than it would have been back at home in a large city. I guess it was one of the benefits of being a farm kid (or considered to be a farm kid) in a small town.
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I got home the day before school was to start and I called Amber to see if we could get together that evening. She told me she already had a date, but was looking forward to seeing me now that I was home and she would make sure to have lunch with me in the school cafeteria the next day.
As much as I was looking forward to seeing Amber I made a decision over the summer. When Amber went off to date some other guy I was going to date other girls. Or at least I would try. I had no idea of how successful I would be at it because Amber was the only girl I had spent time with.
The next day at school I went to the office and got a student parking pass. I didn't have any morning classes with Amber so I didn't see her until lunch time. We caught up on things that happened over the summer and then I asked her if her mother's position on dating had changed any and she told me no.
"I thought you told me way back that she would start letting you go steady once you started eleventh grade."
"She did, but she had a valid point when she said I needed to see what other guys were like before I picked one to go steady with."
"I thought you had already picked me. You said I was your guy and you were mine if I could just put up with your dating others until now. I put up with it and now we are here. I've spent all summer expecting that we would be going steady as soon as I got back to school."
"You get five or six dates to everyone else one or two. To me that seems like we are pretty much going steady."
"Not to me. I would have thought you would have dated enough guys while I was gone to get seeing what other guys were like out of your system."
"Don't be that way. You will get most of them."
"I'm going to want plenty of notice when you make a date with someone else. I don't want any more of asking you on Thursday what you would like to do on Friday or Saturday only to be told you have a date with another guy set up."
"I can do that."
Except she didn't. I made plans for Saturday night and on Friday at lunch in the cafeteria I told her what I had planned and got the "I'm sorry, but I already have a date for that night."