Flashback

Driving home from sewing class (where I made a be-yoo-tiful book cover), I kind of cutoff a driver as I was merging onto Storrow Drive. I say "kind of" because I'm not exactly sure. But it reminded me of being a junior in high school, when I had a one a.m. curfew unless I was driving in which case the curfew was midnight (my mom would say, "I'm not worried about your driving. I'm worried about the driving of all the crazies out there"). One night in late March, my father had a friend from high school coming to stay with us, and I was supposed to entertain his son, who was about a year or two older than I was. He was a strange guy, with a mop of dark hair and an almost cross-eyed look to his eyes when he took his glasses off, and he seemed to have a crush on me so I let him kiss me because there really wasn't anything else to do. Anyway, he was okay, but there wasn't much to do at home, so we decided to go out. I begged for a curfew extension, to which my mother agreed, saying one a.m. would be fine. But (and isn't there always a but?) we had to stay on Miami Beach. Sigh. There was nothing to do in Miami Beach. Remember, this was in 1985 when the hottest place in town was Blackie's on the Beach. No Madonna, no Sylvester Stallone, no hip clubs, no trendy restaurants, no happening Ocean Drive. Just a lot of old people. So we did the requisite loop around the Beach, and figured it was bogus. I mean at that hour, the only thing open was Wolfie's. We were going to cruise the Strip. That's right. You heard me. The Strip. Because we were young and cool and I was behind the wheel of my mom's silver gray/blue Rabbit with the dark blue canvas seats, with no power steering and windows that had to be cranked. It even had a cassette player that worked if you jiggled the tape when you put it in. We were stylin'. And for those of you not in the know, the Strip was none other than the Ft. Lauderdale Strip, home to Spring Break, capital S, capital B. (Remember the movie?) Yep, that's where we were going. And so we went. We got to the Strip. And we sat in traffic. And more traffic. As every college student in America, it seemed, looked for his or her chance to get drunk and lucky (remember, 1985? Drinking age was 19). So we made one loop around the Strip, which took forever, sitting in the car, not having any idea of what we were supposed to be doing. We only knew that we were there. We both acted as if there was not the most boring place on earth. At about midnight, I realized we needed to head back so I didn't break curfew. There were only so many rules I'd break in one night. So we headed back. Only I got a little lost. After a few wrong turns, I pulled out onto the main drag back to I-95. Cutting off a car. A cop car. The lights went on. Panic hit me. The guy is trying to be cool, but I know he's got to be worried, as he'll get in just as much trouble, because after all, he's a big college freshman, corrupting me, an innocent high school junior. We pull over and the cop comes out, a big burly guy--or at least that's what it seemed to me. He could have been four feet three for all I remember. All I knew is that a moving violation at 12:30 a.m. in Ft. Lauderdale wasn't going to go over well with my parents. The cop took a long look at me. "Where you live?" "Miami. Miami Beach." "This your car?" "My mom's. Really, my mom's." "You been drinking?" "No, sir! No, sir!" "Drugs?" "No! No!" I couldn't stop repeating myself. Long pause. He stared at the guy, trying to make him out. "You got a license?" he asked. "Yeah, yeah," I stuttered, rooting around for my purse. "I didn't ask to see it," he snapped. I finally could breathe again. No license, no ticket. My parents didn't need to know. He finally let us go, and the guy acted all tough, but by now, I was really annoyed with him for no other reason that I had decided that he was an idiot. We made it home twenty minutes past curfew but my folks let it slide. Of course, the next week they found one of the guy's cigarettes in the car, and assumed it was mine. Which would have been logical--I was a smoker--but it wasn't my cigarette, because I wasn't stupid enough to drop them in the car. And it wasn't my brand. But I was out as a smoker because of this guy, and it started a whole chapter in my life that included my mother leaving obits of people who died of lung cancer on the kitchen table for me, but that's a story for another night.