In looking back over the stories of my years at Grantosa Drive Elementary School it appears one I overlooked was my relationship with Debbie Sue. She was the first of a number of Debbies in my life including the one I will be celebrating my twenty-fifth wedding anniversary with in a day less than seven weeks.
No one in the fourth grade could form better loops. Whether ascending in her h’s or descending in her g’s she had the loops with both the correct shape and the proper slant. More often than not her meticulous cursive writing, something Mrs. Lynman made us practice every single day, was the model selected for display on the blackboard.
Not only could she write well, but she also had jet-black hair, a twinkle in her eye, and smelled good. Artie M, a kid with white as snow hair, wanted her for his girlfriend, but I told him it wouldn’t work because he wasn’t Jewish so he should just take her friend Cheryl, which he did.
I was so taken with Debbie Sue I went to the dime store and bought her a genuine artificial diamond ring. Too frightened to give it to her I placed it in the basement window well of her four family apartment building on Villard Avenue. Then, I slid a note under their apartment door explaining where to find her “special gift.” I guess I figured if her parents found the note they’d still give her the ring. To the best of my memory she never said anything about the ring and I never went back to see if it was still there.
A couple of years later in the sixth grade Debbie Sue and a couple of her girlfriends organized a party in the basement of her apartment building. I don’t remember who was there with me, but a short while later she moved to a house near John Marshall Junior Senior High where she went to school while I attended Samuel Morse Junior High.
When I arrived at Marshall she was down the hall in the homeroom with Ron and Big Steve. Debbie Sue had always been easy to talk to and even though she did not hold the same attraction for me she had in grade school our ability to communicate was reason enough to accept her invitation to be her date at a party.
Rather than have a parent take us we were able to go on a double date. We went with Denise, who had been Debbie Sue's best friend for the past three years, and her date drove. When we arrived music was playing and the other guests packed the room standing and talking, sitting on folding chairs, or dancing.
One distinct smell permeated the room, hairspray. Nearly every girl at the party had her hair up in a beehive, a hairdo popularized by Audrey Hepburn and Leslie Caron, which had the hair piled atop the head with the outside layer swirled around and lacquered in place by a heavy cloud of aerosol.
At one point in the evening the guy who had been set up with Denise asked me if I wanted to switch dates. Although she was blonde and every inch as attractive in the physical sense as Debbie Sue, she had none of the vitality. She was not easy to talk to, she rarely smiled, she spoke in a monotone, and there was no twinkle in her eye. I’m not sure what I told him but I declined his offer.
Although Debbie Sue and I remained friends, and we “doubled” when we dated other people, we never dated each other again. That night, however, I started to understand what my parents meant when they said looks and brains will only get a person so far, it’s one’s personality that makes the difference.
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