Like Fireworks, It's There and Then ... It's Gone

  • By Mike Dewey
  • August 13, 2014
  • 404
                        
SUMMARY: Nothing says summer quite like how quickly it seems to pass: this week, Mike Dewey examines its fleeting nature through the prism of young love. There’s a phrase that’s recently come into common parlance. It’s “out-kicking your coverage.” It’s a sports-based aphorism that’s being applied to a guy’s love life which, on its surface is nothing new; I mean, all you have to do is recall the difference between getting to first base and finding yourself on third. But, as with so much of the world in the early years of the 21st century, baseball has been blitzed and run out of the game by football, which has become – without question – America’s obsession. I’ll stop short of calling it the national pastime, simply because that kind of dated, black-and-white TV moniker is part of the reason that baseball has been pushed from its once-lofty perch. That kind of horse-and-buggy terminology has been eclipsed by computer-generated words like “platforms” and “branding” and “clouds” and “twerking” and “sexting.” Which is the way it always goes, I suppose. This year’s model is already doomed to planned obsolescence as anyone who’s been around long enough to remember 8-track tapes and quadraphonic sound can attest. But I wanted to write about summer love and the concept of out-kicking your coverage. It means, as I understand it, that a guy finds himself, inexplicably and oh-so ephemerally, in the company of a girl who’s so far out of his league that there’s no way it can be explained. That’s summer love. It can’t last. It can only be savored. This is the way it’s always been. And, shall ever be, heartbreak without end. Amen. Out-kicking your coverage is, in its literal translation, when a punter kicks the ball so deep that the return team finds itself with return lanes so wide open and rife with possibilities that it’s like an unexpected gift falling from the heavens. And that word – “possibilities” – is what summer romance is all about, faithful readers. I WANT TO cast my memory back to August of 1972 and my one and only experience with summer love, its sweetness, its innocence, its brevity and its remarkable staying power. I was 17, anticipating my senior year in high school and probably a year too old to be participating in something so, well, juvenile as a family vacation. And you have to remember that I wasn’t exactly the model eldest child. Never had been. Way too arrogant. Far too opinionated. And certainly living up to my mother’s two-barreled description – deadly accurate and certainly meant with love – as a “wretched flea” and a “child of excess.” I held out for weeks, refusing to commit to joining Mom and Dad, my sister and brother on the trip, citing my lawn-mowing commitments and other semi-transparent excuses. In the end, I capitulated after having been guaranteed that I would be able to drive Country Squire, control the music inside the station wagon and not be forced to share a bed with my brother. This last demand was crucial and resulted in us alternating between the bed and the floor as the family moved steadily westward, from Holiday Inn to Holiday Inn. Our summer roadmap, which I successfully finished, found us crossing the Mississippi River from Missouri into, of all places, Arkansas. Not exactly like traversing the Continental Divide to deliver a dramatic view of the Rocky Mountains, but still. Cherokee Village was the name of the community and all Mom and Dad had to do was attend a seminar aimed at convincing them to invest in a timeshare and the rest was a freebie few days. Nice. And it got even better when, hanging out a stretch of sand that served as a beach on a river whose name I’ve forgotten, I spied a pretty young lady swimming by herself. Her bikini was lime-green, her hair was blonde bordering on ash and her skin was tanned so brown that it spoke of hours in the sun, not even trying to attain that look. Natural, is what I mean to say. And I knew I had no chance. Funny thing about it, you know, is that line from Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone.” “When you ain’t got nothin’, you got nothing’ to lose.” SO A TALL, SKINNY KID ended up meeting Lorraine and the world tilted on its axis. Summer romance – fabled in song and prose – presented itself and – you know this, too – it was as if it had happened for the first time. Yep, she and I invented floating together under the dock, sharing sweet kisses and getting to know each other under in the shade, as the waves lapped and we laughed and smiled and hid from the world. Which was, obviously, next to impossible: I mean, it was a public beach. My parents and siblings were 100 feet away. We might as well have been on a spotlighted stage. “Who’s your little friend?” Mom asked. Dad looked up from his book. “She’s cute,” said my sister. “Into everyone’s life,” intoned my brother, “a little Lorraine must fall.” We lasted for two days. Inseparably joined, holding hands, sneaking away after shaking off our families … I learned so much. She was, I knew on a basic and honest level, was miles beyond my grasp and I was in way over my head, but it was summer and it was happening and the music was perfect and I understood that nothing like this would have been possible had I not stepped off the curb and joined a family vacation, an anachronism that I believed I’d outgrown. You know the end of the story. Knowing Lorraine was leaving in the morning, we spent a final few frantic, fantastic hours together that Friday night, lying next to each other in the sand, staring at the stars, memorizing the moments, knowing that it was over, but squeezing every last drop of summer fun from our time together. And that’s Rule Number One of summer romance. It’s fleeting. It can’t last. And it’s incredibly satisfying, as long as you know it’s doomed. Decades later, I’d stand on a beach, surrounded by family and friends, and exchange vows with a beautiful, smart, caring, generous, funny, lovely woman who was way, way better than I ever thought would love me. Yep. I’d out-kicked the coverage again. Mike Dewey can be emailed at CarolinamikeD@aol.com or snail-mailed at 6211 Cardinal Drive, New Bern, NC 28560. He invites you to visit his Facebook page.


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