It Was the Summer of 1985

A lighthearted look at how my husband asked me out 40 years ago. Actually, he accidentally asked my brother out instead.

This week marks forty years since my husband and I went on our first date. Two silly teenagers who had no idea that forty years later they would have two sons, two wonderful daughters-in-law, and six grandchildren ages four and under.

In honor of the occasion, I thought I’d share an excerpt from the first chapter of our book Classic Marriage: Staying in Love as Your Odometer Climbs, where we tell the story of how Phil asked me (actually, my brother) on our first date.

Let’s go back to the summer of 1985. Dire Straits and “Money for Nothing” was a top hit, but we’ll save that story for another day. This one is about falling in love.

1987 – One of the rare occasions when he would dance with me. I was 18, and he was 20. We’d been together for two years by then.

Throughout our book, Phil’s comments appear in speech balloons. I’ve included them in the sample as well.

Chapter 1: A Novel Romance

Once upon a time, my husband asked my brother on our first date. And they went without me.

When he finally rallied enough courage to call my house to ask me out, the asking didn’t go exactly as Phil had planned. My mother answered the phone.

“Hello,” she said in her special telephone voice—the one that could sound happy and sing-songy even when she was in the midst of chewing one of us out. (We’ve all done that, right?)

In the days before caller ID, texting, Facebook, or e-mail, a boy had to run clearance through a girl’s mother before he could talk with her. And mothers had a way of making young men believe they could somehow permanently maim a boyfriend with a secret weapon that could penetrate telephone lines—even if their voices were sweet and sing-songy.

I think it was my mother’s voice that made Phil think of something profound.

“Uh,” he said, punctuating it with a throat clearing. “Um, is Michelle there?”

“I’m sorry, she isn’t here right now. She’s at work.”

[Phil] Calling Michelle’s house to ask her out was similar to taking a driver’s test. You need to go through the process to get to the end point, but you know you could fail miserably in the process. It could be a lot of joy, or a huge bummer. But a guy has to take that risk if he ever wants to find true love.

Being a think-on-your-toes kind of guy who rarely makes a plan B, he came up with one on the spot. “Uh, is Brett there?”

“Sure. Just a minute.”

Moments later, my brother, who is ten months my junior, accepted Phil’s invitation to go to the lake with a mixed group of friends that afternoon. My friends. Not my brother’s friends. But of course, he would readily agree to any invitation that got him out of his farm chores.

While the guys settled the details, my mother had a glorious moment of mercy. Apparently, she could see right through Phil’s flimsy invitation to my brother and she yanked the phone from Brett before either young man could hang up.

“Phil, I’d be glad to drive Michelle out to the lake when I pick her up from work at 3:00 if you’d like.” That was before I had a license to drive, and I relied on my mother to be my Uber.

[Phil] Michelle’s mom was nice enough to see through my nerves and realize that when she wasn’t home, I panicked and asked her brother to go to the lake with me and my friends instead. Thankfully, she offered to bring Michelle out to the lake after she got off work.

Later, I’d wonder if she was the same mother who gave me a 10:30 curfew and allowed me only one date every other week who really made that offer. Now, don’t get me wrong, my mother wasn’t tyrannical, exceptionally stern, or cruel to us as children. She simply took her role in raising a godly teenager seriously, and that meant setting some strict rules for dating.

I like to think it was Phil’s charm that won her over to his side—that and his reputation at church for being the sort of young man who didn’t cause mothers undue worry. He attended church and Sunday school regularly, treated adults with respect, and blushed whenever a girl spoke to him.

[Phil] Hey, asking a girl out isn’t easy. The fear of rejection sticks in your head and reminds you she could say no and make you look like a fool. I was worried that Michelle might not have the same feelings that I had, so before I had an awkward phone conversation with her mother, I did what any smart adolescent would do: I had some friends ask her if she liked me.

First Date

Later that evening, several carloads of teenagers headed back from the lake. They were laughing and singing with the radio, and thanks to my mother, I was with them. On the way home, we made a stop at the Dairy Queen.

Phil fished in his pockets for what I would later learn was the last of his change, plunked it down on the counter for the cashier, and ordered one twist cone and one dipped butterscotch cone. We sat together on a weathered bench with flaking paint under the yellow fluorescent lights of the Dairy Queen awning, oblivious to the sounds of nearby traffic, the mosquitoes snacking on our ankles, or the ice cream making sticky rivulets between our fingers.

[Phil] After we hung out at the lake with friends, everyone stopped at Dairy Queen. I was super nervous that I wouldn’t have enough change in my pocket to buy Michelle an ice cream cone. I’d already sweat so much that night with my nerves that when my friends stopped at a store to pick something up, I ran in to buy a clean shirt. Thus, the reason for why I had nothing but change left in my pockets.

In that moment, we were a curly-haired boy who I’m sure was the inspiration for the movie Napoleon Dynamite, and a sixteen-year-old freckled blonde girl who could think of little else but the boy brushing shoulders with her—a boy who looked at his own feet more than at her green eyes. At last, he looked at me.

[Phil] She didn’t know it, but I was focused on her cute little boat shoes and ankle socks because I didn’t have enough courage to look her in the eye. And then I got the guts to ask her out on a first date. I was eighteen, and she was sixteen. But in actual maturity, she was more like twenty-five, and I was stuck in perpetual junior high.

“Do you think sometime . . .” He paused, and then as if something had squeezed him hard enough to force all of the air from his lungs, he finished his sentence with a rapid run of words. “. . . yamight liketagooutwithme?” He squeaked the ending, like when someone has just inhaled a draft of helium and it’s beginning to take effect.

That was the beginning of a romance.

Romance Begins

It’s been more than thirty-five years since he asked me out under the yellow bug lights at the Dairy Queen—the same day he took my brother on “our” unofficial first date. Our real first date was to a classic car show. Go figure!

We went to different high schools, and my parents didn’t allow more than one phone call to him per week. My parents were smart, but I didn’t think so then. Ours was never the flowers and candy sort of courtship. Nor was it the kind that makes for romance novel material.

Ours was a saga of chasing turkeys into their pens together in the rain on his dad’s farm. A romance of driving a pickup truck or motorcycle out to dinner and ending up at one of our homes to play checkers or UNO with a little sister. We’d go out for pizza with my family, roller-skating with the youth group, and to visit an antique car show. I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. Ours is more of a pull-the-engagement-ring-from-his-sock kind of a romance. Yes, that’s where he hid it on the night he proposed. I thought he was scratching a mosquito bite.

[Phil] Romance to me is taking a ride on a motorcycle or hanging out together and her laughing at my corny jokes. It’s when she walks by my empty coffee cup and the candy wrappers by my recliner without nagging me about cleaning it up when I’m done watching my favorite History Channel show. Romance is going for a ride in my classic Jeep.

Could I have held out for a kind of Prince Charming who would sweep me off my feet the way it happens in fairy tales? Who needs that? He swept me off my feet by treating me with respect. Could he have written me poems and sung ballads outside my window? In a fantasy world. Could I have demanded heaps of gifts and flowers, or something better than McDonald’s and bowling for a date night? Not on our budget. That isn’t the stuff that makes for real romance anyway.

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Looking for more? You’ll find it in Classic Marriage.