It was a seemingly innocent remark. But with it, early in our senior year, our new school president, John Abraham, set in motion one of the hottest social events of the year.

John was at his locker, exchanging his books from the previous class for his books for the next. Now that he was president, guys had begun to crowd near John’s locker between classes to curry favor or just so they could brag they talked with him or said hello to him.

One of the guys in the crowd, Steve Blanford, was talking loudly about some movies he had. He just knew all the guys would like to see them. That they were far more revealing than the Playboy magazines most guys were too embarrassed to buy. Steve also claimed to have a projector, just nowhere to project them.

John, overhearing the conversation he was intended to overhear, wanted to be accommodating. Or so he said. But Steve could be a big talker and John impulsively called his bluff.

“My parents are out of town this weekend,” John offered. “My basement might be a good spot.”

I soon would come to learn that John liked to play the innocent bystander. Throughout senior year, he seemed to be standing next to nearly every fire of excitement and tagging of the school. But nobody suspected the school president could be the one carrying the matches … or the paint.

“My grandmother is staying with me,” John said. “But she’s old and doesn’t hear so well. Plus, she doesn’t like to go down to the basement.”

The word went out. No parents at Abraham’s house Friday night.

That weekend, a half hour before show time, cars were parked up and down Riggs Avenue. And more kept coming.

John quickly decided to turn a potential disaster into a business opportunity. He put his little sister at the door to take a cover charge. He began acting like a nightclub owner, warmly greeting his customers as they arrived.

I was an usher, installed at the bottom of the basement stairs, with the job of guiding our guests to a spot on the floor. At first, we tried to maneuver around the ping pong table, but that was eventually folded up and leaned against the wall so more customers could be accommodated.

As the lights went out and the projector began to flicker the first images, cheers and shouts erupted. The mixed reactions of approval, disgust and embarrassment started loud and grew louder with each new movie and each new technique. At one point, John went outside to see if it could be heard on the street. It could.

Even his hard of hearing grandmother could hear the roars of the 35 teenage boys in the basement. Early in the screening, the door at the top of the stairs opened and the light from the kitchen flooded down toward me. I could only see the outline of her tiny, angular body, draped in a house dress.

“What’s going on down there?” John’s grandmother hollered past me with her thick Assyrian accent. “John?”

John hurriedly worked his way through the sea of bodies, stepping on a couple to get to the stairs.

“Nothing, Nanny,” he said, looking up at his grandmother. “It’s just a student council meeting.”

The movies were short and there weren’t many of them. A couple of favorites were rerun. But the event was over in an hour. The basement emptied quickly and within five minutes, Riggs Avenue was once again the quiet picture of 1960s suburbia.

Few of us spoke of the “student council meeting” the rest of the year. Certainly not to the girls. It was almost as if it never happened. We had plausible deniability until the end of the year when a yearbook photographer produced pictures of those in attendance. Funny, there were no pictures of the school president, the guy who had set the event in motion.

Shortly after the movie night,  there was a very brief rekindling with Bethani. We’d gone to a reunion dinner/dance for the Boys and Girls State attendees. Our high school contingent sat together and, after our summer apart, Bethani and I just kind of glared at each other. But after dinner, it was easier to dance with someone you knew, so that’s what we did.

And for a few weeks after that night, I pursued Bethani. I called her and drove her home after she was done with the library or cheerleading practice and I was done with football.

But there was a complication.

Bethani hadn’t been idle that summer while I had been dating Annie. She had started dating a guy from the rival high school. It seemed as if I might be winning her back when my rival for her affections broke his leg during soccer practice. Bethani said she had to be there for him.

We were sitting in my F-85 as she told me and Mary Hopkin came on the radio: “Those were the days, my friend. We thought they’d never end.” A song about nostalgia for a lost relationship wafting from the radio while I was experiencing a lost relationship. 

It was such an obvious sign, I gave up. Bethani said we could be friends. But that was the last time we spoke to each other that year, even though it was a small school and we passed each other in the halls several times a day.

With Bethani gone, I had time to help John with his crisis. Over the summer, he had attended a leadership forum for rising seniors elected to student government. When he got home, we never heard a word about the forum. He wouldn’t stop talking about a girl he met there, Kelsey Turbo. 

“She came on to me,” John said in amazement. “I didn’t have to do a thing.”

There were some issues, though.

Kelsey lived two towns over, on the other side of Avon Mountain. And John didn’t have a car, which, at age 17, wasn’t surprising. But neither did he have his driver’s license. So when Kelsey called to invite him to a big dance at her school, John wanted to decline.

I said he should accept.

“You have a girl calling you!” I said. “How often does that happen?”

I thought about the situation for a minute.

“Driving is not that hard, “ I said. “I mean look at all the morons who get licenses. The guys and I can teach you to drive.”

We decided teaching him on Ernie’s 1959 Chevy station wagon was the safest bet. It already looked as if it lost a demolition derby – twice. And the paint was so faded, you’d have thought the previous owner parked it on Miami Beach every summer.

When Ernie bought the car, the front passenger door was already permanently welded shut. And it didn’t get better with Ernie’s driving. By the time we were teaching John, it only had one working door, the passenger side rear door.

It was a terrible car. Still, with only six days to teach John to drive, I figured I could at least make him a better driver than Ernie.

I suggested we should drive over to Kelsey’s house, to see where she lived, and familiarize John with the route. When we set the pre-date date up, we thought we’d been clear that Kelsey should have a friend with her. For me. She did. Her mother.

Kelsey’s mother wanted to get a look at John and the type of friend he had. She quickly began grilling him about his life and ambitions. John answered, but was obviously more interested in spending time with Kelsey.

So like a good wingman, I took over the conversation and began prattling on about my family, how they came over on the boat, and some made-up-on-the-spot grandiose future plans. When I ran dry, I dove deep into the story of Page in full, sordid detail, including robbing houses, stealing cars and the year in Juvie hall.

Meanwhile, John and Kelsey had stopped talking. I didn’t notice because I was so absorbed in my tale of woe and I had a sympathetic audience. I also didn’t notice John standing behind Kelsey’s mother, waving his arms as if he was trying to direct a plane into a hangar.

Back in the car, John just kept shaking his head. “I was trying to get you to shut up,” he said, somewhat in bewilderment. “I figured you were going to start talking about your heroin business next. Or your plans to rob a bank.”

It turns out, it didn’t matter. John – and I – passed the test and he was allowed to take Kelsey to the dance.

Teaching John to drive proved slightly more difficult than I imagined. John said he knew what happed to the front wheels when you turned the steering wheel to the right.

“But what happens to the back wheels?” asked the future Ph.D. “Do they follow?”

He learned well enough to drive Kelsey safely to the dance and back. But they never saw each other again. Maybe it would have worked out differently if John really had his license and a car.

That left us both back where we started the year, endlessly discussing potential girlfriends and then daring each other to call them. I say dare because calling a girl was the ultimate demonstration of bravery. You had to go through the parents – by way of the phone – to get to the girl.

After dinner, with my parents in the living room reading or watching TV, I’d head downstairs to use the phone in the basement. Before picking up the receiver, though, I had to pace the basement for at least five minutes to work up my nerve. It was one thing if a girl passed you her number in class and wanted you to call. It was quite another if you were making a cold call.

When I did pick up the phone, I slowly dialed each number, trying to mentally prepare myself if the dad answered. That was the worst scenario. But quite often, by the time I spun the dial on the last number, my throat was completely dry and my nerve was gone.

I’d hang up.

Then it was more pacing and self talk. Then, I’d pick up the phone and start the routine again. And again. This would go on until I realized it was after 9 p.m. and it would be impolite to call at that hour. I could relax and tell myself that surely, I would make that call tomorrow.

At school the next day, while we talked near our lockers before the first bell, the guys would want to know if I had called Maggie, a girl I was interested in. The answer was always the same. No. Eventually, they decided to give me the courage I needed to start the relationship.  That Friday night I was talking about my plans again.

“I’m definitely going to call Maggie Monday night,” I promised. “Or maybe Tuesday.”

Suddenly, all the guys lunged at me, each grabbing an arm or a leg. They held me down while another guy grabbed a rope. They tied me up. Then, they tied me to a sled.

“We’re taking you to Maggie’s house and we’re going to dump you on her front lawn,” one of them said. “If you’re not going to make it happen, we’re going to make it happen.”

“No, wait,” John said. “I’ve got a better idea. Let’s lean the sled against the door so when she opens it, he falls in.”

The rest of the guys loved the epic nature of that idea. It would be a story they could tell and embellish for the rest of their lives. While I tried to wriggle free, I worried what would be worse: the broken nose I was sure to get when the door opened and I slammed to the ground or the embarrassment of having to confess my feelings to Maggie. Especially if I had to do it with a bloody face.

In the end, the guys realized they had a problem: They didn’t know where Maggie lived. But they didn’t want to waste an opportunity of making a fool out of me. They knew Liz Mason was having a slumber party so they dropped me off – still strapped to the sled – in her front yard, rang the doorbell and sped away.

The guys actually did me a favor. The girls, already dressed for bed, felt sorry for me. They untied me and snuck me inside to join the party. I got to spend the rest of the night hanging out with them. The guys had to hang out with themselves.

Because I doubted I would ever dial all the digits of Maggie’s phone number, I knew I needed to head to the library. Not for the books, but for the girls. That’s where they studied at night.

Going to the library was a great way to get out of the house in the middle of the week. It was one of the few places our parents let us go to without too many questions. At that age, our lives were pretty prescribed. We had school, then sports or music or religious instruction, dinner, and then homework while listening to our favorite DJs chatter between playing the Top 40 songs on our transistor radios and then to bed.

There weren’t many chances for casual social interaction except for a few minutes before and after school, in the three minutes between classes and on Friday nights, cruising from the Park Road Friendly’s ice cream shop, which was our turf, to the Bridlepath Friendly’s, which was our rivals’.

At the library, the girls actually did want to get their homework done. But the guys would be urging them to pack it in early so we could hang out longer before our curfews. Most of us had to be home by 9:15, 15 minutes after the library closed.

In those few social minutes that we had, Samantha and I often found ourselves pairing as we all crowded into one or two cars so we could cruise together.

Sam and I had first met a few years before at The Fort, a well-kept secret teen hideout. It was hidden deep within one of the last large tracts of wooded land in town that would become, in just a few years, the site of a new housing development. Some of the kids from Sedgwick Junior High had gone into those woods and built a pretty solid fort, complete with a floor and roof, using material swiped from nearby building sites. It was a perfect place for 14 and 15 year olds to escape adult supervision and learn to smoke cigarettes. Among other things.

Early in our sophomore year, someone brought me to The Fort and introduced me around. Sam was one of the few girls allowed there. I told her later that I thought she was one of the guys’ molls. We made note of each other but never went beyond saying “Hi” to each other as we passed between classes.

Until senior year.

Sam said she liked pairing up with me at the library because she could stay true to her boyfriend, Tom, who had graduated a year before us. She said I was safe. Being the safe guy wasn’t something I aspired to, but I pretended I was OK with it since I liked being with her.

Pretty soon, though I am a bit slow at these things, I began to notice that something more than a friendship might be developing. But there was a hitch.  

Sam’s boyfriend, Tom, was in Vietnam. And he wasn’t some accidental soldier. He was a Marine.

I realized nothing could happen while Tom was away. You couldn’t just break up with him like you could a high school classmate. At home, with a broken heart, they could just go to Friendly’s and drown their troubles in a milk shake. Not so in a war zone.

Plus, Tom and I had a relationship. Every day at practice the previous year, I had lined up across from him, then a senior and a starting linebacker. Tom was taller and had these long arms, which Coach Robinson used to call our flippers. When the ball was snapped, I would charge at him as hard as I could and Tom would use his arms like flippers in a pinball machine to stand me up. Whack. Whack. Whack. Every drill. Every day. He’d clobber me.

Sam told me later that Tom thought I was a hard hitter. He’s the only guy who ever said that about me. I didn’t believe it, but this was coming from a guy who went to Vietnam at the height of the war. Whatever he says. It’s not the kind of thing you can brag about to anybody, like my teammates: “Hey, you guys may think I suck, but Tom Kay thinks I am a hard hitter. And he went to Viet Nam!”

Others began to see there was more to our relationship before we did. Tom’s younger brother wrote to him about it. However, Tom was cool and he knew – as did everybody – that Sam was a flirt and he told his brother if she were going to hang out with any guy, it was best she hang out with me. He thought I was an honorable guy. I really was honored by that but as my feelings for Sam grew, so did the pressure to stay honorable.

Then one night, we left the library with about 45 minutes left for cruising around town. I found myself in a car with Sam and four other girls. Sam’s best friend, Barbra, was driving and Sam was in the middle of the bench seat and I was shotgun. There was a lot of coded talking and teasing going on that I was not part of, but I began to have a sense it had something to do with me.

While we drove around, listening to the radio, Sam leaned over and said she had a secret to tell me. So I leaned over toward her and she cupped her hands as if to tell me but instead, she started … well, just breathing.

All the girls in the car knew exactly what was going on. I had been clueless. I turned to look at her, my eyes very wide open and she simply smiled. I could tell from that smile our relationship was about to change. I volunteered to drive her home.

It turned out, she had gotten a letter from Tom telling her it was unfair of him to make her stay true. This was her senior year and she should enjoy it. So he was breaking up with her.

Now we were free to be a couple. To go steady. I was excited but also worried.

It could be great. A popular, good-looking, smart girl to be with at all the parties and not have to face that dreaded phone in the basement every week. But being in a relationship had its downs as well as its ups.  I knew from my experience with Bethani the previous year, there was that commitment of time, energy and emotion that could possibly offset the pleasures and convenience of a steady relationship.

But Sam and I didn’t have the fights that Bethani and I did. I had matured, a bit. And neither of us tried to get the upper hand of the relationship. Sam was easy going, quick to smile and got great grades but wasn’t obsessed with them.

It didn’t bother her that I was a terrible football player and was no longer a starter. She had a sense of humor and occasionally would chant, “Put Al in” on her megaphone while I knelt on the sidelines during games. Thankfully, the coach was too busy to pay attention. But I would turn and try to shush her for fear the coach would really put me in.

Mostly we went to parties and movies. Lots of drive-ins on the Berlin Turnpike. I have no idea what movies we saw. We’d often meet up with other kids at the movies, pile into one or two cars together and hang out for the first movie. Then we’d pair off, go back to our own cars and make out during the second. Sometimes I was embarrassed about my lack of creativity in thinking of things to do.

But we kept doing it. My social life was so good senior year that I almost flunked out. (Three songs off the soundtrack of our senior year together: The Beatles , The Chamber Brothers and Blood, Sweat and Tears).

Next week: Chapter 22. Who Are You?