You Don’t Make Sense

I somehow managed to find myself in the Honor Society in the spring of the seventh grade. As a treat, the group took a cruise on Washington State’s Puget Sound. It was a lovely spring evening. Everyone packed their own dinner, usually the same sort of thing they would have packed for a lunch at school. A radio played, tuned to Seattle’s big Top 40 station, KJR. In a coincidence that still seems to be appropriate, I heard Crystal Blue Persuasion by Tommy James and the Shondells for the first time that night on the cruise.

What a night to hear this for the first time.

Later in the evening four people I knew, fellow seventh graders, were sitting at a table on the lower deck. Karen and Allan sat on one side, Roxanne and Everett sat on the other. The pairings seemed odd to me. Roxanne was cute — enough, but Karen probably was causing the plastic upholstery to blister. I guess Allan was OK, but Everett was tall and the kind of guy the girls would swoon over — he went on to become a doctor.

As I observed the two couples, cuddling up about as much as seventh graders could get away with in May, 1969, I could not help but notice that Karen was paying attention to Everett and Everett was paying attention to Karen. What was going on might, in terms of international diplomacy, be referred to as political manoeuvring. Roxanne and Allan were merely the tools being used by Everett and Karen.