Luke’s Smooth Move

Normally I don’t recommend carnivals as good date options. There are many unromantic things about carnivals: food on sticks, piles of sawdust-covered vomit, and carnies, just for example. This story involves a carnival, and it’s a little romantic, but I felt I should give you the disclaimer above before continuing.

Luke gave me moony cow-eyes for a whole summer before we dated. I was completely oblivious. I thought we were friends. I had not yet seen When Harry Met Sally and I didn’t realize that men and women cannot be friends because the man pretty much always wants to bang the woman, even if she’s not hot. This would have been useful information to have when Luke and I started doing friend things together, one-on-one. I was doing buddy stuff like making crude jokes and punching him in the arm, and he was doing I-like-you stuff like…

Well, like taking me to the carnival. I’m pretty sure I tried to get other people to come with us and it didn’t work out. Maybe they were all smarter than me and realized we were a couple, even though I didn’t. In any case, we ended up at the tiny, dusty county fair together with a few hours of free time and a roll of ride tickets, purchased Dutch, of course.

And the ride he wanted was one of those swirly spinny ones with the cars for two people. I was game, so we got aboard. The seat was plenty wide enough when we got in. We were both skinny high-schoolers and there was at least half a butt-cheek width between us. But then the ride started spinning.

Luke had gotten the outside seat and I’d gotten the inside seat, and I quickly realized we were going to have a problem. I held on for a minute, but the centripetal force inched me ever closer to touching Luke’s butt with my butt, which seemed very un-buddy-like to me. Eventually my skinny forearms gave out and I thudded against Luke’s thigh, screaming my lungs out from either the ride or the touching, I wasn’t sure which. Luke just grinned, victorious in his butt-touching scheme.

I think it took us at least a couple more weeks after that to officially be “dating,” mostly because I was still blissfully oblivious, despite my butt having touched his butt. It’s a good thing my life didn’t depend on understanding male-female relationship dynamics. I would have been a goner.

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