I'm not as innocent as I seem

I stopped at the drugstore on my way home from work tonight and I saw the strangest thing. A payphone. An actual, live payphone. I can't even remember the last time I saw one. I'm sure they exist in lots of places that I don't frequent but here was one outside of a drugstore. I was fascinated. I got out of the car and had to take a closer look to make sure it wasn't some installation of modern art or something.

And at that moment, I had a flashback to the year 1979. My friends and I were 13 years old and our Saturday ritual was hanging out at the local mall. Our parents would take turns dropping us off and then picking us up 5 hours later. We would leave the house fresh faced and innocent and turn into mall walking Lolitas after we rolled on our Kissing Slicks in the Sears bathroom.

First, we would head to Cunningham Drugstore where we would steal something we just didn't feel like paying for. Then we would go to Spencer's where we would immediately head to the back room and marvel at the fuzzy posters that glowed under blacklight. We would sneak our way over to the "18 and over" section and giggle and snort over booby mugs and penis pens until we got caught and were told to leave.

Our last and longest stop was the game room,the pinnacle of our Saturday mall experience. The game room was off in a hallway across from the movie theater and as you approached, you heard the DING, DING, DING of that silver ball being ricocheted around the machine. There were a few video games, PacMan and such, but the real cool guys were the ones who played pinball.

One in particular, shaggy haired Mike, was the Richmond Mall's resident pinball wizard. He wasn't blind like the pinball wizard in the Who song but I would have thought so. I spent hours dreamily watching the flippers dance under his touch but he never even knew I existed. Girls stood around staring at him and guys wanted to be him. He had it all.

Since I was invisible to him, I latched onto the next best thing to heal my wounded ego. A boy named John, who attended a school for "troubled teens" and had a chain attached to his wallet. Looking back, he reminded me of Willie Ames(Tommy Bradshaw from Eight is Enough) gone bad. I secretly hoped that Mike would see me with him, become jealous and profess his undying love for me.

At the end of the day, bad boy John walked me to the entrance so I could wait for my father to pick us up. My friend waited off to the side so that I could have some private time with my personal hooligan. We were leaning against the payphones and John was whispering some dirty things about my Love's Baby Soft perfume when I saw Mike coming toward us over John's shoulder. This was my chance. I grabbed John and kissed him and he fell against me and the phone booth.

To this day, it was THE most disgusting kiss of my life. He tasted like cigarettes and gum and I almost choked on his tongue when he thrust it halfway down my throat. When I came up for air, I saw that shaggy haired Mike was gone and I looked at John, who was wiping my Sinnamon Sin lipgloss from his mouth. What a waste.

And yes, all this because I saw a payphone today. God forbid, I see someone wearing a tube top.