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Um . . . Maybe We Shouldn’t Be Here

 

                                                                                                                                             Art by Mollyroselee

Way back in ancient times when I was in high school, I had a girlfriend. I lived in Eugene and she lived in a little community, about 10 miles away. Being as we were teenagers, finding places to “make-out” was high on our priorities. This was my first serious girlfriend and neither one of us were very experienced at having a relationship. Just to be clear, our make-out sessions did not advance to the ultimate step. But it was not easy to find a place to have some privacy. Definitely not her parents’ house. Definitely not my parents' house. We resorted on occasion to “parking” But even parking can have its problems. The last thing we wanted was to be sitting in at Armitage Park and having a cop investigate what that car was doing just sitting there at night.

On one occasion, we decided to go to the pioneer cemetery which was on the way to her house. The girl in question (let’s call her “S”) had a rather strict father. I got along reasonably well with her father, but he let it be known that there was no negotiation about what time she was to be home. If he said she should be home by 11:00, that did not mean 11:01. If we got home at 30 seconds after Eleven, there would be trouble. I did not want trouble.

The nice thing about parking in the cemetery to do our necking was that it was only about five minutes from her house. So we did not have to worry about traffic or other problems from keeping us from meeting our deadline. That was my thinking on that night. My adult self recognizes that making out in a cemetery is a rather disrespectful thing to do. But teenagers seldom think of such things.

Undisturbed, we were. This was out in the middle of nowhere. We pulled off the main road and took the gravel driveway to the cemetery. No houses in sight. Even the main road was sparsely travelled. It was pitch black. Spooky? Was it spooky? You don’t think about ghosts when you are walking around a cemetery in daylight, but at night? Maybe, a bit. I think S was feeling it more than me, but she shook it off. We had been kissing and cuddling for a few minutes and then . . .

WHAM!

"Something" hit the roof of my car. Freaked out? Yes, I think it is fair to say we were freaked about as far as possibly out as you can get. Our heart rates shot through the roof. S said something on the order of “what the hell was that!” I wasn’t staying to find out. I quickly started the car and threw it into gear. We bounced down the driveway to the main road. When we got to the road and headed for S’s house I noticed an apple sitting in the windshield wiper well in front of me. It was obvious what had happened. One if the trees we were parked under had been an apple tree. The apple fell off and hit the roof of my car. It was a perfectly reasonable prosaic explanation. No need to bring ghosts into it. But still . . . There was a part of me that wondered if a ghost had encouraged that apple to fall at that precise moment to show us we should have some respect for the dead.

S and I laughed about it once we had our breaths back. I don’t really believe a ghost had knocked that apple off. But still . . .

Star Liner

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