The Girl in the Fuzzy White Sweater

Peter Rukavina

I remember the night, and the feeling, more than almost any night of my life. Sometimes I forget all about it for a month or two, or maybe even a couple of years, and then suddenly I’ll be waiting for a traffic light, or standing over the sink, or putting on my shoes, and it will all flood back.

I was 12, I think. Maybe 13. The event was an experiment by our leaders at the Hamilton YMCA — all-male at the time — to hold a dance, with girls imported from the Burlington YMCA, which was a “Family Y” and thus co-ed. Amazingly, the girls came.

Most of us, boys and girls both, had never been to a dance before. We weren’t really sure what to do. And we were shy.

We were all gathered in the large first floor space in the Y known as the “Youth Department.” The ping-pong tables and the crokinole boards were cleared away to the side for the evening. The services of a local DJ were secured. The lights were lowered a bit. There were cheesies. And orange pop.

I don’t remember much about the music. I’m pretty certain Three Times a Lady was played. Probably Saturday Night by the Bay City Rollers. Probably Stairway to Heaven at the end, as that was the custom of the day. Maybe Even in the Quietest Moments by Supertramp. After that, my memory has faded too much.

If we were shy as a group, I was extra-especially shy. Girls and dancing and low lights all conspired my make me nervous. The only salvation was that it wasn’t school, so I didn’t have to see anyone in the morning, or maybe even ever again.

Towards the end of the night, after lots of standing in the corner, eating cheesies, talking to my friends, and generally trying to avoid making an ass of myself, out of the blue one of the Burlington girls came over and asked me to dance. Inexplicable.

In my minds eye, over 25 years, I’ve built this brave girl up into a vision of beauty, bravery, intelligence, moxy. She was probably just a girl from Burlington like I was a boy from Carlisle.

But it was a slow dance, and, strangely, that meant dancing in a clutch that was more like a really warm hug than a polite foxtrot.

I remember her fuzzy white sweater the most. I can evoke the feeling of it on my face — she was, predictably, taller than me, given our age — simply by closing my eyes. The whole thing was, well, very warm — the kind of thing that makes you happy to be alive. And wanting more of whatever that was.

It was over in 3, maybe 4 minutes. I think I said thank you. Or something like that. I don’t think I had another dance that night. It didn’t matter.

Comments

Submitted by Rob Paterson on

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Ah Girls and awkward boys! Her name was Beth and I was madly in love with her but I never once - not ever - said a word to her. I invited her to my 8th birthday party (the invite went in the mail) she wore a blue dress and white ankle socks. Even after 45 years she remains a vision of lovlieness and is imprinted on my memory like no other. Maybe it was better that I said nothing?

Submitted by Rob MacD on

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I lived in The Neighbourhood Of No Girls. Seriously, NO girls. Not just no girls of my age. No girls of any age. The summer when I was twelve, a (gasp) girl (sigh) my age (gasp) came to live with her relatives for a week or two. Of course, I was aware of her neighbourly presence the moment she entered the three block radius that was my stomping grounds. Of course, I started to ride my bike more and more up and down the area of the street where she was living. Of course, it took me most of the two weeks of her visit to summon up the courage to approach her. Or more to the point, to summon up the courage to acknowledge her attempts to approach me.

Inexplicably, somehow, she befriended me and for one, maybe two glorious days we were, well, not dating, but ‘not total strangers’. My two-week stakeout-slash-playing-it-cool-slash-oh-so-not-interested ploy worked, and it all culminated on the last afternoon of her visit. We played crokinole in my living room, and drank juice. And laughed. She wore a dark plaid miniskirt and what, I am convinced, must have been knee-high boots. Her hair was long and straight, her eyes, piercing. Her teeth…well, a little buck-toothed, but every jewel has an imperfection and those bunny-teeth were hers. Now, as I reflect, I imagine she had a lisp.

I never asked her her name.

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Photo of Peter RukavinaI am . I am a writer, letterpress printer, and a curious person.

To learn more about me, read my /nowlook at my bio, read presentations and speeches I’ve written, or get in touch (peter@rukavina.net is the quickest way). You can subscribe to an RSS feed of posts, an RSS feed of comments, or receive a daily digests of posts by email.

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