Origin Story
I never disagree with a teenager who tells me they are in love. Many people my age will automatically reply that they are too young to know what love is. They assume that one with so little life experience cannot possibly know themselves well enough to consider knowing someone else. They’ve watched too much Romeo & Juliet, they’ll think, or what fools these children are! But not me. I don’t discount it. I don’t make assumptions.... I know the truth.
You see, my own story of teenage angst and love is its own sort of fractured fairy tale. The short version fascinates people, and they usually beg for more details, probably with a mind to find the flaws or poke holes in my theories. Here is the short version: my husband and I got engaged after less than a month of dating, got married when I was 18 and he was 16, and we are still together now, 27 years later. No, I wasn’t pregnant, and no, we may not have gone about things the best way, but we just knew!
Aside from the narrative of how this all came to be, most listeners have questions. How did we meet? How did we know? How in the hell did we last this long? These are all valid concerns, but the ultimate answer comes down to choice.
Every day, we both make the choice to stay, to keep going, to love one another and our children, to do the hard things now to ensure a simpler future. We choose to work on it when we have problems—because everyone eventually has problems. We choose to talk about things instead of screaming. We choose to come home every night and say “I love you” before going to bed. We choose each other and we choose joy and we choose laughter and we choose love. We choose.
Has it always been easy? Hell, no! We’ve had our ups and downs, but again, we always choose to work through the downs and revel together in the ups.
But, wait. Let’s go back to the beginning. How did all this start? It’s a slightly convoluted tale....
I grew up in rural North Carolina, Thomasville to be precise. It was NASCAR country, beer and pickup trucks, cotton farms, and small-town hospitality. Everyone knew everyone, and no one seemed to mind. It was also an area filled with barely hidden prejudices and beliefs upheld through years of oral history rather than any researched or deeply reasoned rationalizations.
In that area, there was a sharp divide between the city schools—those that actually fell within the city limits of Thomasville—and the county schools—those which fell outside the town borders proper. City school kids didn’t really know or associate with county school kids, and vice versa. It was very nearly self-imposed segregation; the two high schools, Thomasville and East Davidson, didn’t even compete with one another in sports.
My dad had long been friends with Danny Slack, so I had long been friends with his daughter, Kristy. She and I attended the county schools and did not really know any city school kids.
One day, Kristy got new neighbors, and the novelty of these city kids moving in transfixed us. There was a tall, thin boy with a constant mischievous grin who was about a year older than us and his chubby, red-faced little sister, along with their frazzled mom. Michael Hayes (hereinafter referred to simply as “Hayes” due to the preponderance of Michaels in my life—but that is another story) was, despite his queer demeanor and quirky sense of humor, a fast friend, even though he maintained his enrollment at the city schools after moving to our area.
As Hayes got to know me better, he kept telling me there was a friend of his—incidentally also named Mike—who I’d really like. We tried, on a few occasions, to get together in a group, but with few drivers in our circle of friends, and fewer available cars, it just didn’t work out right away. As summer began, we each had jobs and camps and choir tours and babysitting and so much more to steal our time away, so it was not until around the middle of June that Hayes and I went for a drive, and he directed me to his other friend’s house to introduce me.
We walked into Jimmy Wayne Hanks’ dingy dungeon of a bedroom on June 18, 1994. It is a day which will forever serve as a demarcation point in my life. Jimmy was Mike’s best friend, practically a brother, so Hayes thought Mike might be there. He wasn’t, and he did not show up during our three or so hours of just hanging around, sitting on the bed and talking, and watching Jimmy do things on his old Tandy computer that I do not understand to this day. It was nearing the time I’d have to report for work, so Hayes and I said our see yas, and I looked forward to adding this gangly, awkward kid to my circle of friends.
But that was not to be.
Late that night, Jimmy parked his car next to the wooded edge of the Catholic church parking lot—the only Catholic church for miles and miles there in Southern Baptist land—and he placed the end of a 20-guage shotgun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.
* * * * *
The following Monday evening, June 20th, Jimmy’s family held visitation at Sechrest Funeral Home, a long squat building with floor-to-ceiling windows across the entire front lobby overlooking the exciting asphalt parking lot. I went along with Hayes as a literal shoulder to cry on; I knew none of these city kids, and though I was sad for my friend and the family of the boy I’d just met, I was fairly detached from the proceedings.
As I stood next to Hayes in the lobby in the only black dress I owned at the time, a fit and flare number that I remember as both comfortable and flattering, I watched through the bank of windows as students trickled into the building. I could see the mourners who knew him well and the posers who were expected to be sad. The distinction between the two was obvious, and I remember being sad that there were so very few people who were truly feeling Jimmy’s loss.
The parade of strangers continued to fill the lobby area, and I looked out again to see another young man. He was very well-dressed, tough looking back on it, he must have been sweltering on the blacktop in that high June heat. He sported a well-fitted black pinstriped suit, black shirt, white tie, black fedora with a white band, black trench coat with a white scarf, and he was adjusting a button at his right wrist. His hair, trailing down to the bottoms of his shoulder blades, was blowing back in the breeze, and as he lifted his head, his dazzling green eyes were rimmed with red and spilling unabashed tears.
I will never forget this striking figure who so immediately and completely captured my imagination. I tapped Hayes on the shoulder, and with a mostly failed attempt to hide the eagerness in my voice, asked him, “Who is that?”
“Oh, that’s Mike. He’s the one I wanted you to meet.” I continued to stare in rapt attention. Mike came inside, found Hayes and embraced his friend for a moment, then mumbled through the introduction Hayes made to me. He left to go stand with Jimmy’s family, and I didn’t see him again that night, or for some time thereafter.
To this day, he does not remember meeting me there.
I wasn’t able to attend the funeral the next day, and Mike left immediately after to go stay with family in South Carolina. I continued to hang out with Hayes and help him heal as best I could. I spent most of my time off work at his house. He called Mike’s house to see if he was home yet, and we left a message filled with support and love on his answering machine. Hayes led the way and encouraged a meet and greet upon Mike’s return to civilization, and I simply offered my condolences. “I know you probably don’t remember me, but I am here for you. Whatever you need, you just say the word.”
Mike’s mother called him in South Carolina and played the message back to him. He called Hayes’ house and spoke to him for a while. He’d been planning to come back to Thomasville the following week, but felt he needed more time before being bombarded with the hauntings of memories all over town. He said he’d be staying with his uncle for at least another week, and then Hayes asked if he felt up to talking to me. Intrigued by my earlier message, and armed with whatever positive picture Hayes had been painting of me to that point, he agreed, and I took the receiver.
Mike and I talked for over two hours that day. We found that we had much in common, and that where we didn’t match up precisely, we complemented one another. We agreed that when he did return home, he would let us know, and he and I and Hayes and my friend, April, would all get together and hang out for a while—not a date, really, but more of a get-together.
I gave him my phone number to my direct line in my room, as well as my work schedule over the next several days. When I was not working or sleeping, I was talking to him. It was such an instant and deep connection, with an undeniable pull toward one another. I was smitten before, but now I was simmering—anxious to see him again.
* * * * *
Mike returned to Thomasville at the beginning of July. Early in the morning on July 4th, 1994, he and I and Hayes and April got together, and we spent the entire day together. We had epic adventures, including our urban spelunking of the abandoned Church St. School—the first brick and mortar school for blacks in the state. The grass grew thick and tall in front of the entryway, but Hayes and Mike had been here before. “Over here,” Hayes called as he led us around to a back entrance.
We shoved our way through the flimsy fiberboard covering where the door had been to the kitchen. Giant pots and pans still littered the area, covered in years of dust streaked white from bird droppings here and there. We made our way out into the hallway where lockers gaped at us with their doors askew or missing like an uncared-for smile. Some still held textbooks, the most recent one we could find published in 1962. “Check this out,” Mike called as he forged ahead.
We entered what had clearly been the auditorium, the seats disjointed and broken. The stage had a grand proscenium arch, and much to my surprise, the heavy red velvet drapery, though tattered and threadbare, was still hanging in place around its edges. In true fame-seeking fashion typical to my behavior, I jumped up on the dusty stage and began to sing. My friends applauded and laughed, and we continued our exploration through the creepy building.
It was as if everyone had evacuated mid-school day, and no one had ever returned. In the office, we found correspondence, file cabinets with student records, hand-jotted notes on old-school mimeograph paper. Classrooms still had the faint remnants of lessons written on the chalk boards, faded with the passage of time, but never quite wiped away. Someone’s red cardigan still lay flung over the back of a chair. It was like walking through the set of a movie about the Rapture™. People had obviously been here, used the space as intended, and then one day, they’d simply disappeared.
As we continued our haunting of those hallowed halls, we made our way to the gym, a separate building at the back of the property, added as an afterthought. We sat in the middle of the hardwood floor, avoiding the scorch marks of an earlier fire in the back corner, and we talked and played Truth or Dare. The shadows stretched in the gathering twilight, and soon we saw the streak of headlights pass over the walls. We knew we weren’t supposed to be there, so we stood, gathered our things, and began to scatter. “Ow, shit!” Mike whisper-shouted just as the flashlights entered the gym.
The two police officers who had entered the gym with us were questioning us with their flashlights in our faces. While they were questioning us, I happened to look down and saw the growing puddle of blood under Mike’s bare foot! I prayed the officers wouldn’t notice, and my prayers were answered. Soon after, the police warned us that they would ticket us for trespassing if they found us there again and watched as we left... but didn’t see Mike’s trail of blood.
Once we got in the car, Mike told us he had stepped on a nail during the scramble. We wrapped a T-shirt around his foot and headed for the gas station where his mother was working. She patched him up—without asking what happened—and then we headed to my house for a cookout before fireworks.
My dad was grilling burgers and hot dogs, and it was a fun and festive atmosphere. We sat around and watched some TV. I remember at one point sitting in one of our dining room chairs with Mike sitting beside me on the floor. I was eating some grapes, and he asked for some, so I fed him grapes from the vine by dangling them above his mouth. (I later found out he asked his dad the next day, “Dad, have you ever had a woman feed you grapes?”)
After dinner, we rode around town, checking out different locations throughout Thomasville and High Point. We hung out until around 1am, when I dropped everyone at home and called it a night.
* * * * *
Mike and I became nearly inseparable after that. A little less than a month later, on July 31, 1994, we were celebrating Mike’s 16th birthday. He and Hayes and I were riding around town, as we often did, and Mike seemed pensive. He asked Hayes to pull his Geo Metro over at an old gas station with a gravel parking lot. Hayes did as he was asked, and Mike got out of the car and started pacing the small lot. I looked at Hayes and said, “I’ll go,” and I got out of the car to find out what was wrong.
When Mike turned at the end of his pace and saw me, he smiled and walked up to me. He said, “I want to spend the rest of my life with you,” and he dropped to one knee. “Marry me.”
* * * * *
That was 27 years ago, and we are still going strong! There’s a lot more to our story, but those are tales for another time.