Thinking about the holiday today and my November thankfulness postings on Facebook took me back to a sweet and humorous memory. This particular memory dates to the holiday season of 1979, must have been about mid to late December, it was my senior year of high school and was after I had met Glenn. He was one of a couple guys I had dated that fall, but this event is what turned the tide to us moving toward a relationship.
I was active in Rainbow Girls and all the activities of the local Rainbow, Jobies and DeMolay. One of the things that happened that year was a barn dance and box dinner. For those that don't know what that entails, well a Box Dinner means that you make a meal and wrap it up nice and pretty for it to be auctioned off... in theory no one knows which dinner was made by who. The dinners are auctioned and then whoever is the winning bidder eats with whoever made the dinner.
If I remember right mine had Fried Chicken, rolls, some sort of veggie and pumpkin pie... and yes of course my date knew which dinner was mine, and everyone knew their dates box so that they would bid on it, lol-- it was for a bunch of teens after all.
Glenn's band, Easy Street was playing the dance, and he was there with his date, and I was there with a guy I'd been dating since the Halloween dance. It seems like there was a hayride before the auction and dance, it was a lot of fun, but the story really starts at the auction. The dinners were each auctioned, and the girls dates were of course the primary bidders with a little bidding by parents & chaperons that were present, to at least make it some sort of auction. For me it got a little interesting when my box came up for auction, my date bid, and then Glenn bid, and this went on for a bit... increments weren't huge. It was a bit awkward, though, since we hadn't really talked since the Halloween dance when I kind of got together with Eric, my date, so I was a bit surprised. So was Glenn's date, lol... oops.
During the dance, I had snagged Glenn's favorite hat from him, yeh, I was bratty that way. Well after the dance a large group of us did what we always did after dances, we all went to pizza. I know, we hadn't eaten that long before, and as I said, we were teens and pizza was a post-dance ritual. I think Glenn must have still been at the barn tearing down equipment while we were at the pizza parlor. Since he didn't show up by the time I was leaving I returned his hat to his mom.
The next day the guys from the different DeMolay chapters in the area had all met in Medford for some football and after their game Glenn showed up at my house unexpectedly, looking for his hat- for some reason apparently his mom hadn't given it to him or told him that she had it. -- Thanks mom!
My silly teen flirtations and hat snatching were enough to encourage him that I was still a possibility for connecting with, so he started calling again, and he came over a few times over the next couple months, until he asked me to go steady on Valentines Day. From there the rest is history, and many happy memories to look back on.
I do enjoy looking back and seeing how the Lord orchestrated events to bring the two of us together.
May your Holiday's be blessed with many events that will become happy and fun memories!
Blessings,
Mary
