I Was Saved From Humiliation By My Father When I Was Sixteen
A summer night in 1978 on the Jersey Shore
This reprised vignette about my father and me is top of mind because tomorrow is Father’s Day, and this week my father turns 89.
Below, from a while ago, my father and his three sons. According to my wife Debbie, I (far left) look possessed.1
I know it was the summer of 1978, because my father had taken my younger brothers and me to see the movie Grease at the theater nearest to our home on the Jersey Shore. Long Branch, to be specific, remarkable to us for its iconic Windmill restaurant serving hot dogs and hamburgers beneath its giant blades. My father, now 89, was 41 at the time, I was sixteen and my brothers would have been ten and eight.
I obviously ate candy at the movie. But as well, pre-movie, my father had taken us to a store where I had bought additional candy to bring home for later feasting. The store-bought candy was in a white bag that I placed at my feet during the movie.
I was absorbed by the movie and fascinated by it in a wistful way. The high school experienced by Danny Zuko (John Travolta), Kenicki, and their friends at Rydell High seemed so vastly superior compared to my experience at my high school. While the movie was running, I could forget for a while the real life of my own adolescence and in the darkness of the theater pretend that the movie was somehow my real life.
Of course, I fell hard in love with Sandy (Olivia Newton John).
My sixteen year old self preferred the Sandy on the right. The one on the left scared me.
When the movie ended, so did my fantasy high school life, and my father, my brothers and I went to our car, parked between the Windmill and the theater. I remember my father looking around at all the teenagers––girls and boys––outside the Windmill and saying, “Look at all these youngsters hanging out. It’s kind of like the movie.”
It was an accurate and innocent observation, but it cut at me, because I knew I’d never be like those kids in Long Branch, scarcely older than I was if not sixteen themselves. And here I was being taken to the movies by my father with my two little brothers. The divide between being me and being cool never seemed greater.
When we got to the car, I realized I’d left my bag of store-bought candy in the movie theater. I believe there was a suggestion I should just leave it, but I needed that candy more than ever to sustain me through the night. I went back to get the bag, found it quickly, and walked back, swinging the bag to and fro, which turned out to be unwise in a packed parking lot.
On one of my swings my bag hit a car, hard enough to make a noise but not hard enough to cause damage. A girl sat cross-legged on the hood of the car, just like in a Springsteen song. “Hey, watch the car,” she shouted at me.
The indignity was too much for me, so I shouted back, “Oh, why don’t you just shut up.”
My words must have been indistinct, because she screamed, “This kid just told me to fuck off.”
I had a split second to wonder who she was screaming at before her boyfriend was on me, one hand firmly around my neck, telling me to get down on my knees and apologize. I started to protest that the girl had misheard me, but he squeezed a bit harder and repeated his command for me to kneel.
Suddenly my father appeared, and his presence changed the dynamic. My father was taller than the boyfriend and, more importantly, had about him an air of quiet confidence and reasonableness. An air of getting his way in things.
He asked the boyfriend to release me so “we could work this out.” I was released and repeated my protest at being misheard. Still standing, I apologized for hitting the car with the bag of candy. (As bags of candy go, this one was on the softer side; I’m guessing from memory of my tastes back then that the bag’s contents were mostly black Twizzlers and red Swedish fish.) 2
The boyfriend inspected the car and saw it was undamaged. He seemed annoyed at the girl for causing this disruption and maybe even felt a little foolish for his own hasty reaction. He must have sensed that I was not the type of kid, with that type of father, to go around telling strangers to “fuck off.”
The boy turned his back to us, and my father said something to the effect of “alrighty,” and, with his arm around my shoulder, led me back to the car.
I was still very embarrassed. I was sixteen after all and in my interaction with the local Grease kids, I’d acquitted myself as a loser and a dork.
But thanks to my father, I never had to suffer the humiliation of getting down on my knees or endure any physical assault. My father had saved me with the speed of his coming to my aid and then had defused the confrontation with his reasonableness and the confident ease with which he carried himself.
It’s only in retrospect, as a father myself, that I can fully appreciate how my father was a hero that night. Quiet but firm. The best kind of hero.
Question for the comments: Who are your quiet heroes?
Maybe, but my father and my brothers look good, so that’s a “quorum.”
I didn’t want this piece to be controversial but I realize that there are many licorice-haters out there. If you choose to disagree with my candy choice, please be kind and remember that I’m a person just like you!
I love stories with real heroes. Thank you for telling it and your dad for being it.
I remember this story from when you first published it. I don't usually re-read articles, but I did. I was absorbed by the story and fascinated in a wistful kind of way. The adolescence you experienced with an adult to help you back out of any mistakes you made seems so vastly superior compared to my own with adults who piled on when I made mistakes, like hitting someone else's car with my (hypothetical) bag of candy. It is a fun exercise to imagine what a life like that would have been like.
You write good escape literature, sir.