Courting

We were 19 when we met - kids still, although we felt very grown up. It is only with hindsight that you realise you weren't.

We enjoyed ourselves going out, meeting friends and looking at the world through rose coloured glasses when planning our future together. I had jokingly proposed on our first date and there was some sort of agreement locked there in the back of our brains. We can't remember any sort of official proposal, we just assumed that we would be together forever.

We did a few crazy things that were great fun. In fact we still laugh about the prank we played quite early on in our relationship. We were at T's house, his parents were at a concert and we were sitting idly chatting with his sister Cathy who was waiting to be picked up to go to a party with a new boyfriend. Talk became silly. We decided that a new boyfriend should meet at least one of the parents and that I should pretend to be 'mother'.

This was all spur-of-the-moment and so we had to use what we could find to transform me from a slim, young looking 19 year old into a 'traditionally built' (to use an Alexander McCall Smith expression) middle aged woman.

T's mother used to wear shapeless house dresses which were coveralls when she was doing any type of housework or cooking. One of these 'delectable' garments was hanging on a hook so I put it on and stuffed a pillow down the front and did up the belt to hold the pillow in place. She also used to wear white socks rolled down with scuffs so I found the appropriate items and put them on. The scuffs were too small, but never mind. I powdered my face and hair and applied bright red lipstick.

T and his sister were in the dining room when I came in modelling the new look. We were all screaming with laughter when the doorbell rang. 'Go on, go on, answer the door, do it!!!' they gasped between gales of laughter, so I did.

T's house had a long corridor right down the middle. Sitting room, dining room and kitchen to the left and the bedrooms and bathroom were to the right. There was a large music room which was the width of the house at the end away from the front door. The front door was clear glass with a decorative security screen.

I quickly put on a pair of T's mother's glasses which were a la Edna Everidge and went to open the door. It wasn't so easy. The glasses were so strong that I couldn't see and the scuffs were so small they fell off, so I had to feel my way down the corridor shuffling to keep the scuffs on. The poor boy could see this lurching apparition through the glass. When I opened the door he looked fairly gobsmacked as far as I could tell. I established that he was 'Cathy's young man' and asked him to follow me into the dining room.

I could hear T and Cathy crying with laughter and then much to my surprise saw their blurred bodies hurtle across the corridor into the bathroom so I shuffled up the small hallway to the right which led to the bathroom with the new boyfriend following.

The poor young man. He thought he was going into a dining room and ended up in a bathroom where his date was sitting in the bath red faced and hysterical with tears streaming down her cheeks and her brother was doubled up with laughter on the toilet. He stood there absolutely confused until we could gather ourselves enough to explain the prank. Not surprisingly it was a once only date for Cathy.

Another time we were hosting a dinner party with our friends at my parents' house (my parents were out). In those days everyone smoked a lot and drank like fish. We had feasted to excess and had lots to drink when someone realised they had some marijuana but couldn't smoke it because they didn't have any cigarette papers. No problem. I got my father's pipe and we all puffed away, just finishing and putting the pipe back in the drawer before my parents got home. My parents were pleased that everyone seemed so happy and my father especially enjoyed his next smoke.

Ah those were the days. We didn't have any real responsibilities and certainly enjoyed our lives.