Read Online My Mother Was Nuts by Penny Marshall - Free Book Online
Authors: Penny Marshall
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have said something after the dance and so this time they said it wasn’t a good idea for me to sit with them anymore.
What?
I didn’t understand why. As I said, I was naïve.
“It’s not cool with the Texas boys,” one of them explained.
I dismissed their warning with a shake of my head. Screw that. Growing up, I had always been able to cross boundaries. I had gone into whatever neighborhood I wanted and played with whomever I wanted, and I wasn’t going to stop now. “I’m going to sit with you if I want to sit with you,” I said. “I don’t give a shit what the Texas boys think.”
And I didn’t.
My admirers included the football team’s captain, Chuck Cummings. We dated for several months. He had starred in the team’s biggest victory of the year, the 1961 Aviation Bowl Championship, in Dayton,Ohio, and one night we were reliving some of those magic moments and creating a few of our own in the front seat of his car. Now, this is where life gets embarrassing. I thought that I’d already had sex, which shows how ignorant I was. If you think you’ve had sex but aren’t sure, you probably haven’t done it.
As it turned out, I hadn’t—until that night when I was making out with Chuck, and even then I wasn’t sure what was happening other than that this guy who weighed two hundred plus pounds was on top of me and I couldn’t push him off. Unsure what he was trying to do, I quit struggling and said, “Hey, if whatever you’re trying to do means that much to you, go ahead.”
It was after curfew when I walked back into my dorm and the tight-ass monitor immediately slapped me with twenty-eight “late” minutes. That pissed me off. Once upstairs, I changed clothes and discovered there was blood in my underwear. The next morning I called Chuck and yelled at him for making me start my period. He was quiet for a moment. He took a deep breath before explaining that he didn’t think I had started my period.
“No? I’m bleeding,” I said, annoyed.
“Penny, let me talk to you about what happened,” he said.
Like the good guy that he was, he came over and took me for a walk, and with more compassion and gentleness than you’d ever expect from a star football player, he explained the facts of life to me. This was the talk that I never got while growing up. I guess it says something about me that I didn’t just have sex with the captain of the football team. I learned about it from him, too.
Tragically, Chuck died in a car accident the next year. In his honor, the university created the annual Chuck Cummings Memorial Award for the most inspirational player. They still give it out. I also think it’s kind of cool that there’s a memorial to the first guy I did it with.
I know that I’ve never forgotten him.
CHAPTER 10
Mrs. Henry
Penny and Mickey Henry cutting the cake at their 1963 wedding in New Mexico
Anthony Marshall
T OWARD THE END of my sophomore year, I met Mickey Henry and I quit thinking about all the other boys I had been dating or wanted to date. A freshman, Mickey was in school on a football scholarship. An All-State end from Highland High, he was large and strong—exactly the type I liked—with short, dark hair and a puckish grin like a young Burt Reynolds. I came up to his shoulder and practically disappeared when he wrapped his arms around me.
You couldn’t find two more different people, though. Mickey and his two sisters had been raised by his grandmother. His mother worked at the local military base. His father had been in an institution since Mickey was a baby. If not for football, he wouldn’t have traveled outside of Albuquerque. He was shocked by the stories I told about my family and growing up in New York. If I didn’t amuse him, I confused him. Like when I tried to explain why my brother, sister, and I had all been confirmed different religions but were atheists.
Then summer came. I was a counselor for the second year in a row at Diana-Dalmaqua, a camp in the
What?
I didn’t understand why. As I said, I was naïve.
“It’s not cool with the Texas boys,” one of them explained.
I dismissed their warning with a shake of my head. Screw that. Growing up, I had always been able to cross boundaries. I had gone into whatever neighborhood I wanted and played with whomever I wanted, and I wasn’t going to stop now. “I’m going to sit with you if I want to sit with you,” I said. “I don’t give a shit what the Texas boys think.”
And I didn’t.
My admirers included the football team’s captain, Chuck Cummings. We dated for several months. He had starred in the team’s biggest victory of the year, the 1961 Aviation Bowl Championship, in Dayton,Ohio, and one night we were reliving some of those magic moments and creating a few of our own in the front seat of his car. Now, this is where life gets embarrassing. I thought that I’d already had sex, which shows how ignorant I was. If you think you’ve had sex but aren’t sure, you probably haven’t done it.
As it turned out, I hadn’t—until that night when I was making out with Chuck, and even then I wasn’t sure what was happening other than that this guy who weighed two hundred plus pounds was on top of me and I couldn’t push him off. Unsure what he was trying to do, I quit struggling and said, “Hey, if whatever you’re trying to do means that much to you, go ahead.”
It was after curfew when I walked back into my dorm and the tight-ass monitor immediately slapped me with twenty-eight “late” minutes. That pissed me off. Once upstairs, I changed clothes and discovered there was blood in my underwear. The next morning I called Chuck and yelled at him for making me start my period. He was quiet for a moment. He took a deep breath before explaining that he didn’t think I had started my period.
“No? I’m bleeding,” I said, annoyed.
“Penny, let me talk to you about what happened,” he said.
Like the good guy that he was, he came over and took me for a walk, and with more compassion and gentleness than you’d ever expect from a star football player, he explained the facts of life to me. This was the talk that I never got while growing up. I guess it says something about me that I didn’t just have sex with the captain of the football team. I learned about it from him, too.
Tragically, Chuck died in a car accident the next year. In his honor, the university created the annual Chuck Cummings Memorial Award for the most inspirational player. They still give it out. I also think it’s kind of cool that there’s a memorial to the first guy I did it with.
I know that I’ve never forgotten him.
CHAPTER 10
Mrs. Henry
Penny and Mickey Henry cutting the cake at their 1963 wedding in New Mexico
Anthony Marshall
T OWARD THE END of my sophomore year, I met Mickey Henry and I quit thinking about all the other boys I had been dating or wanted to date. A freshman, Mickey was in school on a football scholarship. An All-State end from Highland High, he was large and strong—exactly the type I liked—with short, dark hair and a puckish grin like a young Burt Reynolds. I came up to his shoulder and practically disappeared when he wrapped his arms around me.
You couldn’t find two more different people, though. Mickey and his two sisters had been raised by his grandmother. His mother worked at the local military base. His father had been in an institution since Mickey was a baby. If not for football, he wouldn’t have traveled outside of Albuquerque. He was shocked by the stories I told about my family and growing up in New York. If I didn’t amuse him, I confused him. Like when I tried to explain why my brother, sister, and I had all been confirmed different religions but were atheists.
Then summer came. I was a counselor for the second year in a row at Diana-Dalmaqua, a camp in the
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