All Night Skate, Lizard Tongues, and Tackle Boxes!

All Night Skate, Lizard Tongues, And Tackle Boxes
written by, M.L.L. aka. Tom Sawyer



This story consists of all the topics I listed in the title of this essay.

In the year of 1990, I was in middle school, 8th grade to be exact. I lived in rural Texas. Activities under the “rad” menu, were few and far between. The only thing we had that was well…rad, was the rollerskating rink on the otherside of town. A huge megaplex of glossy hardwood floors and terrible snack food. I’d frequented this place all throughout childhood, but I’d never been allowed to go to the “all night skate lock-in.”

The lock-in was for kids with parents that let them watch movies like, “Pretty Woman” and “Dirty Dancing.” None of which I saw until my adult life. On a side note, I was allowed to watch horror films with my mother and brother..i.e. “Hellraiser.”
I have no idea what relevance that has to this story, but take it for what you think it means? Again, that was a side note tid-bit.

So, where was I? Oh, right. The lock-in stuff…

This girl who lived on the street ½ of a mile from me was one of those kids that couldn’t wait to be grown up and make-out with dudes. I was the opposite. I thought the whole idea was rancid. Dudes were my homies and not to be making out with…but nobody was in the “make-out” category. I simply didn’t think about it. This bothered my friend severely. She couldn’t wrap her mind around why I wasn’t practicing french kissing on my GI Joe dolls… because she was totally doing that all-the-time.

It was the summer before 8th grade when I was finally brave enough to ask permission to go to the…(drum roll please) ALL NIGHT SKATE!!!!! To my surprise, my family agreed to let me go providing I would call from the pay phone and check in with them from time to time. I was so excited.

The preparation for this event was a huge deal to my friend. She told me to bike to her house about 2 hours ahead of time so we could get “fixed up with makeup.”

Uhm………? Make-up you speak? Uhm……? No?!

My physical appearance was the last thing on my priority list. I was a fat kid, had huge rabbit-like teeth, a horrendous lisp, covered in freckles, and I spoke of science.
Yet, being naïve and gullable, I showed up with full expectation of being “made up all pretty-like.” I arrive at my friend’s house and she immediately wisks me away into her room for the big makeover. One hour later, I’m covered in pink and feelin’ like an asshole.

My friend’s mother drops us off at the skating rink. We have our sleeping bags, granola bars(totally not my idea), and about $40.00 between us. Life was kickin’ ass.

After paying to get inside, without hesitation I raced to the skate rental center. My friend ran up beside me and said, “No, not yet. We need to hang out first and just see who’s here.” I refused and said, “ I’m going to get my skates now because I want the speed skates.” Nerd am I.

About one hour later, the whole lot of ‘em starts to show. All the pre-teen nightmarish kids within a 15 mile radius. (*see rural Texas fun, above*)

That night, I think out of the 12 hours of “all night skating” potential, I probably skated about 10 of those hours. I was there to skate, right? Wrong. In the 2 hours of not skating, it was because this friend of mine convinced me to hang out with her and her new boyfriend??? When did she get a boyfriend? She got the boyfriend in the previous 10 hours that I was skating with the other nerds, and the usual 50 year old backward skating dude…. THAT guy has been in all skating rinks from here to Venice, California. I swear it’s the same guy! Early 50’s, ill-fitting jeans, very thin and lanky, and he shares in the ambition of ACTUALLY SKATING for 10+ hours.

My friend’s new boyfriend of 10 hours was named Derrick. He was a douchebag. He had that look on his face that let everyone know that he was the hot shit ticket to be sitting around. When my friend introduced me to him, I knew that it would take street credibility off of her feigned persona at this event. I will still never figure out why she didn’t see that coming? I saw it coming! I sat down on the ground and my friend asked Derrick if he had any other friends who might be interested in me. (upload uproar of laughter now)

The answer to that? A very big NOOOOO. I honestly didn’t care and was relieved that I didn’t have to talk to douchebags douchier friends. My friend at one point started making out with this Derrick guy. It was all tongue, all the time. Full tongue action with slobber.
To this, I felt as though I was turning into a mixture of: The Invisible Woman & The Hulk. I was pissed off. Mainly because I didn’t see the point to my cessation from skating! Why did I stop skating again? Oh, right. So I could watch you two slobber and cram your tongues down each other’s throats. Nice.

Her 10 hour relationship jumpstart ended abruptly the next day.

Three weeks later…
Another lock in at the skating rink was in full swing. I made it very clear that I would indeed be skating for the full 12 hours, sans watching the lizard tongue action.
She complied to my wishes, and chose to passive aggressively ignore me the entire night. I don’t think she put on a pair of skates ONE time in those 2 lock-in nights. Lame.

She met some dude named Justin. He was in 9th grade, an “older man” for us measely 8th grade gals. He seemed pretty damn cool though? I rolled off the rink and got some shitty nachos with food poisoning sauce and sat down. They eventually joined me. Justin had a friend named Sloan, also a 9th grader. They were not douchebags, but something wasn’t totally rad about them. Sloan seemed to actually like me? So immediately I doubted his credibility. I thought, “yeah right. Do you not know who I am? I’m Mel, THE SUPER DORK!” But whatever, he thought I was cute? Weird. (trust me, I wasn’t cute then, and it’s not me being critical of myself… I really wasn’t cute.)

After the lock-in, we all exchanged numbers. Wow, a guy wants to call me? Crazy shit!

Later on in the week, my friend, Justin, and Sloan, decided that we should all go out to the mall. A huge trek into the great beyond… THE CITY. My friend’s mother dropped us off at the mall and said she’d pick us up at 8pm. Across from this mall was a Walmart.
For some lame ass reason we thought it would be cool to go over there? I’ll never remember why exactly, but we did and that was the downfall of the night in my world.

We go into Walmart and Justin and my friend split off in an entirely different direction. She gave me that chick look that says, “I’m going with my boyfriend to a secluded aisle to suck face.” Lame.

Sloan assured me it as cool that they were splitting off, and then he grabbed my hand and started making way toward the sporting goods section. I was freaked out already. I didn’t want to hold his hand, and I didn’t think we were going to the sporting goods area to look at flashlights, so what was the point?

He kept nervously laughing and saying over and over again, “It’s okay Mel, it’s okay. Trust me, you’ll like this.” SCARY!

Eventually we were on the aisle with the fishing equipment, bait, tackle boxes, and other various things one would buy if going on a fishing trip…including live bait that was packaged nicely in a see-thru tacklebox. All I remember was Sloan grabbing my shoulder and turning me toward him and then cramming his large slobbery tongue down my throat in a manic fashion. He was holding my face too. I was making a fuss about this and he let me go and I said, “What are you doing?” He said, “you haven’t french kissed before?” I plainly stated that I hadn’t and why would I want to! He grabbed my face again and all I remember was seeing the earthworms squirming around in the clear tacklebox to my left. I felt nauseated and Sloan’s tongue cramming was getting increasingly disgusting by the second. I couldn’t take it any more and I broke off from him, stood back about 8 feet and said, “Dude, no way man. No way. French kissing is the nastiest thing I’ve ever felt in my life. I’m not doing that with you again.”

After that, you’d think most young guys would be so embarrassed that they’d call it a night and we’d call our parents and that would be that, right? Wrong. The hormones of most normal 8th-12th grade people are at a critical level. Not mine however. I had no hormones, not yet anyway. (late bloomer) He comes at me again with his lizard tongue and crap pincher hands and before getting anywhere close to my face, his tongue was out and wriggling around…like the worms in the box. ICK! I pushed him with full force and off he went into the barrel of fishing poles. I pointed a finger at his face and said, “I don’t want to FRENCH KISS YOU FOR THE LAST TIME!!!!!!” I said that so loud that the manager of the sporting goods section came over and asked what the problem was.

I stated that Sloan had tried to cram his tongue down my throat one too many times.
The manager laughed and said, “why don’t you two call your parents and get them to pick you up, okay?”

That was A-OKAY by me! Great! Let’s go now!

I briskly walked that whole thing off, and found April and Justin in the automotive area, totally making mouth noises and cramming tongues. I pulled them apart physically and said, “I’m done with this retarded night, I want to go home, this sucks ass.”

She was really upset with me needless to say. But as we were walking out, her boyfriend Justin said, “Mel, come here… thank you for doing that. I wasn’t into that at all. She was grossing me out dude.”

I asked him why and we basically lived the same night of lizard tongue cramming slobber mouth kisses. Terrifying.

To this very day, that was a defining moment in my life. I chose to stop something that I thought was gnarly-nasty and I think it set the tone for who I was as a person. I think Justin would probably say the same if he were questioned. It goes to show that not all adolescents are the same geno-type. Not all of us were ruled by our hormonal impulses, but some of us were.

In closing, I found out that my friend got married at the age of 17, has 5 children, and I’m not real sure if they are all from the same guy? I don’t know what happened to Sloan, but I’m sure he used Rufies in someone’s drink at some stage? I don’t know… but damn, he didn’t know how to respond when he was told, “NO! YOU’RE SICK!”
So….I’m just sayin’... middle school sucked, all-night-skates are fun if you skate, and french kissing is highly overrated at 12 years old.

Thanks for reading.