After staring at the ceiling for an hour, I rolled over and got out of bed. I couldn’t sleep. My mind was racing, as I thought about how I wanted everything to go perfect today. The forecast said it was going to be a warm summer day. This meant that most of my neighborhood buddies would be meeting up at the corner to hang out and likely play sports all day. The sport of choice for the day would be determined by how many kids showed up and where we could find space to play.  

         Growing up in an inner -city neighborhood dominated with apartment buildings had the built- in advantage of providing a large number of kids to hang out and play with every day. The disadvantage however was the lack of any suitable places to play. But my mind was not thinking about sports this morning. Well, not on playing sports anyway. Today was going to be one of the biggest days of my young life. I was going on my first date.

         My friends and I had grown up attending school and church with all of the same neighborhood girls for years and never really paid them much attention. I attended a local Catholic school that was very small. My class only had 18 kids ( conveniently a mix of  9 girls and 9 boys) of which 16 of us had been together since the first grade. So, we all knew each other well. Then somehow overnight the world changed. Paying attention to girls and having them do the same, suddenly seemed equal in importance to your sports prowess. Not only were we expected to take notice of the girls, but there was a good amount of pressure to pair off as boyfriend and girlfriend. It seemed like once you pierced that first relationship cover, you became more desirable in the eyes of all the girls. Needless to say, I was still on the persona non grata side of that ledger.

         I have to admit, that I was very naïve and not prepared for any of this. I was still happy playing baseball all day. At this point in my life, that was the only first base I knew about or ever got to. But you can’t imagine the power that peer pressure has on a young teen. Your status in the neighborhood now depended on if you were popular with the girls.

         Most of my friends had already spent some “one- on- one” time with a girl. This was defined as talking with a girl away from the other kids, or maybe hanging out on the steps of her house or walking together to the candy store or to get an ice cream. This simple act of spending time together was enough to have everyone label you as boyfriend and girlfriend.

        It should be noted that at that age these unofficial relationship pairings had the shelf life of about three weeks. 

         Not only was today going to be my first date, but I somehow had found the nerve to ask out Lori Sorrento. She was by far considered to be the best catch in the neighborhood. At least that was her standing among all of my friends. What was I thinking! As if there wasn’t enough pressure of a first date, but why did I choose to start at the top? She was very pretty, very smart and very developed for her age. The combination of these “traits” had made her very popular. The word on the street was that she was already skilled in the art of “boyfriend stuff”, having already had a number of previous suitors on her front steps, literally and figuratively.  So here I am, a green, inexperienced rookie, planning to make my dating debut against the 1927 Yankees. Now you know why I had trouble sleeping.

         To add to my first date fears, I had made the tactical error of making this an all -day event. To secure the date and avoid the embarrassment of getting turned down, I had devised a strategy. Knowing that Lori was a big Chicago Cubs fan, I made the assumption that she wouldn’t turn down an offer to go to a game. So, when I asked her if she wanted to go, I got a resounding YES for an answer. My friends were so jealous. This was a way bigger move than walking to the candy store. If I could pull this off, my street cred would go through the roof.