Teen Time

Tyrone

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Tyrone

It stood to reason that there would be someone for me someday. Mom always said it, and Dad kept assuring me of it; so I figured it must be true. But no one in junior high ever thought so. The boys acted like I had SARs. They walked a lake around me, their eyes downcast like they were in trouble.

I saw that other girls knew how to make boys talk. They giggled with that high-pitched tone that said they were interested in the guys. I decided that boys must have antennae. They heard that giggle, and they headed for it. I don’t giggle. I wasn’t born with that ability, and I certainly don’t know how to develop it.

I used to watch those girls throw their hair over their shoulder with coy, come-hitherness. I found it irritating, but the boys didn’t. I saw their eyes. They followed the toss and then, as if the girls had woven some kind of spell, the boys fell over their feet rushing to stand nearby, all gawky-eyed and magnetized by flopping, finger-caressed hair.

Those girls knew how to flag boys down, too. They would ask a guy for an assignment and flash black-smudged lashes and teeth shining through lip-sticked smiles that mesmerized males. But I tried it once. In fact, I tried it three times. Not one boy did more than give me a page number. No banter, no smiles of “gee, I like you, Rayna,” no sparks of any kind whatsoever.

I thought it was dreadfully unfair. I couldn’t understand why some girls were given such instincts. How did they know when to toss the hair or when to giggle, when to smile, or when to look up at the guy with that look of . . . you know what I mean, the one that makes guys babble silliness, but also makes them ask for dates? Do girls like that practice with their mothers? Do they go to special classes at night to learn it? Or is it something they’re born knowing, and the others of us are missing that chromosome or something?

I asked my best friend, Peter, but he couldn’t give me a straight answer either. “It’s stupid when they do that,” he growled, but he always watched them, glassy-eyed with fascination. He wouldn’t admit to it, but he was mesmerized by the hair flinging and rouged lips as much as the other guys. I think he might react to giggles, too, but I’ve never seen his radar steer him in that direction. Of course, it could have something to do with that fact that he knows the popular girls would flip the off switch if he came near. Instant magnetic reversal. Pretty cool, huh?

But then I noticed a guy who didn’t seem to react conventionally to the hair heaving and silly laughing. That’s Tyrone. He was really hot. I tried the assignment bit with him one day, and he gave me the page number, just as I told you, but then he looked at me. He looked into me, and I felt like he was checking out my soul. Pretty spooky. Especially when he didn’t say anything. He just walked off, without another word.

Let me tell you, if he’d said anything to me, I might have passed out, anyway, because he’s the one I used to dream about. Maybe it was that caramelized skin of his next to the whiteness of his teeth, or his resin-colored eyes, or the way he did his own thing and pretty much ignored what anyone else was doing.

The teacher called on him one day. It was in history class. She asked him to name the causes of the Korean War. When Tyrone got finished talking, the whole class clapped. He was that good, that polished. Yet Tyrone ignored all the congratulations of everyone. He just nodded his head and said thanks, real polite and everything, but he went on about his day as if he hadn’t been the spotlight hero of the hour.

I managed to tell Tyrone later how great I’d thought his answer was. He paused a moment and asked, “Did you agree with everything I said, Rayna?”

Talk about putting someone on the spot. If I’d been one of those hair floppers, I’d have probably had an answer for him, rolling it off my tongue into his lap with the ease of a ready giggle. But I couldn’t. I just stared at him, and I nodded. He gave me that same searching look, and then he turned and walked away.

In his speech, Tyrone had been wrong about quite a few things, though. I should have spoken up and told him so. I should have informed him that my father fought in the Korean War. Why didn’t I tell him? Why didn’t I answer his question truthfully?

That’s when it hit me. All those girls with their hair flipping, their smiles, and their giggles, that wasn’t really what I wanted. What I wanted was to be brave enough to answer someone like Tyrone.

I stopped concentrating then on the popular ones and their skill at manipulating boys. I started using my head and thinking -- and I decided that I wanted to say exactly what I thought about things. Yet, I couldn’t. I read and I talked about them with Peter, with my father, and with other girls, but I couldn’t stand up and say those things in class.

Then one day Tyrone went on the rampage again about Korea and why we’d been over there instead of minding our own business. I don’t know how it happened. I just bolted up, and I said some of what Dad had always told me. I knew what I was talking about too, because I’d read about it, curious because it was so much a part of my dad’s history.

When I finished, the class clapped for me, and I dropped into my seat in shock. The bell rang, and everyone filtered out, giving me the same congratulations they’d given Tyrone that time. I nodded, and I just sat there, too stunned to do more than say, “thanks.” My heart was racing. I felt sick.

Finally, worried that I’d be late for my next class, I pulled myself together and got up out of my chair. Tyrone was waiting for me outside the door.

“I’d like to meet your dad, Rayna,” he said.

I stared up into his resin eyes and thought for a moment. “Would you listen to what he had to say, or would you just argue with him?”

Tyrone smiled that mouthful of toothpaste commercial of his. I guess I would have gotten tongue-tied right about then, except I was thinking about my dad. I didn’t want Tyrone to get carried away with his anti-war slogans and not see the look in my dad’s eyes when he talked about the war and how he’d gone over there to help the Korean people.

“I’d like to listen to what he has to say,” Tyrone assured me.

I’ll ask Dad,” I hedged, after a moment of checking Tyrone’s eyes for sincerity.

My answer satisfied him. He walked me to the next class. Then he said goodbye and gave me another warm smile.

My heart was flopping about, but my geometry teacher soon made me forget Tyrone and speaking in front of the class and everything outside the world that wasn’t a polygon.

But because of my standing up for what I thought, Tyrone and I slid into friendship. Dad liked him just fine, and Tyrone learned to listen more than he talked. I grew more confident, too, about discussing the issues with both of them.

Tyrone and I went to the prom together. We had fun, but eventually, we went our different ways -- no tears or argument. Tyrone just wasn’t my soul mate, but he was a good friend.

I’ve never gone back to watching the hair flippers. Brandon, my new boyfriend, doesn’t care for that kind of thing, either. I’ve never learned to giggle, but I have learned to think. I like to believe that thinking is the more important of the two. Anyway, it's who I am; Tyrone taught me about that.

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