Summer of 1980

I was eighteen in the summer of 1980, and on my way to the beach after graduation with some girlfriends and had life by the tail never realizing that this was the time of my life.  Riding shotgun to my best friend Lorraine in an ole' blue 1972 hatchback VW, backseat was Forie Daniels, Debbie Montgomery, and Marsha Parsons.  This car that would barely go sixty, but baby we were cruisin' down the highway, wind in our hair, tunes turned up and boys on the brain.  We were some cute chicks going to the beach and going to have fun.  Five of us in tuna can, no a/c in south Carolina and we were lovin' every minute of it.  Eating Cheetos, drinking cokes, and stopping only to pee or for gas we were Myrtle Beach bound. 
We found our little white beach house that sat ON the beach, yes ON the beach and one of our guys that we hung out with was there already wanting for us.  Kelly Walker.  Student body president of Asheville high, all around great guy.  Stick man is what everyone called him.  He was the welcoming committee.  Already nice and tan with the tape across his back of his girlfriends name he was going to leave it the whole week so when he went home to her, HOLLY would be as bold as the white skin under that tape.  Kelly was great! 
So we went in, picked out a room, room mates were decided and the party started.  Although we weren't huge parties, there was a little drinking.  We went dancing every night.  Switched clothes so it looked like we all had a huge wardrobe and all looked fabulous.  We traded shoes, shirts, pants, jeans, shorts, sandals, anything we could possibly switch, we did. 
 One day while on the beach we had this bright idea to switch bathing suits, while out in the water.  Now mind you, all of our guy friends were laying out in the sun with us on this particular day. So we just very nonchalantly got up all like eight of us (all the Civitan girls) there might have been more.  Anyway, we swim out pretty far and proceed to get naked and twirl our top and bottoms and whoop and holler to the guys.  Then as quick as a wink, we pick a partner to switch with.  I haven't ever seen guys hit the water so quickly in all my born days, trying to get out there to see us in our birthday day suits. We were all laughing and giggling so hard. What if we had dropped someone bottom?  Or top?  The funny thing was, we all came out of the water wearing someone else's suit, mismatched to the hilt.  We have the picture to prove it!  Somewhere. 
Then one night we slipped down to the guys house and got all of their underwear and took it down to the ocean, got it nice and wet then.patted the crotch with sand, then put them all in the freezer.  But the next night the got us back by freezing our bras. We didn't realize we were in trouble until it was time to go out the next night and no one had an over the shoulder boulder holder because the were in the deep freeze with ice cubes stuck to them!  We had to all wear sun dresses that night.   On the fun we had playing tit for tat, no pun intended. 
On the next to last day we were all standing on the porch and one of the girls named Holly was a waiting a drive by her so called beloved named Jimmy. He hadn't called Holly the whole week we had been there.  He had obviously been too busy. Jimmy and Holly were quit the idem at Asheville High, didn't appear so down here in the low country.  We had her back in case she needed us to kick some booty.  This girl was hopelessly in love with this boy and had tears in her eyes.  We knew she needed us to be out there with her if he decided to show up. Besides, she didn't need to appear sad, we needed to cheer her up.  The last thing a boy needs to see is a girl crying over him.  We were a cute bunch of girls and we were going to make sure he was sorry that he had waited so long to call.  Holly looked over at me and said "Oh, gosh, their here."  Who, they, what, where, I knew Jimmy's car, and I didn't see Jimmy's car in front of the house.  Holly said, "Gary drove, see the gold Camaro with the bird on the hood?  Oh, OK. They had parked down a few houses and were walking up.
It felt like Jimmy and Holly's talk didn't last all that long but the funny thing was I couldn't stop looking at the guy driving the car.  Once I caught him looking at my legs.  It made my stomach feel funny.  I swallowed hard.  He was blond, blue eyed and very tan.  It made me look twice before going back into the house.
Later that night, Holly said she talked to Jimmy and Gary wanted to know all about me.  This was a good sign.  But the bad thing was we were all going home the next day.  I was thrilled.  This was the first time I was excited about going back home to Asheville.  I kept telling myself, just wait and see if you see him again or if he calls you.  I'm going to college in the fall, I don't need this.  I just want to date, nothing serious.  Why did I feel like I was about to loose my breath when I thought of him....