Turn And Face The Strange Changes

My sister is twelve years older than I am so as a young girl growing up in the late sixties and seventies I was listening to the Beatles, Hendrix, and Jefferson Airplane. I'm quite sure I listened to my sister's records more than she did. I loved them.

Rock and Roll was in my blood from an early age, but was limited to my sister's collection and what I heard on the radio. As I became older I started my own record collection. Lots of Bob Seger, Heart, Foreigner, Journey, and even Barry Manilow. Chris W's record collection was very different from mine. He had every record KISS ever made. There were bands like Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, and a new band called AC/DC. I was scared to listen to them because I didn't want to become possessed by the devil. After all, every kid from that generation knew that KISS stood for "Knights In Satan's Service", and AC/DC stood for "Anti Christ/Devil Child". Right?

But eventually I DID listen to them....and I loved them. And I fell in love with Chris. We started dating and nothing could keep me away from him. My parents tolerated him, but it annoyed them that on Saturday nights we would go out to Malibu Grand Prix and I would watch him play Pac-Man, Asteroids, and Centipede. I didn't mind at all. I thought it was great.

Unlike the Judd Nelson character, Chris did play sports; soccer and baseball. I loved to go watch him play. He was only about 5'8" but had a nice body; very strong, muscular legs. There really wasn't much I didn't enjoy doing with Chris, but it began to frustrate me that he didn't turn in his homework and he didn't care about tests. I knew he was smart and that he could do the work, why didn't he want to show everyone else that he could?

We went to our Junior Prom together. We went to movies, he came to my house, I went to his house. I got to know his family; even his grandparents. The months ticked away. We went to our Senior Prom together. We were all over each other any chance we had. We even figured out a way to sneak off together during our heavily chaperoned senior class trip to Florida. We were a couple and everyone knew it.

As our senior year began to wind down everyone's thoughts turned toward college. My friend Kim would be going out of town to school. Kathie, Scarlett, Mark, and several other friends and I would be staying here but going to different colleges and universities. But what about Chris? He didn't have the grades or the desire to get in to college. I hoped for technical school. Most people probably just thought he'd end up in jail.

One day Chris came to me with some news. He had enlisted in the United States Marine Corps. After graduation he would be leaving home and he would be gone for four years. I tried to talk him out of it but it was too late. How could he do this to me? To us??

I didn't know what to expect. I didn't know what was going to happen, other than I knew my life was about to change forever. I was very sad, very mad, and very scared. I cried for days and days.