Sweet Sixteen......

....and never been kissed. I began high school in the fall of 1957 at age 13. High school was an overwhelming experience after eight years in a one room school. The girl who had been my best friend was a year ahead of me - a sophomore with a whole new set of friends. Some of the town kids were nice while others just made fun of us country bumpkins. The first day or two I discovered I had every class with another girl from the country, Ellen Sullivan. Fate threw us together and we have been friends ever since. Gradually my circle widened.
Mom & Dad had made it clear to Betty and me that we would not be allowed to date until we were 16. OK, so maybe I couldn't date them, but that did not stop me from having crushes on the boys in my classes; and thinking about them and talking about them and giggling about them and dreaming about them.
Finally the fall of my junior year began - the fall I turned 16. Now I could date! Problem was, no one asked me out. Then the break through, a senior boy (Marvin Lockwood) called me up and asked me out. Just my luck, I did not want to go out with him. I told him I would have to ask my parents and call him back. They told me I was old enough to make up my own mind. I told him they said 'no'.
The guy I was really interested in was a senior boy from Prescott High School. He had three older brothers and the four of them had been dating girls from Corning quite a while - long enough that they had "love 'em and leave 'em" reputations. Kenny was going steady with a girl in my sister's freshman class. Sandy was a friend of friends of mine who knew I wanted to go out with Kenny and had told her. One Monday morning we passed one another in the hallway and she said: "He's all yours. You can have him!"
It was a bit of a shock to hear they had broken up. It was a bigger problem to finagle a date with him since he didn't even know me. The campaign began the end of January. There was one place everyone went after the picture show on Saturday night -The Candy Kitchen. I was there with my girl friends, he was there with his brothers and their dates. No one actually introduced us, but I was pointed out to him so at least he knew what I looked like.
The middle of February after a basketball game a bunch of us were in the Candy Kitchen. After I left he asked my girlfriend, Donna Hall, why a nice girl like me would want to go out with a freak like him. (One of the advantages of moving last year was finding my diaries from my highschool days...my memory certainly isn't this good!) Donna said maybe I didn't think he was a freak to which he replied, "Does she need stronger glasses?"
Finally after a lot of tense moments and mixed signals Carma Neta Bennett (the girlfriend of Kenny's oldest brother, Ronnie) told me I had a date with Kenny the following Saturday night. It had been arranged as a 'blind' date. She said they would pick me between 7 & 7:30. When they still weren't there at 8:30, I just knew I had been stood up. Dad said even if they did show up that late I couldn't go out with him. At 5 til 9:00 they drove in.
March 5, 1960, my first date with Kenny Botkin. We went skating in Lenox then stopped at Stringtown for a coke before they took me home. We were in the back seat. He put his arm around me. I could tell he was going to try to kiss me but Mom had said I shouldn't let a boy kiss me on a first date so I turned away. We were almost home when he asked me for a date for the following Saturday night. I accepted. I think my curfew was 11:30. At 11:40 he walked me to the door and kissed me good night. Sweet 16 yrs, 3 mos and 16 days and I'd finally been kissed.