Stairway to Heaven

My first boyfriend (let's call him "Jeff") is still a close friend of mine, even though he lives in another state. In fact, it's quite likely he's going to read this story about us!

Jeff became my boyfriend when I was a very mature 15. He was 19. I was wild about him. But he was always a gentleman and as cautious as a cat on a hot tin roof. Can we say jail bait? I think we can.

But we had wonderful times! Although we're now older and our own kids are close to that age, we remember everything just as if we were still in our teens. Both of our families were close, and it was very easy to float between households, and no one thought twice about leaving me alone with Jeff.

They were right to trust us. It's funny, because teens were just as over-sexual as they are now, but we had a ball without ever having sex, or anything close to it. There was always something to be done: Walking the dog on a nearby golf course in the moonlight, projects of some sort or another, dinner, movies, hobbies, friends... Jeff had a fish tank, and could often be found with his arms submerged into the fish tank, mucking about. I could be found nearby, chatting with him while he wiped green ooze from the walls of the aquarium. We followed where our whims led us.

Jeff's father (not understanding us and being somewhat psycho) once caught me sitting on Jeff's bed while Jeff was (of course) elbow-deep in fish. Jeff's bedroom door was open, incidentally. He asked me to leave, and then proceeded to chew Jeff out for having a girl in his bedroom. What if something happened, he asked? As Jeff pointed out dryly to him, it's rather hard to be romantically entangled when you're covered in fish gunk.

Neither one of us ever were very thrilled with his father (who was in the process of divorcing his mother at that time). But Jeff's mom was like the favorite aunt that everyone should have. She taught me to drive, to draw (she's a fantastic artist, just as Jeff is) and affected my life in so many positive ways. On the weekends, I'd spend the night at her house (I was very good friends with her daughter) and her home was filled with teens, love, and laughter, a large, loveable dog, and a tankful of fish.

One night we were sitting around when Jeff came bursting through the door waving an old Led Zeppelin record he'd gotten ahold of somehow. "Look what I've got!" he said enthusiastically. "Have you ever heard that when you play this record backwards, you can hear Satanic lyrics in Stairway to Heaven?"

Excitedly, we all went running to the stereo, where he tinkered for a moment with the turntable. With bated breath, we all waited as he lowered the needle onto the disk. Even Jeff's mom hovered behind us, watching. The record started playing backwards. "Snarf sneef reburrr snyok liblieef dreburbli," warbled Led Zeppelin, demonically.

We waited a little longer, but never found anything that was much better than that. Jeff finally had to admit defeat, disgustedly. So much for the evils of rock n' roll. But Stairway to Heaven remains one of my favorite rock anthems of all time.