The Soundtrack of Our Lives
A Double Album in Prose
by Annie Christie
Genre: Drama
Swearwords: None.
Description: For anyone who has ever got lost in music!
Swearwords: None.
Description: For anyone who has ever got lost in music!
Disc One
Side Two
Mis-Spent Youths
Holdin' on to sixteen as long as you can
Change is coming 'round real soon
Make us woman and man (John Cougar)
Side Two
Mis-Spent Youths
Holdin' on to sixteen as long as you can
Change is coming 'round real soon
Make us woman and man (John Cougar)
Track Nine
Holdin' on to sixteen as long as you can
Change is coming 'round real soon
Make us woman and man (John Cougar)
~ Don't Cry for Me, 1977 ~
Holdin' on to sixteen as long as you can
Change is coming 'round real soon
Make us woman and man (John Cougar)
~ Don't Cry for Me, 1977 ~
We came back after Christmas and everyone was expecting Scooby and Laura to have split up. How wrong were we? He’d bought her a really expensive Christmas present – a necklace from H.Samuels and she told me that she just couldn’t dump him yet. Note the ‘yet’. The writing was on the wall. She was hoping he’d go off her. What she hadn’t taken account of was that Scooby knew he had no chance of getting any other girl. He was well aware he’d struck lucky once and he was hanging on to what he had. So Laura did the only thing she could. She got off with Stevie. It was ugly.
It was at the cinema. She fixed up a date with Scooby for a Saturday matinee in January. She got me to go along. With Stevie. As chaperones. We didn’t tell our parents we were going to the cinema, of course. We fed them some line about a fencing practice and they bought it. They couldn’t keep up with our activities anyway – skiing trips, fencing competitions, orchestra gigs – unlike parents today who have to drive their kids everywhere, we went on the bus and as long as we were back at the agreed time, they were quite happy with that. We had to be a bit circumspect because my mum might have been out shopping, so we didn’t go down the Lothian Road. Laura had let Scooby pick the film. It was her last act of kindness. He’d picked The Sentinel but it was an 18 and we knew they’d never let us in – Scooby didn’t look sixteen, never mind eighteen. So his second choice was The Eagle Has Landed. It was that or Freaky Friday. The Eagle Has Landed was longer, which, when the main aim of the game is to get off with each other in the dark, was the clincher.
So, we lined up to get the tickets. It was a Saturday afternoon and the guy behind the cash desk couldn’t have been less interested.
‘I’ll pay you in,’ Stevie said to me, in the tone of voice that suggested I’d better not take him up on the offer. The whole situation was incredibly awkward. If I’d said yes, I’d be more or less obliged to get off with him, wouldn’t I? So I muttered, ‘It’s okay, I’ll get my own.’ Scooby, who was one step behind (but then when wasn’t he?) picked up on the vibe and loudly said ‘Two, please.’ The guy looked up from his desk at that and quipped, ‘Two full price or one and a half?’
Scooby never missed a beat. ‘Full price, pal, we’re all over sixteen here.’
We breathed again. I had half been expecting Scooby to try and get in to a 15 film on a half price ticket. It was a Scooby sort of thing to do. And right at that moment I was really regretting even being there. I realised that even though I’d paid my own ticket I was more or less inevitably going to have Stevie stick his tongue down my throat – and well – to be honest – it would be the first time. Not just for Stevie, I mean, for any boy. I was sweating just thinking about it.
We didn’t bother with popcorn or drinks or anything like that. The boys marched us straight past the concession kiosk, not wanting to waste more time or money. Laura looked like she might kick up a fuss, but then there was this mad scramble to get into the seats. The cinema was already dark and the Pearl and Dean adverts were shrieking to a pretty empty auditorium. We fumbled our way to the back, the far left hand side. Scooby went in first. Laura went next. I was trying to get in front of Stevie to sit next to Laura but he all but pushed me out of the way. So the line-up was Scooby, Laura, Stevie and me. At least I was closest to the aisle, I thought. At least I can escape to the loo if it all gets too much.
And the film started. Within about two seconds Stevie had ‘made the move’. You know the one where they stretch out their hand behind their head, scratch it, then let it come back down around your shoulder. I was just grateful his arms weren’t long enough to reach right down to my breast. I tried not to wriggle but I was really uncomfortable. Then I made my first mistake. I looked over to see whether Scooby had been that quick with Laura, and as I leaned in, Stevie took it as a sign and that was that.
We came up for air and I was not impressed. I felt kind of sick, actually, and if I’d known the word then I might have felt violated, though at the time of course I knew simply by being there I’d be ‘asking for it’. The rules of the cinema allowed that no one had to ‘ask’ or say anything. The darkness meant that no one could see and what they couldn’t see… well, normal rules of polite convention didn’t apply. No ‘my friend wants to know…’ or any of that. Just wham, bam, thank you ma’am.
I tried to casually look at Stevie to see what would happen next. He didn’t look impressed. Obviously whatever he’d been expecting wasn’t what he’d got. But I seriously wondered how exchanging spit and saliva with another person could actually be pleasurable. I made my excuses – ‘I’m off to the loo,’ and left. I hung around the foyer as long as I could. I determined that when I came back I’d sit one seat further along the row. Anything to avoid more of that – and the potential mauling that would come after as Stevie tried to make sure he hadn’t wasted his ticket money and had something to brag about at school the next week.
I needn’t have worried. When I finally crawled my way back in the darkness, I saw something that I never expected. Stevie and Laura were going at it like professionals. I couldn’t see Scooby, I assumed he was flat against the wall on the other side of Laura. I just hoped that somehow he was into the film and not noticing what was catastrophically obvious to me from my side!
I sat down, one seat away, trying not to make a fuss. The next minute along came Scooby. He sat down next to me, well, he crawled over me and sat between me and Stevie. They stopped just about in time. Not quite, but just. Did Scooby notice? He could hardly miss it. But he acted as if nothing was happening.
‘Want some popcorn?’ he asked me and handed me the bucket to dip into.
I took some.
Laura and Stevie were now sitting like buttered popcorn wouldn’t melt in their mouths. But we all knew, I’m sure we all knew, exactly what had happened. Scooby crawled his way back past Stevie and Laura and we all sat in our seats, as if everything was normal. Except this was anything but normal. I felt truly dirty.
I whispered to Stevie, ‘What were you doing?’
He looked at me, ‘Well you were off at the bog, what d’you expect me to do?’
And that was all he said.
The dilemma it presented was complex. No way would Scooby fall out with Stevie just because Stevie had got off with his girlfriend. Laura had misplayed it there. She’d assumed Scooby would ‘go mental’ and chuck her. No such thing.
So it took her another week to get up the courage to tell me to tell him he was chucked and she was going out with Stevie.
‘Why?’ Scooby asked me when I told him at break-time.
‘The cinema,’ I said.
‘What?’ he replied, as if he had no idea what was going on.
‘She got off with Stevie,’ I said. ‘Doesn’t that bother you?’
‘She wouldn’t have done it if you’d not baled out,’ was his reply.
Oh, so now it was my fault? I got a beamer. I know I did. It was anger and shame and… a whole host of emotions. I didn’t know who I wanted to kill most, Scooby, or Laura or Stevie or myself.
‘I don’t suppose you…’ he began and I knew that whatever happened I wasn’t going to do a straight swap just to keep any kind of peace.
‘What kind of a slag would that make me?’ I asked.
And realised I’d just called my best friend a slag. I hoped Scooby wasn’t smart enough to use that one against me. Or use it to blackmail me.
I sought out Laura. She forgave me. She explained that she’d just been using Stevie to break up with Scooby (and that was supposed to make it all better?). Let’s just say the ‘etiquette’ of dating was somewhat rudimentary when we were teenagers and leave it at that.
I felt sorry for Scooby. I felt sorry for myself. I felt sorry for Laura, but only because she was my friend. The one person I felt no sorrow for was Stevie. And he knew it. He was already running around saying that he’d gone out with me but chucked me and upgraded to Laura because, despite me being a slapper, I was ‘no good’ at kissing. I hated him. But he was popular and I wasn’t, so I kept my mouth shut. I wished I’d been able to do that in the cinema, then none of this would have happened. Scooby and I were the victims and we suffered for it.
The song of the moment was Don’t cry for me Argentina’. It wasn’t exactly Bohemian Rhapsody but Scooby, Stevie and Doobs, who were all in my Maths class, took it to heart that winter. To be entirely accurate, Stevie and Doobs used it to wind Scooby up over his break up with Laura.
Laura dumped Stevie just as quickly as she could. They didn’t even make it to a school disco as an ‘item’. And Stevie was out for revenge. Doobs went along with it. And Scooby, to keep in with the guys, went along with it too. So after a couple of renditions of the song against him, he simply joined in and the song was re-directed at me. I was the one who’d lost out, after all. I wasn’t good enough for Stevie and Scooby said he’d not have swapped if he’d had the chance. I don’t blame them, I suppose, though it’s hard to feel any sympathy even now for them. Teenage boys with a grudge are not nice things.
Of course they grew up, as we all did, and it’s only our joint shame that stops us from ever mentioning some of the things that went on during those years at High School. Believe me, I’m not telling you the half of it.
Discography
Julie Covington Don’t Cry for Me Argentina https://youtu.be/adUPdnzCAk8
Queen Bohemian Rhapsody https://youtu.be/fJ9rUzIMcZQ
It was at the cinema. She fixed up a date with Scooby for a Saturday matinee in January. She got me to go along. With Stevie. As chaperones. We didn’t tell our parents we were going to the cinema, of course. We fed them some line about a fencing practice and they bought it. They couldn’t keep up with our activities anyway – skiing trips, fencing competitions, orchestra gigs – unlike parents today who have to drive their kids everywhere, we went on the bus and as long as we were back at the agreed time, they were quite happy with that. We had to be a bit circumspect because my mum might have been out shopping, so we didn’t go down the Lothian Road. Laura had let Scooby pick the film. It was her last act of kindness. He’d picked The Sentinel but it was an 18 and we knew they’d never let us in – Scooby didn’t look sixteen, never mind eighteen. So his second choice was The Eagle Has Landed. It was that or Freaky Friday. The Eagle Has Landed was longer, which, when the main aim of the game is to get off with each other in the dark, was the clincher.
So, we lined up to get the tickets. It was a Saturday afternoon and the guy behind the cash desk couldn’t have been less interested.
‘I’ll pay you in,’ Stevie said to me, in the tone of voice that suggested I’d better not take him up on the offer. The whole situation was incredibly awkward. If I’d said yes, I’d be more or less obliged to get off with him, wouldn’t I? So I muttered, ‘It’s okay, I’ll get my own.’ Scooby, who was one step behind (but then when wasn’t he?) picked up on the vibe and loudly said ‘Two, please.’ The guy looked up from his desk at that and quipped, ‘Two full price or one and a half?’
Scooby never missed a beat. ‘Full price, pal, we’re all over sixteen here.’
We breathed again. I had half been expecting Scooby to try and get in to a 15 film on a half price ticket. It was a Scooby sort of thing to do. And right at that moment I was really regretting even being there. I realised that even though I’d paid my own ticket I was more or less inevitably going to have Stevie stick his tongue down my throat – and well – to be honest – it would be the first time. Not just for Stevie, I mean, for any boy. I was sweating just thinking about it.
We didn’t bother with popcorn or drinks or anything like that. The boys marched us straight past the concession kiosk, not wanting to waste more time or money. Laura looked like she might kick up a fuss, but then there was this mad scramble to get into the seats. The cinema was already dark and the Pearl and Dean adverts were shrieking to a pretty empty auditorium. We fumbled our way to the back, the far left hand side. Scooby went in first. Laura went next. I was trying to get in front of Stevie to sit next to Laura but he all but pushed me out of the way. So the line-up was Scooby, Laura, Stevie and me. At least I was closest to the aisle, I thought. At least I can escape to the loo if it all gets too much.
And the film started. Within about two seconds Stevie had ‘made the move’. You know the one where they stretch out their hand behind their head, scratch it, then let it come back down around your shoulder. I was just grateful his arms weren’t long enough to reach right down to my breast. I tried not to wriggle but I was really uncomfortable. Then I made my first mistake. I looked over to see whether Scooby had been that quick with Laura, and as I leaned in, Stevie took it as a sign and that was that.
We came up for air and I was not impressed. I felt kind of sick, actually, and if I’d known the word then I might have felt violated, though at the time of course I knew simply by being there I’d be ‘asking for it’. The rules of the cinema allowed that no one had to ‘ask’ or say anything. The darkness meant that no one could see and what they couldn’t see… well, normal rules of polite convention didn’t apply. No ‘my friend wants to know…’ or any of that. Just wham, bam, thank you ma’am.
I tried to casually look at Stevie to see what would happen next. He didn’t look impressed. Obviously whatever he’d been expecting wasn’t what he’d got. But I seriously wondered how exchanging spit and saliva with another person could actually be pleasurable. I made my excuses – ‘I’m off to the loo,’ and left. I hung around the foyer as long as I could. I determined that when I came back I’d sit one seat further along the row. Anything to avoid more of that – and the potential mauling that would come after as Stevie tried to make sure he hadn’t wasted his ticket money and had something to brag about at school the next week.
I needn’t have worried. When I finally crawled my way back in the darkness, I saw something that I never expected. Stevie and Laura were going at it like professionals. I couldn’t see Scooby, I assumed he was flat against the wall on the other side of Laura. I just hoped that somehow he was into the film and not noticing what was catastrophically obvious to me from my side!
I sat down, one seat away, trying not to make a fuss. The next minute along came Scooby. He sat down next to me, well, he crawled over me and sat between me and Stevie. They stopped just about in time. Not quite, but just. Did Scooby notice? He could hardly miss it. But he acted as if nothing was happening.
‘Want some popcorn?’ he asked me and handed me the bucket to dip into.
I took some.
Laura and Stevie were now sitting like buttered popcorn wouldn’t melt in their mouths. But we all knew, I’m sure we all knew, exactly what had happened. Scooby crawled his way back past Stevie and Laura and we all sat in our seats, as if everything was normal. Except this was anything but normal. I felt truly dirty.
I whispered to Stevie, ‘What were you doing?’
He looked at me, ‘Well you were off at the bog, what d’you expect me to do?’
And that was all he said.
The dilemma it presented was complex. No way would Scooby fall out with Stevie just because Stevie had got off with his girlfriend. Laura had misplayed it there. She’d assumed Scooby would ‘go mental’ and chuck her. No such thing.
So it took her another week to get up the courage to tell me to tell him he was chucked and she was going out with Stevie.
‘Why?’ Scooby asked me when I told him at break-time.
‘The cinema,’ I said.
‘What?’ he replied, as if he had no idea what was going on.
‘She got off with Stevie,’ I said. ‘Doesn’t that bother you?’
‘She wouldn’t have done it if you’d not baled out,’ was his reply.
Oh, so now it was my fault? I got a beamer. I know I did. It was anger and shame and… a whole host of emotions. I didn’t know who I wanted to kill most, Scooby, or Laura or Stevie or myself.
‘I don’t suppose you…’ he began and I knew that whatever happened I wasn’t going to do a straight swap just to keep any kind of peace.
‘What kind of a slag would that make me?’ I asked.
And realised I’d just called my best friend a slag. I hoped Scooby wasn’t smart enough to use that one against me. Or use it to blackmail me.
I sought out Laura. She forgave me. She explained that she’d just been using Stevie to break up with Scooby (and that was supposed to make it all better?). Let’s just say the ‘etiquette’ of dating was somewhat rudimentary when we were teenagers and leave it at that.
I felt sorry for Scooby. I felt sorry for myself. I felt sorry for Laura, but only because she was my friend. The one person I felt no sorrow for was Stevie. And he knew it. He was already running around saying that he’d gone out with me but chucked me and upgraded to Laura because, despite me being a slapper, I was ‘no good’ at kissing. I hated him. But he was popular and I wasn’t, so I kept my mouth shut. I wished I’d been able to do that in the cinema, then none of this would have happened. Scooby and I were the victims and we suffered for it.
The song of the moment was Don’t cry for me Argentina’. It wasn’t exactly Bohemian Rhapsody but Scooby, Stevie and Doobs, who were all in my Maths class, took it to heart that winter. To be entirely accurate, Stevie and Doobs used it to wind Scooby up over his break up with Laura.
Laura dumped Stevie just as quickly as she could. They didn’t even make it to a school disco as an ‘item’. And Stevie was out for revenge. Doobs went along with it. And Scooby, to keep in with the guys, went along with it too. So after a couple of renditions of the song against him, he simply joined in and the song was re-directed at me. I was the one who’d lost out, after all. I wasn’t good enough for Stevie and Scooby said he’d not have swapped if he’d had the chance. I don’t blame them, I suppose, though it’s hard to feel any sympathy even now for them. Teenage boys with a grudge are not nice things.
Of course they grew up, as we all did, and it’s only our joint shame that stops us from ever mentioning some of the things that went on during those years at High School. Believe me, I’m not telling you the half of it.
Discography
Julie Covington Don’t Cry for Me Argentina https://youtu.be/adUPdnzCAk8
Queen Bohemian Rhapsody https://youtu.be/fJ9rUzIMcZQ
About the Author
Annie Christie is a pretty ordinary person, except that she was born Annie Christie and then married a man called Christie and so is still called Christie despite having taken on her husband’s name. She sometimes wonders if she should have called herself Christie-Christie: but who would believe that?
Born near Drum of Wartle in Aberdeenshire, Annie moved as swiftly as possible to a place with a less bizarre name – Edinburgh – but the bizarreness chased her and she now lives with her husband Rab in rural Galloway, with a Kirkcudbrightshire postcode. (That's Cur coo bree shire to the uninitiated.) She is an active member of the Infinite Jigsaw Project.
The Soundtrack of Our Lives is Annie's fourth McSerial written for McStorytellers.
Born near Drum of Wartle in Aberdeenshire, Annie moved as swiftly as possible to a place with a less bizarre name – Edinburgh – but the bizarreness chased her and she now lives with her husband Rab in rural Galloway, with a Kirkcudbrightshire postcode. (That's Cur coo bree shire to the uninitiated.) She is an active member of the Infinite Jigsaw Project.
The Soundtrack of Our Lives is Annie's fourth McSerial written for McStorytellers.