Another favorite memory that, after 50 years, still seems like a fantasy. It happened the summer between my junior and senior years of high school, after attending the 1972 New York Comic Art Convention, which was made possible by mih.
That was the first time I met Joe Sinnott. It was also the first time Joe met Jack Kirby. In the past it was widely stated that Joe and Jack met for the first time at the 1975 Marvel Convention, but that is incorrect.
That isn’t, however, the memory that seems like a fantasy. The story you are about to read is true. The two names in it have not been changed.
After returning home from the convention, I attended a driver’s ed class that was held at the high school, paying for it myself. The first part was classroom instruction, before taking the learner’s permit test. For those who passed, driving lessons would be scheduled.
There were 10-12 kids in the class, evenly split between boys and girls. At the end of the last classroom session, the instructor said he needed to speak with me.
“Mr. Pratt, we have a problem,” he said. I had absolutely no idea what that could possibly be.
“Every one of the girls in the class has requested to go practice driving with you.”
“Uh… what? All of them?” I would have been stunned if even one girl had made such an unlikely request!
“Yes, and to avoid disappointing the ladies I have assigned you a rather difficult schedule. I’m sure you don’t mind.”
I swear this really happened, and I’m not making it up! I was, to use the British expression, gobsmacked. It was as if I’d been suddenly made aware of an entirely different plane of reality, where high school sports stars and bad boys with motorcycles existed. But I was just a nerdy, glasses-wearing, comic book fanboy.
I actually did mind knowing why the instructor had given me a crazy schedule, because I was extra nervous every time I was in that AMC Hornet sedan, thinking about the girls in the car with me. I was either behind the wheel with two of them in the back seat, or I was in the back sitting next to one of them! I remember quite vividly that I was so distracted seeing Diane and her friend Cindy in the rearview mirror I almost drove through a stop sign. The instructor had to slam the secondary brake pedal installed on the passenger side.
There was no such distraction when I was ready to take the driving test. I recall the RMV guy told me to go the wrong way down a one-way street. Are trick questions supposed to be part of the test? Anyway, I passed, and that was — gulp! — fifty years ago.
