Meeting Jeanell

I grew up (at least from the age of six) in the small (at the time) town of Grantsville, Utah. When I grew up, there was one elementary school (K-4), one middle school (5-8) and one high school (9-12). What this meant in practice is that while of course some kids moved away (Ryan S (winner of the 5th grade 5K with a bit of an assist from Justin W, as I recall), Billy M, Casey W) and some moved in (Travis T, Kim H, Rhett B), by and large my entire school career was spent with the same 100 or so kids. Jeanell was one of those 100.

While we were in the same grade for 12 years, my early memories of Jeanell are few and far between. I have a vague memory of talking to her and her good friend Shelly Larson (now Matthews) at the Grantsville City Park, near or on the swing set, but I can't really place when that happened and if that was the first time I met her or I had already known her.

My first definitive memory of Jeanell was when we were in the same class for the first time. We both had Mrs. Mikelson (whose husband Bill was the head football coach at GHS at the time. Bill was recently inducted into the Utah High School Sports Hall of Fame). The one memory I have of Jeanell from that year is her coming to school one day and announcing that she had had a dream that we were all at a dance and she was telling each of us who we were dancing with at the dance. Sadly, as I recall, I was not who she was dancing with in her dream. I also remember that she was not one of the girls who stomped on my fingers as I attempted to scale the High Tower at recess, causing me to fall. I guess that's a plus.

(In this day and age, it is hard to believe that in the mid-80s, we had a playground toy that was just a tall platform, just high enough to get seriously injured if you fell from it. Fortunately for me, I did not fall from the top of the platform, but from the chain ladder that allowed you to ascend the platform with my outstretched hands at the level of the bottom of the platform. Not so fortunately, I did flip backwards with my feet staying entangled in the ladder and landed mostly on my face. It was the last day before Christmas break and I believe by the time we came back to school I was mostly healed).

The next time our paths crossed was when we were both in Mr. Camp's 6th grade glass at Grantsville Middle School. Incidentally, this is Jeanell's first memory of me. I don't really have any other memories about her from that year. I just know that we were in that same class together.

I didn't really get to know Jeanell until she started dating my good friend Dave our freshman year of high school. That's also when we started having more boy-girl parties and Jeanell hosted many of those at her house on Deseret Circle. A few memories stand out from that time period.

The first is that our group of friends put together a number for the annual Lip-Sync Assembly. I can't remember what other songs we discussed, but we finally landed on Madonna's Vogue for our number and recruited our classmate Greta Griffiths, who we all had nicknamed Madonna, to take the central role. I didn't then nor do I now know the words to that song so I'm not sure how I lip-synced to it. I don't remember much of the choreography, but I do remember we all wore white gloves and that at one point in the song we attempted to put our hands together to form a giant "V", but we weren't as precise as we needed to be and it ended up looking more like a "U", or maybe even just a smile. We didn't win. (My brother-in-law Cam, who is two years older than Jeanell and I, and his friends did an epic lip-sync to "Bohemian Rhapsody" that same year. I'm pretty sure they won).

I can't remember if it was at one of the rehearsals for "Vogue" or at a different gathering at Jeanell's house, but I do remember that on one occasion, a few of us guys had found the hoop shoot game on the east side of their house and began playing it, seeing who could get the best score. At some point, Jeanell made her way over and wanted to take a turn. Soon after the timer started, our jaws dropped, as the only thing more impressive than the speed with each she was able to rebound the ball and fire off another shot, was the remarkable consistency that each shot richoceted perfectly off the backboard and through the hoop. She handily beat all of our scores, at which point I think we decided to do something else, rather than be humiliated further.

My final memory is from a party at Jeanell's house. At that time in my life, there were three songs I knew how to play on the piano, Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata (like my dad),  The Righteous Brothers' Unchained Melody, and the song that was most associated with me, the theme from Cheers. Whenever I was somewhere where there was a piano, sooner or later I would be sitting at it and playing one, or more likely all, of the songs I knew, and probably more than once. Where I only knew three songs, I'm sure this got old for my friends, but I didn't seem to mind.

Jeanell's family had a piano in their front room and so sure enough, as we were all over there for her party, I eventually made my way to the piano and began to play. At some point, my buddy Aaron came and grabbed my shoulders and pulled me backward, tipping the piano bench onto its back legs. As it turns out, there's a reason that piano benches sit on four legs, because as soon as it went back on two legs, they snapped. I remember Jeanell's mother Carol hearing the commotion and coming down to see what was going on. She's a wonderful pianist and I'm sure was none too pleased that we had broken the legs on her piano bench, but she of course didn't outwardly display any anger.

I always felt bad about it. Some time after that, Jeanell and I started dating and I remember every time I went to her house I would see a chair sitting in front of the piano and remember that I had broken the bench (or at least played a part in breaking it). Even several years later, when we started dating again my junior year of college, I believe there was still a chair at the piano. I don't remember exactly, but I don't think it was until after Jeanell and I were married that Carol got a new piano (and bench).

Looking back, we didn't really have a whole lot of interaction until high school, and even then, I don't have a lot of memories of our interactions our freshman and sophomore years. That would change when we started dating at the end of our sophomore year. But that's a story for another time.

I am first on the left in the third row. Jeanell is third from the left in the front row (wearing her Dallas shirt that she probably got from Uncle Scott).