BY JOHN SLOAN

Copyright is held by the author.

I MAY be a creeper, but I am not a creep. At least I hope I’m not being a creep as I read an online obituary of someone I barely knew, and that was a long time ago.

My millennial children tell me that a creeper — one who looks up somebody they don’t know, or barely know, on social media — can certainly be a creep, a digital stalker. But it can also be simple curiosity or gentle interrogation, such as checking the Facebook page of the guy you met at a party before answering his texts.

It’s a grey area. Is it appropriate for an employer or potential employer to creep your Facebook page? Here, the millennials, born into the digital world, may see things differently from old farts like me. Making public personal “deets” is simply the price of admission. I want to believe that it is honest curiosity behind my occasional web creeping, driven by the old question, “What ever happened to . . . ?”

Whatever happened to that childhood friend who moved away in grade six? Whatever happened to the girl in high school who turned the tables by asking me to the prom? Whatever happened to the guy I’d share a weekly beer with when we were at university but had not seen since graduation? How we laughed.

Whatever happened to my first love?

Her name was Toni. Toni Anderson. She had a twin sister named Tori. Toni and Tori. You might think Toni was short for Antonia and Tori the same for Victoria. No. Toni and Tori were their proper names. It was on their birth certificates. A twin thing, I guess.

I was 14 years old, closing in on 15. I now know it was not love but early adolescent infatuation. A crush. But only “love” or “lovestruck” comes close to the tidal forces of feelings both enjoyed and endured. Only “lovelorn” describes those dreaded emotions when love is unrequited — yearning and heartache.

Oh man, the heartache.

I got to know Toni and Tori over a couple of 1970s summers at Two Tents, a campground northeast of London, Ontario, northwest of Woodstock, and just south of Stratford. I’m not sure if that put it in Middlesex, Oxford or Perth County. It drew campers from all corners of that triangle.

Toni was the quieter of the two sisters, though neither was an extrovert. Just below the surface calm, there was a dry sense of humour and deep intelligence. There was also a touch of sadness. Smitten, I yearned to make her laugh, to make her happy.

We were the older kids of what they called seasonal campers, living in semi-permanent campsites with wood decks attached to hard-shell trailers or motor homes and bricked fire pits. They would even mow the grass on their campsites and put in small gardens. My family went more rustic with a tent trailer up in a wooded area. Eschewing even the creature comforts of a foam mattress, I often slept in a little pup tent next to the trailer. Better to come and go late at night without waking the family. Sweet freedom.

In my 14th year, I discovered that I really liked girls. At Two Tents I found, to my surprise, that girls could like me too. I was clever and funny. A nice guy. I learned later that clever and funny didn’t always equate with desirable in that way. I was just thrilled by the attention, the inclusion.

I remember touching a girl for the first time. It was entirely accidental as we were playing tag in a big swimming pool at the centre of the campground. I immediately apologized. She laughed and splashed me. I was absolutely amazed and intrigued at how soft she was, how soft they were.

Toni was almost a full year older than me. That was an obstacle, as girls of her age preferred older boys. Rapidly maturing early adolescent females tend to dismiss males their age and younger for the little boys they are. I did have the advantage of an early growth spurt. When I turned 15, I was the same height I am at 60, five foot nine inches, though about a hundred pounds slimmer back then.

She didn’t seem to mind having me around as we hung out at the pool and recreation hall and group campfires. The rec hall could become an impromptu roller rink with its cement floor and a bunch of second-hand roller skates. There was also a sports field with a ball diamond. Overlooking the campground was a steep grassy hill that we’d climb and lay on, looking at clouds in the cool breezes of day and the starry sky at night.

The age range for our gang of about a dozen at Two Tents was 13 to 15 — teens but twerps. We were too old to be children yet only starting the adolescent adventure. Some of us were still in elementary school, while others had just completed the minor niner year of high school. The changes of puberty that separated the children from the not-children-anymore defined the low end of that range. At the other end, you’d age out with a driver’s license and a summer job in the city.

Our standard attire for the summer of 1977 was gym shorts, t-shirts, and runners. Jeans on the cooler nights and Speedo bathing suits for the pool. Of course, I thought the girls wore it all better, especially the jeans and the bathing suits. Snug jeans played the role that leggings do today. Then there was that one mid-seventies fashion that got most of my attention — the halter top. We boys had just started to notice blossoming breasts on girls. The halter gave us plenty to try not to stare at.

A girl from the campground, who had just got her license, drove with Toni and Tori to Toronto for a Blue Jays baseball game. They arrived back in the early evening, sunglasses on, the car top down, all wearing the most amazing powder blue halter tops. It had been Halter Top Day at the park, and the first few thousand females through the gates got Blue Jays tops. They were encouraged to put them on, given that it was a sweltering summer day at Exhibition Stadium. Most complied. Ah, the 70s!

Aside from looking great in a halter and jeans, Toni had a pretty, thin-lipped smile, fine blond hair, and slightly heavy-lidded eyes. Bedroom eyes, they called them. With those eyes, hair, and smile she looked a bit like Linda McCartney. Linda, and of course Paul, were very much a part of the soundtrack of those days. From 1974 through 1977, there always seemed to be a new Wings single on top 40 radio. Wings. Elton John. Queen. The Eagles. Bob Seger. Fleetwood Mac. They were all in the background in the summer of 1977, on campsite transistor radios and on the jukebox in the rec hall.

“Alexa,” I say to the empty air in my empty house, “play Night Moves by Bob Seger.”

The electronic hockey puck under my kitchen counter complies, and the air is now filled with that familiar tortured tenor, singing that as an early teen, he was tall for his age and could have been heavier. A walking stick, I guess. I can relate to that. He then describes his first sexual encounter with a dark-haired girl with firm breasts and big brown eyes. I cannot relate to that. Must have been nice.

I type “Toni Anderson” into a Google search, as I have done occasionally for years. All I have learned is how many not-her Toni Andersons there are on Facebook. Half a dozen, all in the States. Ancestry sites fill me in on all the Toni Andersons who lived a hundred years ago.

Then there are the obituaries. A great repository of regular names on the Internet is in online obits. Most funeral homes and newspapers have them. Type a name in Google and find all the people with that name in the world who have died in the past decade.

That Toni was friendly toward me only fanned the embers of desire and hope. She let me hold her hand for a roller skate in the rec hall, and I could put my arm around her shoulder at a campfire. I looked for further signs, but none were forthcoming. Roller skating in pairs was innocent fun, and it was chilly that night by the fire. It did not necessarily mean anything more. It didn’t mean she was interested in me in that way.

Cue the heartache.

We all know the accepted wisdom for these situations. As Billy Joel sang: “Tell her about it. Tell her everything you feel.” It’s useless to do nothing, looking for a sign.

Yeah, like that was going to happen.

I didn’t have such a vulnerable conversation with a girl until many years later, and I was going to marry that one. Toni and I never really talked. I was too busy trying to be clever or funny.

The preferred soft launch in these situations was to ask the girl on a date. It was an expression of interest, feelings even, without actually saying anything. But here is where Two Tents was as much a tantalizing prison as a playground. We were all together all the time, friends and teasing siblings. What’s more, it was a family campground. There were parents around most of the time: in the pool, in the camper, by the campfire, and playing progressive euchre two nights a week in the rec hall.

Managing a date would require a means of escape, typically an automobile. But I was months away from getting my beginners, let alone a full license.

It wasn’t all innocence. There were whispered stories among our group of hookups and secret rendezvous in the woods or atop that grassy hill. What went on in these clandestine meetings was far more forward than what I thought proper for a first date. To ask a girl to do such a thing with no groundwork seemed rude, a vulgar accusation of impropriety. Remember, I was a nice guy, a would-be gentleman.

A coward.

While I looked for signs and signals, somebody else would ask Toni Anderson out on a date. His name was Erik. We sometimes called him Erik the Viking for his six foot plus height, tousled blond locks, and striking blue eyes. He was related to the campground owners, a cousin I think, and was working there for the summer. He was also 18 years old, owned a car, and had a license to drive it.

The Beach Boys were playing at the Canadian National Exhibition Grandstand in Toronto that summer. Erik thought it would be fun to go, even though to us they were an oldies band. He got a couple of tickets and needed a date.

He asked Toni Anderson.

An 18-year-old asking a 15-year-old on a date? Was that a little creepy? It was just a date, Erik said to Toni’s mom. It was an afternoon concert, so they would not be late. Toni was just weeks away from turning 16 and there weren’t a lot of girls Erik’s age at Two Tents.

Erik made pretty much the same case to me. That’s right. To me.

“I know you are kind of sweet on Toni,” said Erik one late night as we sat at a picnic table drinking an illicit beer at an empty campsite. “I thought you should know I’ve asked her out to a concert in Toronto.”

I was stunned. Not that Erik knew I was “sweet on” Toni. Everybody knew that, including Toni. It was that he was telling me, man to man as it were, about the date. He certainly didn’t need my permission. I think he thought it was a decent thing to do, so I wouldn’t be too hurt. He really was a gentleman.

Damn him.

I was devastated. I kept up appearances, though. I smiled and chatted amiably, graciously, pretending not to even notice the red-hot poker that Erik was jabbing into my chest.

Thus ended my first crush. I’d always known at some level that I didn’t have a chance. Now I was certain. I was in a different league than Toni and the car-driving 18-year-old. The minor league. Still, the pain would not subside until Christmas.

There would be more crushes and lost loves ahead, but none quite like the first. It wasn’t all pain and disappointment. I eventually was successful in dating. I did get to explore that incredible softness, but by invitation, not by accident this time. Years later, I met and married the true love of my life. We had 35 wonderful years together before cancer took her away.

Seger is still singing about his night moves. Living without a care and getting their share. Sorry, Bob, I didn’t get my share. Not this time. Anyway, who says we deserve a share?

I shouldn’t be surprised when a Google search turns up nothing. Googling a long-ago female acquaintance has the added challenge that surnames can change with marriage. If you weren’t around for the blessed event, you will never know what the new name was, unless they choose to keep their pre-marital name. Not everybody has been living online, like me, since the 1990s. Others chose not to for reasons of privacy. There are a lot of creeps out there.

Online obits are not necessarily — ahem — a dead end. Sadly, the deceased may be the person you are looking for. That has happened to me. But they can also be a relative of the deceased. This is the case in the obit I’m looking at right now. I tried a search for “Toni and Tori Anderson” hoping the two names together are unique enough to yield a result. The obituary is for a deceased parent. Here is the important thing: the obit lists both women by their married names.

Breakthrough! I learn I’m looking for Toni Wilson. In seconds, I find Toni’s Facebook and LinkedIn pages. Both are pretty meagre and have not been updated in years. The Facebook page has a picture, though. I instantly recognize the smile of the 50-something woman with those bedroom eyes. The picture also features a smiling young woman with similar eyes. More than 45 years after Toni Anderson broke my heart, I learn she has a family with grown children and grandchildren and lives and works right here in London. In the picture she looks happy, though everybody looks happy on social media.

The story ends here. Curiosity satisfied; I’m on to the next ‘whatever happened to’ quest. I won’t pursue the subject of Toni Wilson, nee Anderson, further. That only happens in Hollywood movies. I find it interesting that such obsessive stalking is a staple of both rom-coms and horror films.

Another piece of online etiquette from my millennial children — never creep and tell. It’s not likely, but at least possible, that I could run into Toni someday. We could chat. Get reacquainted. If that happens, I must refrain from letting her know what I’ve learned. Her deets are hers to reveal, if she chooses.

If I were to tell all I know, well, that would just be creepy.

***

John Sloan has been a writer in London, Ontario, for 40 years, mainly as a journalist, columnist, and technology analyst. He chose this path due to the TV show Lou Grant, a degree in journalism, and a need to eat. Since retiring from all that, Sloan has swung back to writing fiction (mainly speculative) and narrative non-fiction. He’s been published in Everyday Fiction, Polar Borealis, Daikaijuzine, Fiction on the Web, and the Great Lakes Review among others. (Check out his website at www.thudergott.ca). Sloan lives neither in a rambling Victorian house nor in a cozy flat. He does not own a cat.