Spin the Bottle S

ometime in the early ‘70s, my grandparents purchased a red brick house in town and moved from the home place. Even though my sister and I still lived in the boondocks with our parents, I felt confident Nana and Papa Creecy’s move would do more for my social status than anything to date. After all, life was bound to change when full-time country mice became part-time city mice. (Never mind that the ‘city’ in this scenario had a population of less than 400 souls).

Seriously though, what a thing to happen! When Papa poured concrete for a new carport, we wrote our names in the wet cement and claimed that place with all our hearts.

My sister and I had a groovy bedroom there, complete with wall-to-wall purple shag carpet and a white canopy bed. But the attic ... It was a whole other world with builtin bookshelves, storage under the eaves, and a large closet at one end. Add the Bee Gees blasting from our cassette player and board games to play, our futures became a few shades brighter.

Soon, the attic became a hangout for our friends, both male and female. Looking back on it now, I realize the attic became one of the first steps into my romance journey.

It’s where I first played Spin the Bottle.

Yes, before driver’s licenses and dates to the Malco in Blytheville, we teens of Mississippi County learned to make our own fun. And Nana and Papa’s attic, with its narrow, steep stairs (generally avoided by adults), guaranteed the perfect private location for such a riteof-passage game.

The rules of the game were simple. A group of us, around eight or so — I can still see their faces as clearly as my own — sat in a circle on the floor (boy, girl, boy, girl) with an empty glass Coca-Cola bottle in the center. Each person took a turn giving the bottle a spin. When the bottle stopped spinning, the “winner” (whoever the bottle pointed to) won a kiss from the person doing the spinning. If the bottle pointed to someone of the same sex, the spinner spun again.

Just imagine it! What if one of the boys sitting crosslegged within that small circle turned out to be my soul mate? Back then, I wanted to believe in the slight possibility of it; after all, my parents met as teens while attending school just a stone’s throw away.

Keith did have nice hair.

Tim’s eyes sparkled gemstone blue.

Sure, Craig could keep us all in stitches, but he was bound to be a farmer, and I had no plans to be a farmer’s wife!

Yes, life was spread before us like a starlit sky, but try as I might, I could never imagine being married (period), and certainly not to any of the boys in our circle.

Later, Spin the Bottle morphed into a game we called One Minute in Heaven. I don’t recall how we stumbled upon this expansion to the original game, but it certainly added a little something-something to the overall experience. In this enhanced game, the lucky couple spent one minute together (the minute timed by a tiny hourglass borrowed from a board game) in the dark attic closet, where Nana kept out-of-season clothing.

Oh my goodness — early on, I learned a vital life lesson. Sixty seconds could often seem like an eternity.

Now, decades later, the red brick house belongs to someone else. I drive by when I’m home on the farm and imagine the attic space, silent witness to bottle-spinning, lots of giggling, and quick kisses in the dark.

Nothing earth-shattering ever happened in the attic, at least not for me. But while the moon glowed and cotton grew in fields around our little town, our group became bound by the possibility of love and happily ever after. Yes, we were hopeful, naïve, and unaware of life’s fragility. And, for a few magical minutes, we were willing to put our fates in the spin of an empty glass bottle. That in itself truly was life-changing. •