I am reading and typing along and suddenly it makes sense why she is doing things like playing tennis and sunbathing.  It’s June!  I had lost all track of time.  As I go through the month I keep wondering if she is approaching graduation.  Classes continue into July so before the end of this month there is no indication, but I’ve gone on ahead.  Yes, she is on the verge of being a college graduate!

She is having a wild time, well, wild for her.  Which is really tame.  Even still, just the first of June alone gives her many ups and downs on the emotional roller coaster.  First, why won’t Benny ask her to the dance?  Even more down, she goes to the last rehearsal at the high school.  It’s never explained why but the show is canceled.  She walks home with Andy, Zosh, and Frank and it is a riotously good time with laughs and fun.  Her mother slaps her when she comes home, late and loud.  Babu writes she deserved it for being silly and reminds herself there is a party on Saturday.

Wow, which way is up?  The next two days seem to plummet a bit and by June 3rd she is cussing.  “Darn it!”  she writes, “I wish Benny would ask me to the hop.”  She is fully smitten.  Clearly.

Benny waits five days to finally give her an answer about the dance, sort of.  He isn’t going to it.  So that’s off the table.  Instead, he asks her, and Ernie, to go to the circus.  They had a grand time but as always we are left wondering, what are his real intentions?  Babu wonders, too.

Sometimes I am immersed in transcribing and I forget what month I’m transcribing because it’s really February and oh so cold, and sometimes I’m transcribing June and walk around the real world thinking it’s fully Spring.  (If even for a moment.)  And sometimes, while I’m reading things that just don’t seem to have happened a full eighty years ago, I can’t even remember what decade it is.

By June 18th Babu finally gets a chance at a dance date night with Benny.  She writes:

Danced and fooled around.  Budson got sick and we stopped.  So did a cruiser and we went through a degree.

It seemed so modern to read about a bunch of partying kids getting pulled over by a cop “cruiser” that for some reason I was left wondering if that was even what she could have meant.  So I googled.  Apparently, the police cars and the term itself were very alive in the 30s.

and then in the same night -this:

Benny kissed me twice and I let him.  It was nice!

!!!!

Oddly enough, I read about a cruiser two times in less than a week.  Here is another story that could have ended terribly, but turned out just fine.

Aunt Nelly and Mary were here and we had quite a fright.  Mary wandered off and I had to call the police.  They sent out a cruiser and found her.

(Mary is Babu’s goddaughter who is only about two.)

I’m not going to lie that I really question how this child wandered so far away in the first place.  What a wild thing to happen.

There is a second dance with Benny in June, this one in Meriden.  It begin magically but does not end the same way.  Something happens and there is a strange tension between them for the rest of the month.  There will be more about this later.

June 30th leaves us with two cliff hangers, New York or no?  Benny and the banquet or no?

Wednesday, June 30th, 1937
My elation started at noon and by now it is blasted.  Mr. Munford asked me how I’d like to work in New York.  I was overjoyed.  But it’s a different story at home.  I know everything points to my remaining at home, but I’d love to have my chance.  Also, Benny hasn’t said anything about the banquet tomorrow.  Joe Adams asked me to go with him, and somehow I got out of it.

You will have to wait to see how it all turns out.  (No spoilers from me.)  (I read most of July and I don’t even know!)