But being a pre-teen and teen...embarrassment was my middle name! Sometimes it had to do with an older girl I liked (when I was about 12 one summer, someone I knew fairly well asked me when I was going to get hair on my legs), yet most of my lack of confidence centered around music.
Music was just so personal to me, especially then. At the age of 10, Mom took me to some department store (possibly Montgomery Ward), where there was a music section on the second floor. I wanted the 45 (single) of Wayne Fontana & the Mindbenders' "Game of Love," and they seemed to be out of copies. It was uncomfortable for me to tell them the title...what? A ten year old talkin' 'bout love?
As a pre-teen, I was walking home from school, quietly singing Jimmy Ruffin's "All the Love I've Got" to myself. Somewhere on Townhall Road, I got to the "oh baby, baby, baby" part, which he kind of belts out, so I did too. I looked up and there was an older girl sitting on her porch, staring at me. Embarrassing!
Two other instances concern sharing Beatles records. When "Penny Lane" b/w "Strawberry Fields Forever" was new, my music teacher in grade school said she hadn't heard it, and told me I could bring it to music class the following week. As she played both sides of the single, I sat in the back of the room, nervous about my classmates' reaction. Even though this was a song that the world was beginning to get to know, I felt like people would be judging me for what I liked, as if they were tapping into my private world. My private world was my bedroom, where I played a lot of music in my youth.
It's doubtful that most of my sixth grade classmates even cared much about "Strawberry Fields Forever," because I don't remember a single kid's critique; I recall the music teacher thinking it was quite interesting (in a good way).
A few years before, I brought the Fabs' then-new "Nowhere Man" to school on a stormy day, because the teacher would let us play records at recess time when the weather sucked. Again, I sat there in a quiet turmoil, wondering what people would think. The cutest girl in the class, Cheri, was (I believe) a Jehovah's Witness who wore go-go boots and played ukulele and sang for us once. Needless to say, she seemed more womanly than most of the females I studied with. My heart was broken that day with her thoughts about "Nowhere Man." "It's too slow," she opined.