An Old Romance
Posted on August 17, 2013 under Storytelling with 2 comments
I have been accused of many things in my life, but no one has ever accused me of being Don Juan. For those of you just crawling out from under a rock, Don Juan was a famous seductress of women several centuries ago. An incident that happened several months ago gives me some hope that I may just now, at sixty two, be hitting my stride. Alexander Pope, in his story “Essay on Man”, immortalized the phrase, “hope springs eternal”.
Like most teenage boys, I was clumsy in dealings with the fairer sex. No, that is far too charitable. I was way more interested in sports than women. Sadly I wasn’t much better at sports than I was at courting. Like most of the other dorky, pimple faced teenage boys, I regularly attended dances on Saturday nights at the local community centre. It was a free for all. Some guys went to hear the great local bands, back when live music was in its heyday. Many others went to drink and yes, there was a crew who went to fight. But the vast majority of us went in the hopes of just maybe getting a chance to dance with that special someone. The problem was that everyone wanted to dance with that special someone, especially the last waltz of the night. Throughout the evening, all the guys paced around the room like crows in heat trying to muster the courage to ask anyone to dance. The girls sat on one side of the bleachers and the guys sat on the other. It was a bit of a staring contest and quite pathetic to watch. Eventually you would muster the courage to ask someone to dance. Very often the outcome was predictable. You would get “shot down” which received snickers from the other girls and uproarious laughter from the other studs biding their time.
And then, you would hear the first few notes of “Whiter Shade of Pale” or” “Hey Jude” and it was “game on”. You would nearly be trampled to death by the other guys all wanting the same thing – a chance to get close, very close if you were both bold and lucky, to the special girl that everyone wanted to dance with. While I was a pretty good bowler back then, my average score on the dance floor was abysmal. Let’s face it, in the eyes of most girls, all the guys were losers.
University held the prospects of higher learning but unfortunately for many of us that meant ingesting copious amounts of leafy greens. Many years later when trying to get elected to town council I had to declare past habits. As I was fond of saying, we only tried drugs once, for four years, but didn’t like it. And no, we didn’t inhale! Many people back then wandered around in Jimi Hendrix’s “Purple Haze”. We were having way too much fun to be paying much attention to romance.
My second go round at university came many years later when I was employed by the university as a residence director at one of the more notorious buildings on campus, known as The Zoo. I can’t think of too many redeeming features for the two years I spent there but I did meet a number of women in a most unusual fashion. It was certainly not that I was older and more mature. And I hadn’t had any cosmetic surgery so I still wasn’t going to win any beauty contests. Why did I become so popular with the women? Because I learned how to knit. You see, I trashed my left knee playing intramural hockey and ended up with a major league cast on my leg after ACL surgery. Back then, this surgery kept a person virtually immobile for weeks on end, which is when some lovely lady taught me how to knit. I wasn’t content to be just any knitter and I became a knitter of Olympic proportion, crafting fifteen or so Lopi sweaters in a matter of months. Somehow this impressed the girls for it seemed that I had any number of them bringing me meals from the cafeteria. I played the pity card pretty hard. I was almost disappointed when the injury healed
. A few years later I stumbled into my wife’s life – that is a story in itself and is probably best left for another time.
This brings me to a startling turn of fortune, in my decades-old attempt to become just a little bit romantic. Finally, finally, after sixty one years, I was approached by a woman who had eyes only for me. I would like to say that I met her at a bar. And no, I didn’t lure her on the internet. The sad news is that my latest crush is ninety years old and lives in a nursing home.
Every year for as long as I can remember, I have been going to local retirement homes to sing Christmas carols. Our parents took us there as children and we have taken our own on many occasions. Last December I went to one of the residences along with a few of my siblings and several other friends. All was normal. We paraded throughout the home and performed many Christmas favorites in the residents’ lounges. Early on in the proceedings, a very spry woman not only got out of her seat but within moments was a full-fledged member of our choir. She was much more than a one hit wonder and besides singing, she introduced dancing into the program. I was the “de facto” leader of the group and as such, did the honorable thing and offered her my hand in a dance. BIG mistake. For the remainder of the two hours, she was my constant companion. During that fateful dance, (and I can assure you that this has NEVER happened to me), she put her hands, and how can I say this delicately, on my ass.
Well, well, well. And I thought there were no surprises left in life. I wasn’t sure what to do so I just went with it. And no, I didn’t enjoy it, but she certainly did. She stuck to me like a flea on a dog. And late into the afternoon, as the romance blossomed, someone, some sicko, presented her with a sprig of mistletoe. She landed in front of me like a piece of a comet hurtling towards earth. As she was shorter than me, I bent on one knee and we exchanged a kiss.
All good things must pass and it was time for me to depart and time for her to have her afternoon nap.
On leaving the home, I immediately drove to the nearest convenience store and purchased several lottery tickets, for surely my fortunes had changed.
