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vanillafluffyAs I mentioned yesterday, I saw the movie "Heaven Can Wait" and heard the call. Suddenly, if there was a Warren Beatty movie on the Late Show, I stayed up for it, although HCW remained my Great Love.
I developed a passion for his character's team, the Rams (who fortuitously went to the Super Bowl that season), wore a grey hoodie like his, and...well, I couldn't afford a saxophone. And I knew better than to ask my dad for anything that expensive.
So I coughed up a few dollars and bought myself a sopranc recorder. Thanks to St. Jerk's, I could kind of read music: I knew Every Good Boy Does Fine, and FACE, but I didn't know musical keys from house keys, so I may have been a little flat.
I acquired a fair bit of sheet music/music books, and got into the habit of skipping lunch and finding a quiet place to play during the hour I had for lunch. This was usually in a shaded area outside the library.
One afternoon, a thin boy with blue eyes came out and asked if I had just played "Greensleeves". Yes, I did. He'd been in the reference room, and heard music through the walls and had wondered where it was coming from.
And that was how I met BC. We got to talking, and at the end of the day, he walked me home. It turned out that his family lived literally around the corner from me---the way the subdivision is laid out, I *have* to pass that house coming and going---and had moved in a few months prior.
It soon became clear that the Universe was being playful, because I soon discovered that his sister, GK, was in the school play with me. That year, our drama club was doing "Arsenic and Old Lace"---I was one of the daffy old ladies, and GK was a police officer.
It got better. BC already had a girlfriend, NJ. It turned out that she and I sat next to each other in Brit Lit class---but we'd never talked to each other because we both usually had our noses in our respective books (and I don't mean textbooks). NJ and I became quite friendly, and she was soon one of the slumber-party brigade.
I was somewhat intimidated by Dr Bizarre, who was between BC and GK in age, stolid and unsmiling. I wasn't so much physically intimidated as put off by the fact that he never laughed at any of my jokes. It was a few years before things progressed to that point.
Their dad, VC, was career Air Force, mom Kat at that time had a cafeteria job at the college. VC was from Georgia and Kat was from Texas---the kids had grown up all over, but most of their talk was about the last few years when they'd been stationed in North Dakota, or as BC refered to it, Nodakland.
NJ didn't want to go to the prom, BC and I both did. I asked permission to borrow him, and then began searching for a dress. Dad let me order one from the Sears catalog. We went and picked it up from the store on Wednesday afternoon (the prom was Saturday night), I tried it on there in adressing room, and discovered it was scaled for someone 5'5" or shorter.
If shopping for sister-of-the-groom dresses with my mom had been traumatic, it was nothing compared to finding a prom dress with my dad. Hunting through every department store at the mall, I finally found something wearable at...it was either Burdines or Jordan Marsh, I can't quite recall. It had an empire waist, and was a print that reminded me of cotton balls or clouds, rose and taupe and pale grey. (I still have it, somewhere.) It was...I want to say a size 16---I was about 125 at the time---although it might've been 18.
The prom for CHS class of 1979 was held at the Contemporary Resort Hotel at Walt Disney World. BC got me a corsage and rented a tux (which made him look like an undertaker, albeit better dressed than usual), and I drove, since he wouldn't actually get his driver's license for several more years.
We danced a few dances. There was a buffet of appetizers, which we both foraged at. Got lost on the way home, and of course, had car trouble. (This after not having seen another car for a solid hour.)
A car came along and stopped; it was a guy I knew from my Architectural Drafting class, dressed for prom and driving his dad's Corvette. (I was in a 1971 Toyota Cornna Mark II wagon. Strictly blue collar.) He and BC fiddled with the air filter and got it started. I dropped BC off at his house and continued around the corner to home and bed.
BC, NJ and I all graduated at the same time. (Agnes had graduated the previous year, Big Red came a couple years later.) BC had the good sense to tuck a book into the sleeve of his gown to have something for entertainment during the internimable ceremony. Finally, it was over. We shook Principal Blake's hand and were turned loose upon the world.
Because of my checkered academic career, I didn't get anything resembling career or college counseling. I technically had all the credits I needed to graduate in January, and took off a week to look for work, where I ran into the classic "I can't get a job without having experience, but how can I get experience without a job?" trap. I spent the second half of the year unabashedly ignoring the teachers: "Look, I have all my credits, but those turkkeys in guidance didn't sign me up for January graduation. The only reason I'm HERE is because my dad gets Social Security for me as long as I'm in school." I got a LOT of library passes.
I signed up for early college enrollment and took an intro to computers class. (This is far enough back in the dark ages that they began with an explaination of bits and bytes.) That, as it turned out, circumvented the usual new student orientation I would've been subject to if I'd started in August like everyone else.
Warren Beatty = saxophone = recorder = Greensleeves = BC. Just remember that, because an awful lot is going to stem from it....
.
I developed a passion for his character's team, the Rams (who fortuitously went to the Super Bowl that season), wore a grey hoodie like his, and...well, I couldn't afford a saxophone. And I knew better than to ask my dad for anything that expensive.
So I coughed up a few dollars and bought myself a sopranc recorder. Thanks to St. Jerk's, I could kind of read music: I knew Every Good Boy Does Fine, and FACE, but I didn't know musical keys from house keys, so I may have been a little flat.
I acquired a fair bit of sheet music/music books, and got into the habit of skipping lunch and finding a quiet place to play during the hour I had for lunch. This was usually in a shaded area outside the library.
One afternoon, a thin boy with blue eyes came out and asked if I had just played "Greensleeves". Yes, I did. He'd been in the reference room, and heard music through the walls and had wondered where it was coming from.
And that was how I met BC. We got to talking, and at the end of the day, he walked me home. It turned out that his family lived literally around the corner from me---the way the subdivision is laid out, I *have* to pass that house coming and going---and had moved in a few months prior.
It soon became clear that the Universe was being playful, because I soon discovered that his sister, GK, was in the school play with me. That year, our drama club was doing "Arsenic and Old Lace"---I was one of the daffy old ladies, and GK was a police officer.
It got better. BC already had a girlfriend, NJ. It turned out that she and I sat next to each other in Brit Lit class---but we'd never talked to each other because we both usually had our noses in our respective books (and I don't mean textbooks). NJ and I became quite friendly, and she was soon one of the slumber-party brigade.
I was somewhat intimidated by Dr Bizarre, who was between BC and GK in age, stolid and unsmiling. I wasn't so much physically intimidated as put off by the fact that he never laughed at any of my jokes. It was a few years before things progressed to that point.
Their dad, VC, was career Air Force, mom Kat at that time had a cafeteria job at the college. VC was from Georgia and Kat was from Texas---the kids had grown up all over, but most of their talk was about the last few years when they'd been stationed in North Dakota, or as BC refered to it, Nodakland.
NJ didn't want to go to the prom, BC and I both did. I asked permission to borrow him, and then began searching for a dress. Dad let me order one from the Sears catalog. We went and picked it up from the store on Wednesday afternoon (the prom was Saturday night), I tried it on there in adressing room, and discovered it was scaled for someone 5'5" or shorter.
If shopping for sister-of-the-groom dresses with my mom had been traumatic, it was nothing compared to finding a prom dress with my dad. Hunting through every department store at the mall, I finally found something wearable at...it was either Burdines or Jordan Marsh, I can't quite recall. It had an empire waist, and was a print that reminded me of cotton balls or clouds, rose and taupe and pale grey. (I still have it, somewhere.) It was...I want to say a size 16---I was about 125 at the time---although it might've been 18.
The prom for CHS class of 1979 was held at the Contemporary Resort Hotel at Walt Disney World. BC got me a corsage and rented a tux (which made him look like an undertaker, albeit better dressed than usual), and I drove, since he wouldn't actually get his driver's license for several more years.
We danced a few dances. There was a buffet of appetizers, which we both foraged at. Got lost on the way home, and of course, had car trouble. (This after not having seen another car for a solid hour.)
A car came along and stopped; it was a guy I knew from my Architectural Drafting class, dressed for prom and driving his dad's Corvette. (I was in a 1971 Toyota Cornna Mark II wagon. Strictly blue collar.) He and BC fiddled with the air filter and got it started. I dropped BC off at his house and continued around the corner to home and bed.
BC, NJ and I all graduated at the same time. (Agnes had graduated the previous year, Big Red came a couple years later.) BC had the good sense to tuck a book into the sleeve of his gown to have something for entertainment during the internimable ceremony. Finally, it was over. We shook Principal Blake's hand and were turned loose upon the world.
Because of my checkered academic career, I didn't get anything resembling career or college counseling. I technically had all the credits I needed to graduate in January, and took off a week to look for work, where I ran into the classic "I can't get a job without having experience, but how can I get experience without a job?" trap. I spent the second half of the year unabashedly ignoring the teachers: "Look, I have all my credits, but those turkkeys in guidance didn't sign me up for January graduation. The only reason I'm HERE is because my dad gets Social Security for me as long as I'm in school." I got a LOT of library passes.
I signed up for early college enrollment and took an intro to computers class. (This is far enough back in the dark ages that they began with an explaination of bits and bytes.) That, as it turned out, circumvented the usual new student orientation I would've been subject to if I'd started in August like everyone else.
Warren Beatty = saxophone = recorder = Greensleeves = BC. Just remember that, because an awful lot is going to stem from it....
.
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(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-08 11:52 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-08 11:55 pm (UTC)I hope I'm not boring the crap out of too many people....
(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-08 11:53 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-08 11:57 pm (UTC)I'm glad it's holding your interest. There seems to be a small core of my f'list following it.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-09 02:41 pm (UTC)XO
Donna
(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-09 11:47 pm (UTC)(Oh,that icon---!)
(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-09 05:46 pm (UTC)::oof::
Sorry about that. Blame it on the caffeine.
::grin::
This is impressive, the way you can remember and communicate so many memories. As I said last night, I can barely remember yesterday, much less 40 years ago.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-09 11:51 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-09 06:24 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-09 11:53 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-09 06:38 pm (UTC)I think my problem with that movie was how basically nice and sweet Warren's character was, when at that point I was more enamoured with his "real-life"/Shampoo persona. So on that level-kind of a let-down, but it did have James Mason in it, and even though it was torward the end for him, he still had that voice.
Obviously it had a lot of meaning for you though.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-09 11:56 pm (UTC)But YES, James Mason was a definite perk! I loved him (and Kirk Douglas) since Mom and I saw the rerelease of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-09 10:31 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-09 11:59 pm (UTC)