Lobsters do Dance

My friend Karen Newton calls this my Bozo date! I had let it go from my memory but then on a paleontology dig in northern Minnesota one year we were talking about the worst dates we had ever been on! As people talked and things were getting hilarious I all of sudden recalled this! I am sure the girl in question also calls this her worst too! Ok, the details as I recall them! Dick Newton was going to go out with Karen on a nice date and asked me if I wanted to go along with them. I had no special girl at the time so I searched the yearbook for a likely candidate. It was something at which Rick Oliver and I had become quite proficient. We would look a girl up and then call cold and spend time getting to know them and before we hung up we got to the real reason for the call…a date for such and such. Since we were great at talking things up usually they agreed to go…but it was no big deal if we failed…the yearbook was full of girls and with a school population of 2500 people a little over half of which are girls with just one yearbook you have about 1250 or more to choose from. If all else failed we had three other high schools in our district too. I had settled on and asked out this very pretty (to me… I was extremely prejudiced) redhead, named Beverly Bonning. I think now that she must have been an alien or some other mutant species at the least. She went to another school in town, Estancia High School and I was pleasantly surprised by her acceptance of the date. I was always amazed that a girl would date a boy she had never met. I assume that she looked me up in her freshman year yearbook…. And saw that I at least looked normal (little did she know!!!!)

She was small 5’4” 115 pounds with lots of freckles (Freckles are an absolute aphrodisiac to me!) (Maybe I am the alien) and flaming bright red hair that was very unruly and very frizzy. Perfect for me I

thought.

We went to Disneyland for five or six hours and did the dancing and the rides and I tried to talk with her and she was having none of it. I realize I am a little over the top and goofy but she still could have at least told me to shut up now and then. She was as silent as the Sphinx … The mother ship must have ordered her to not reveal anything. Disneyland then was a favorite place to go for meaningful dates. It costs enough that the girl knew you liked her to spend all that loot and yet, in her defense maybe they felt the pressure of a boy spending a lot on her, so maybe he expected something in return… maybe that was the problem. Anyway she was as humorless as any date I have ever had. She was so freaking cute though…this had to work! Dick and Karen (On only their third date) are full of good humor and fun. They have always been fun people to me. (I am missing all my serious genes… from a serious childhood accident) So that she was being so flat and lifeless was getting truly depressing to me. After all this frivolity we left Disney and went to Sam’s Seafood, a very good restaurant in Seal Beach, California. It was made of old parts of piers and nets from ships of all sorts. It was on Coast Highway about 20 miles from Disneyland and it was almost always packed! It was the most expensive date that I had gone on up to that time. She was just bored to tears and very quiet. I am trying to recall if I ever spoke to her now. Maybe she communicated telepathically since I can’t recall any audible conversation. Well, as the evening wore on and on and on, I began to get bored with her as well, but I very much hoped that the dinner would be nice. We both had ordered Lobster Thermidor even though either of us had a clue what that was but it sounded good. I arrived at the table and I just couldn’t eat it at all. The un-assaulted part of the lobster was still ok. But I hated it and Bev hated it (Hey finally a common agreement of sorts! Marriages have been based on less) so we tried to eat what was there on the plate with as little thermidor as possible. Dick and his girl, Karen really wanted something good, so they actually were clever enough to order something palatable and were not noticing our problems. Bev is just sullen by now and I am fully puzzled by her and her attitude. I was probably saying things to her that she was ignoring and this made her more and more uncomfortable. I was also afraid of the steam pouring from her ears! This always sets my mind working in a better and more creative way though! So, I grabbed my lobster and then I glanced at her and she is sitting there pouting but still looking very lovely I must add…and I dearly want to kiss those lips…pouting lips drive me crazy! So I reached over, she lurched away from me fearing the worst, and I took her lobster too. With both lobsters in my hands now I dressed them up with parsley in each claw and a few sprigs jammed in their heads and began a song and dance routine with the lobsters by holding one in each hand and making them dance to my songs. I began with singing “Hello My Honey” a great song of the 1930’s or the depression era anyway. Fitting since I was depressed. I was well into the second chorus when Dick and Karen caught on and were laughing so hard that other tables were noticing. These wonderful crustaceans were even doing the can-can… a very difficult step for dead lobsters. People nearby were sensing stars being born and they all started watching the floor show and were laughing and applauding until the Maitre’d came over and asked me (not the alien… just me!) to leave the premises as quickly as feasible. I said I’d be happy to as soon as we had all finished eating in deference to Dick and Karen, but I did cancel the dance of the decapods. He didn’t move but stood there with the same alien face that Bev was wearing (hmmmmmm) so we hurried up and left to a round of applause and some cold hard stares from other mother shippers like the Maitre'd. Beverly sat through all this with the reddest face I have ever seen on a human being. She was redder than the lobsters ever could have been. On the way home, she sat in stony silence with little wisps of smoke still slowly escaping from her ears and nostrils. She was near bursting into flames I am sure! Spontaneous combustion was a definite possibility. Dick, Karen, and I totally enjoyed ourselves most of the time anyway and we tried to include our little alien friend. As soon as I walked Bev to her door she quickly went in and slammed the door. No good bye, no thank you for the entertainment, no kisses of any kind except maybe the big kiss off! Needless to say, she has never spoken to me since that day. I tried to call her a few times but she was always “unavailable” each time I got an answer from her family. Karen tagged her with the name Bozo from this date (it was the hair!!!!) and that was all she used to refer to her for many years. I now recall more and more of this each time I think of it and Bev never seems to get any better (Attitude wise… I still to this day love the way she looked then! I wonder now if we ever really spoke at all on the date! We never kissed much to my great and lasting regret…. And I completely assume to her great relief! Red hair and girls with red hair in green dresses have always been just too sexy for me to pass up. And since our high school had green and white for colors and we had a drill team for football season halftimes and red heads just looked so great in those tight green bodices and flared short skirts… I was in Nirvana most of my high school days. That was my worst date! I had so many bad ones but this one was the classic! I wonder if I am in many girls bad date lists! Maureen Mc…? I think it is McCorry says I am on her S--- list for introducing her to a guy she got dumped by for an 8th grader he liked! She adds me to her bad list for that faux pas. Heck Bill Richardson fell for this nubile young 8th grader ‘cuz she was just plain hot! I mean screaming hot! Maybe even alien hot! How can I help that! Maureen just never had a chance and Maureen was wonderful! She was a dancing partner of mine at the Rendezvous often! We never won any of the dance contests but we came close once or twice. Bill was on the track team with me and I never saw him after graduation day! I wonder what happened to him? He was planning on being a Marine! Was he taken to the mother ship to be with Miss Nubile? Another photo of little Miss Bonning.