Suave and Debonair

I haven’t always been the seriously cool cat that you all know.  No, this project took some time.  My early attempts at sophistication would often result in some level of embarrassment.  I can understand why today, knowing the finished product, you would be surprised to read this.  But I offer you a few examples from my formative years.

Sometime in the late sixties, I can’t pinpoint the exact day, while the rest of the world was turning towards flower power; I was discovering my inner cowboy.  Do not be misled.  I was the product of a typical California suburban upbringing.  I wasn’t raised around horses.  My family did not live on a ranch.  I couldn’t tell a steer from a dairy cow.  But there was something about the direction of society, especially its younger members, which put me off.

I did not care for music that glorified the drug culture.  As I believed that the purpose of shoes was to protect ones feet I favored boots to sandals.  I kept my hair short because it was easier to care for and fit more comfortably under a football helmet. I preferred lifting weights to smoking dope. Well, to be honest and fair to the dope smokers, I never smoked dope, or anything else (no, not even once… uh, uh) legal or illegal.

One of the benefits (and there are detriments aplenty) to growing up an only child is that you are less likely to learn to submit to peer pressure because for the first few years of your life, you have no peers.  It never occurred to me that I might not be cool. I can present no evidence today that suggests I was cool, but in high school I never thought of it. I was not a pimply faced freak that others avoided at all costs.  I was a jock!  But I didn’t really hang out with the jock clique.  I spread myself around.  One day, I would hang with the music geeks; the next I would be chillin’ with the student body government types.  Hell, I didn’t even mind being seen talking to the science geeks while they spent their lunch hour playing chess.  Nobody ever seemed to mind where I spent my time… not to my face anyway.  Remember, by the time I was a sophomore; I was six feet tall and weighed in at about two-fifteen.  I was universally respected and a favorite of the football coaching staff.

As I stated, I was finding my inner cowboy while everyone else was turning Haight-Ashbury.  I wore Levis, like everyone else, but mine were tight, not baggy.  And instead of Hush Puppies or Converse All-Stars, I wore Acme boots (until I saved up enough for a pair of Dan Post; sheet, howdy).  I even carried a pocket watch in my jeans watch pocket.

One day while laying a line on some sweetie as we awaited the bell that called our tenth-grade English class into session, a friend, David Jessup, asked if he could see my pocket watch.  I absent mindedly handed it to him while I continued dazzling my retinue of one with sparkling conversation.  David returned my watch just as the bell sounded and I slid it into the proper pocket without a second thought.

At just about the mid-point of class, I believe the topic that day was The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, my testicles began to tingle.  Now when you are a fifteen year-old boy, you are hardly surprised when your body introduces a new sensation to your brain. But this could not be put off as a reaction to whatever daydream I was engrossed in. Jostled out of my Shakespeare induced fog, I realized that my pocket watch alarm was ringing, pressed tightly against my pelvic bone: Whoopee!  I struggled to retrieve the offending time piece while seated, resisted all the way by my thirty-inch thighs (weight lifting).  I finally had to stand up to get the watch out and turn off the alarm. “Thanks, David!” laughter all around. With that, the teacher changed course, “Well, Dale, now that you’re awake we can turn our attention to the annual student body government nominating convention.”

Each spring, my high school engaged in the practice of selecting the following school year’s class and student body government officers.  It began with a nominating convention wherein student delegates would spend a Saturday listening to speeches by office holder hopefuls.  The delegates were selected from grade-level mandatory classes.  For example; all sophomores were required to be enrolled in an English class. So, each English class would select a cadre of delegates to send to the convention. Likewise freshmen were from Geography classes, juniors were from History classes, seniors were from Civics classes.  I’m not sure who represented the guys who spent their entire high-school career in auto shop working on their chopped hogs, but as they all looked like they were thirty-years old sporting pony tails and full beards, I’m sure they would have asserted their rights through the local Hell’s Angels chapter, if needed.  Anyway, by virtue of my errant chronograph, I was selected as one of the delegates from Mrs. Sandra Coler’s third period English class. As I left class that day, I remember hearing from a little voice in my head the woeful refrain, “Beware the Ides of March!”

The big event was to be held on a Saturday in the school’s gymnasium. There were rules: Dress was business office; men wore ties and jackets, women dresses.  Each delegation was assigned a State of the Union and required to impart some information regarding its culture. Seemly decorum was strictly enforced by the Senior Class Sergeant at Arms and his deputies.

I awoke early on the assigned day, eager to play my part in the governmental workings of my alma mater.  I donned a pair of grey dress slacks (boy, these sure seem tighter than the last time I wore them… the freshman class sports award banquet of 1969), a white shirt with one of my dad’s ties and a blue sports jacket.

As my dad was currently attending some kind of professional training in Boston, it fell to mother to help me unravel the mystery of the double Windsor knot.  I’m still not convinced that we got it right, but the pressure in on my Adam’s apple and the slight light headedness suggested we were in the neighborhood. All dressed up, I examined the result in the bathroom mirror.  I moved in for a closer look at a pimple (I was fifteen, what did you expect) and noticed to my horror; I had whiskers! Well, it was truthfully more like fuzz, but this would not do.  As a duly appointed member of the delegation representing Mrs. Sandra Coler’s third period English class, it was my solemn duty to be clean shaven.

I proceeded to my parents’ bathroom to retrieve my dad’s Schick electric shaver.  Oh, oh!  Dad had taken the Schick to Boston.  What to do?  There was only one path.  Fortunately, my father’s abandoned Gillette safety razor with disposable injection blades was still in the drawer. Today I would learn the manly art of razor blade combat.  Over my mothers’ admonishment, I lathered up and set out to become a man.

Up one cheek and then the other; across the chin, “Ouch!” rule number one, there is no “across” in safety razor shaving.  Immediately, a thin red line began to grow into a gusher-like flow. I wiped the foamy cream from my face.  The offended nerves were punishing me with an excruciating sting.  I recalled my Boy Scout first-aid training; direct pressure.  I held it for thirty seconds.  Lifting my finger from the wound, I learned half a minute was not sufficient.  Pressure applied again, this time for sixty seconds; no good!

The appointed hour for the opening gavel was fast approaching.  My mother, having had the benefit of growing up with eight brothers, recalled a memory from her youth.  She grabbed a scrap of toilet paper and held it to the Grand Canyon sized gash. After a moment she took her finger away and the patch stayed in place.  It seemed as this application of the ancient and mystic Tee Pee would keep me from bleeding out.  “By the time you walk to school” my mother did not drive but it was only a quarter-mile hike, “you should be able to take that off.”

I arrived at the gym and was standing around in the lobby waiting for the days’ proceedings to begin.  Unexpectedly, I was joined by Sis and Ronnie (their real names were Mary and Sharon but everybody knew them by their popular monikers) who struck up a conversation. Ronnie was a member of my delegation, but I didn’t really know Sis except by her association with Ronnie.  They were inseparable; outside of class, where you saw one you saw the other. Ronnie was cute but Sis was the kind of girl that looked just a bit more mature than the typical fifteen-year old.  Her hair was dark blond with sun bleached highlights.  She was tanned winter and summer.  She was generally made up as if she were in for a night out on the town. It was rumored she was dating a college sophomore. Every school has one.  All the boys know her by name.  I was shocked she knew mine; not to mention the confusion I was sensing about her choice to talk to me in the midst of schools crème-de-la-crème.

While I was lost in the sparkle of her deep blue eyes, she asked, “What’s that on your chin?” Involuntarily, my hand rose to the scrap of paper.  It fell to the ground and without thought I bent to pick it up.  This was more pressure than the gray dress slacks could contain; RIIIIP!

In retrospect, I should have seen this as an omen regarding the rest of my life.