Sometimes we don't have a clue.
I still have two balcony seats to see Simon and Garfunkle in concert. Granted they are from Feb. 8, 1968 and all the scalpers are probably dead, but my plans for a birthday date with a young woman I met at a MoPar auto parts office were with good intentions. I can't even remember her name (some defense mechanisms are really good), but around 15 years later I was visiting Michigan one Winter and ran into her at the mall with her young daughter. She never appologized that I remember, but said she'd moved to Canada to teach and have been out of town.
That reminds me of the excuse I got at Snelling and Snelling Employment Agency ("Northtown" as it was introduced to clients over the phone) when they told me my employment agent had left to take over an uncle's ranch in Alaska and was no longer available to help me find work. This in an office made up of "Clue" characters with names like Mr. White, and Les Taylor. All of them fake, with desk signs and business cards to match. I told the office manager I bet I could do my late agent's job as well as he did. They agreed to give me a try and just like that, I had a job. I watched the Chet Huntly video pep talk, and adopted the name Les Taylor (Yup, He is me now) which was already running in the papers. I worked very hard making cold calls to all sorts of business even remotely related to what a former milk man might do. Though I'd never met my client Lee S. and didn't know if I was pronouncing his name correctly, I told the bottling companies and beer delivery companies who answered my calls, that he was a determined, hard-working guy, who was personable, and well liked. I secured him several interviews which when they were offered to him (by someone else since after one day I'd had enough of the charade) were presented as almost sure things that he only had to show up for.
This proved to be one of many "one-day" jobs I had in my life.
So, what do we, or rather I, deserve? I had stood up a sweet girl named Candy about 4 years before the S & G concert. She had been dating a friend of mine and I took a liking ot her. Not enough to be honest or true though. At least not after running into a kind of Susan Summers type of blond while cruising around Grand Rapids, I saw her driving and paid more attention to my hormones, and her fancy glasses with the poodles on the corners, than I did to my heart, and brain. I stood up Candy in order to take this new girl to the stock car races at the Speedrome. That was the last time we went out and the last time Candy's mother would let her talk to me. I got what I deserved 4 years later.
Oh wait my birthday date was Trudy.
How did I ever get so lucky as to find Pappy at the Humane Society?
.jpg){kind=small}
Take me? ;)
ReplyDeleteDon't answer yet.....
I did the same type of thing that you did to Candy once. I went out with a guy that intrigued me because of his physical stature and blew it with a friend who asked me out. I went out with the "good looking" guy and stood up one of my best friends. My friend had not asked me on a date, but just out for pizza (as a friend). It was only later that I found out that my friend was in love with me and had asked me out only as a friend, because he was too afraid I would reject the request for a date.
After being stood up by me, my friend went out anyway that night. He went out, talked about me, drank too much, and later that evening was killed in a motorcycle accident.
I have carried that guilt with me for over 20 years. And of course it has always been once of those, "what if" scenarios in my mind.
So.... would you still take me? ;)