TV character Gomer Pyle made us laugh with his joke of how he complimented his date: “You don’t sweat much for a fat girl”, and then, of course, he couldn’t understand why she got mad at him.
Husband makes blunders along that line much of the time. He says things and then does not understand why they do not turn out as he had planned.
In the old Sumpter Hall at Friends University, he and I and several classmates sat at one of the retro tables sipping cokes and talking. One girl at the table was my buddy whom I will call Grace, a silly,selfish adolescent in many ways, She had never been on a date, and she felt out of the social swing of life.
Husband, my then boyfriend, turned to her and asked, “When are you going out on a date with me, Grace?”
She blushed and giggled while everyone at the table turned and looked at me. I responded with, “It sounds as if he is serious. I would give him an answer if I were you.” I refused to let on how much his comment stung.
My then-boyfriend turned a bit ashen, but that began several weeks of them going out on dates.
Husband recalled the event several years later by saying, “ I can’t explain why I asked that question. I thought I would make you jealous, but it all backfired when you told her to pursue it. That was one of the stupidest things I have ever done.”
Actually, I can think of many others that were far more imprudent, bit this is not the venue to delve into them.
“I remember I did everything I could to include you in my dates with her. Remember the time we came and got you to go to the movies with us? We picked up then-pregnant Jan because Larry was at work, and then came for you. I think Grace was not too happy with that one.”
“How did you convince her to invite me?” I knew I would not have agreed to his plan at all had the situation been reversed.
“I had this spontaneous thought how to pull it off, I mentioned Jan should get out of the house since Larry was at work. Then, I casually asked ‘I wonder how Simers is doing’ as I steered the car toward your house.”
“You paid for my ticket and sat between Grace and me.” I remember how we dominated the rest of the evening with our own private conversation.”
Husband also recalled the night I went with him and Grace to count shooting stars. “Remember that August when Kjersti invited us to the farm to watch the star show?”
Of course I remember. “It seems we laid out in that field for hours, then we finally got smart and crawled into the station wagon. Didn’t it belong to Grace’s parents? You slept in the back end, had her take the front seat, and directed me to the middle seats. You kept raising your head to check on me.”
“I wanted to make certain you were still there between me and her. If she had attempted to get into the back with me, she might have tried something. I didn’t want her to smother me to death with her big boobs.”
“That isn’t a funny picture,” I said, “But the funny part was the way you kept throwing cigarettes.”
During that period of his life, Husband smoked a great deal. On that particular August night the Kansas sky was most clear and the meteors were abundany. Each time we saw one we would count aloud. Husband must have become bored with the entire thing, so he began smoking throwing his still-lit cigarette butts into the air while counting. “Ninety-eight.There goes Ninety-nine. Look! Now we are up to 100.”
That was about the time he suggested we get in the station wagon for a bit of sleep.
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