My Uncle Jack did his best to get me and my wife going out. He knew a keeper when he saw one. These are pages I wrote in my younger days chronicling the experience. Why she didn't grab me up at the mere sight of me, I'll never know.
June 18, 1980
Today Uncle Jack was babysitting me, which is always cool. This time he told me to get on my tricycle and "haul ass" to someplace called Darien. He said I'd understand when I got there. So I made it onto the expressway and kept going until I got off somewhere where all the streets have numbers. Then I rode into this one house where they were taking a holiday picture and these two guys asked who I was and I didn’t say anything and the girl said You’re cute and I nodded and rode back home. Uncle Jack asked me She's pretty cool isn't she? and I said I think I want to eat ice cream for dinner and Uncle Jack said Ok, maybe next year.
 |
| Family photo in progress; perfect time for a drive-by photobomb. |
April 22, 1981
Today my Uncle Jack made me go to this girl’s house in Darien. It was dumb. He told me we had to go and say hi to this girl and I would understand when I got older, but when we got there, I didn’t understand anything. She’s this short black-haired girl named Kim and she kept eating the whole time we were there. I said Hi and she said Who’re you? Then I said I’m Gregg and she said Oh whatever, and kept eating. Uncle Jack kept telling me You’ll understand when you’re older and I said Well I’m a minute older now and I still don’t understand and he said Just shut up and have something to eat.
So we went into the kitchen and Kim gave me something called tofu. It tasted like nothing. I said You got any hamburgers? and she said Well yeah, but I don’t want to eat meat for much longer because cows are cool. I said What do cows have to do with hamburgers and she said that hamburgers come from cows and I said Yeah right, listen lady, I’ve seen cows and they don’t look anything like hamburgers. Then Kim asked if I liked the Muppets and I do so we talked about that for a while.
Uncle Jack took our picture in the living room and said You can have this when you’re older. And I said, Oh, older like when I’m supposed to understand what I’m doing here? And he said Yeah. Like that. Then I noticed that Kim was pretty but by then it was time to leave, and when I got home there was a new Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends on so I watched that. Uncle Jack watched me, shaking his head, and said, Maybe when you’re a teenager.
 |
| Full disclaimer: That's really us. But I didn't like the living room decor, so I Photoshopped it. |
May 12, 1992
Uncle Jack gave me a gift certificate to an ice skating rink in Darien today, don’t ask me why. When I got there, the crowd looked suitably hip and with it, so I kept my sunglasses, velcro-fly shorts and jeans jacket on, figuring that would help me blend with an obviously cosmopolitan crowd. It was then that I saw her, skating with reckless abandon across the ice, laughing at something her friends were saying to her. She was a statuesque five feet tall, and radiant in her jeans and pullover.
I made my way over to her, elbowing several idiot friends of hers to the side as I did. “I see you skate,” I said to her in my most debonair voice. “I too am a skater. So let’s go out some time and skate together.”
Since I was mumbling out of abject cowardice, she didn’t seem to hear me. “Are they okay?” she asked me, gesturing towards two teens of her acquaintance, picking themselves up off the floor and looking somewhat peeved at me.
I figured it was time to up the seductiveness of my approach. “I said DO YOU WANT TO GO OUT WITH ME!” I yelled at her, tapping her on the shoulder for persuasive effect. She tripped backwards, laughing at the utter imbecility of my suggestion.
In front of me was a kid with a camera. “Quick, kid, take a picture!” I demanded, dropping to a knee and striking my best, most thoughtful pose, the girl behind me still laughing at the idea of us being socially intimate in any way whatsoever.
Dutifully, the kid snapped our picture, promising to send it my way as soon as possible. “Remember this moment,” I breathed huskily into the girl’s ear as she picked herself up off the ice. “This is the moment you met your soul mate.”
“Who are you again?” she demanded, gesturing towards the security guard and pantomiming a taser firing off and my body writhing in agonizing pain.
I straightened up. “Bam!” I said confidently and ran out the door, the guard and friends on my heels, a police dog in the distance barking angrily. “Phil Collins rules!” I crowed in their direction, flipping a pair of devil’s horns.
That night, after Uncle Jack bailed me out of the DuPage County Jail (a hellish experience if ever I went through one), I explained to him what happened, and he shook his head wearily. “Maybe in another four years,” he mused. “If you’re lucky.”
 |
| Full disclosure: That's really us. But I airbrushed my acne out, and made her look slightly more graceful. |
