For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women, please visit www.shyperson.com. For Terry Heggy's other writing, please see www.terryheggy.com.

Clint Eastwood’s Influence ~1974

Like all teenagers, my friends and I were greatly influenced by the movies. For weeks after seeing “The Omega Man”, for example, we denounced anyone who disagreed with us as “eee-vill” in our best falsetto zombie-mutant voices. We referred to any desperate girl as a “Moneypenny” in our best Sean Connery accents. And I don’t even want to think how many unintentional bruises and muscle strains were the result of some member of our group momentarily forgetting that he was not actually Bruce Lee.

But the greatest cinematic influences on our swim team had to come from the work of Clint Eastwood. Of course, you’d expect kids to try to psyche out opponents by leaning over and growling cool action-hero lines such as “Do ya’ feel lucky, punk?” and “A man’s got to know his limitations.” Or “Make my day!” But you might not expect an Eastwood influence to manifest itself during the breaks between workout sets.

Our coach at the time was a gentleman named Bill Spahn. Despite being cursed with a surname reminiscent of something nasty that salmon do, Bill was well-respected and well-liked by the kids on the team. He’d stand on the deck and give instructions for the workout sets, and for the most part we’d pay courteous attention.

But sometimes a few swimmers would finish the set before the others were done. Or perhaps there was a built-in rest period to let us recover before launching into the next challenge. During those moments when we weren’t swimming and Spahn wasn’t talking, well, we had to do something to pass the time. Here’s where Clint comes in:

In “A Fistful of Dollars”, there’s a lovely scene where Clint politely asks a group of local hooligans to apologize to his mule. Being bad guys, of course they refuse, and begin to taunt him. A gunfight appears imminent – and poor Clint is outnumbered 6 to 1. Being a good guy, of course he cannot draw first – which provides an opportunity for some excellent camera work showing the squinty-eyed determination from these potential combatants. Then, inevitably, one of the bad guys reaches toward his holster…and the shooting starts.

Of course, our hero fires six shots almost instantaneously, neatly eliminating his foes before a single one of them can aim a shot in his direction. An impressive feat, indeed. And something that any moviegoing teenage boy would love to emulate.

Well, for some reason we were not allowed to bring loaded pistols into swim practice. And even though there were people on the team who were not very popular – perhaps even a bit obnoxious – none of them would stoop so low as to harass a defenseless mule and therefore did not deserve to be the subject of our target practice. We had to find substitutes.

We used the backstroke flags for bad guys.

Backstroke flags consist of a series of vinyl triangles hanging from a line that is suspended above the water a few yards from the pool end. When doing backstroke, a swimmer can see these flags as he passes underneath, and can thereby gauge how far he is from the wall in preparation for making a turn. They are a valuable swimming aid… but with the proper imagination, they can also be transformed into a bunch of ugly thugs who deserve a good plugging. And it just so happened that there were about 6 vinyl triangles per swimming lane. Perfect.

Instead of shooting bullets, we squirted water. By interlacing our fingers, cupping our hands, and pressing the palm heels together, we could create a water-holding reservoir inside our fists – about the size of a small egg. Then, by forcefully squeezing from the thumb toward the pinkie, we could force a stream of water to jet forth from the pinkie side of the hand. With enough practice, a swimmer could shoot a stream high enough and hard enough to splatter one of the triangles on the backstroke flags.

(Let’s be honest, if you could master that shot, you could also squirt some other unsuspecting swimmer in the eye with enough force to cause genuine pain. But such an offensive act would elicit retaliation, and was therefore dangerous. As Bruce Lee would say, “flags don’t squirt back”.)

Since the flags weren’t going to draw down on us, we set an arbitrary time limit for blasting all six flags: one and a half seconds. Every time there was a break between sets, you could hear someone quietly mumble “I’d like you fellas to apologize to my mule”. A short pause, and then spat-spat-spat-spat-spat-spat as another 6-flag injustice was righted by our erstwhile Eastwoods.

And that was about the extent of Clint’s influence on our team…until the release of “High Plains Drifter”.

“High Plains Drifter” is a morality tale, focusing on a mysterious stranger (Clint) who visits the small town of Lago. At first it appears that he has come to save them from an impending attack by revenge-hungry criminals. But as the story unfolds, it becomes clear that the stranger has a darker agenda. The townspeople begin to discuss how to get rid of him.

Since the stranger is staying at the town’s only hotel, they decide to meet there to plot against him. Conspirators include the banker, the grocer, the town “good-time” girl, the hotel owner, the…huh? Wait a second – omigod! The hotel owner looks exactly like coach Spahn!

We couldn’t believe it! Here we were in a theatre, watching a real Hollywood movie feature, and our very own swim team coach is right up there on the silver screen, plotting to kill Clint Eastwood! Oh, man! This is SO cool!

(OK, it wasn’t really him, but the resemblance was uncanny.)

Um, back to the plot. So just how did our hotel owner/swim coach character plan to get rid of Clint, anyway? Well, he convinced a bunch of the townspeople to sneak into Clint’s hotel room after the unsuspecting cowboy had gone to sleep. They all carried baseball bats (wait, this was before Abner Doubleday – so let’s just say they were carrying sticks. Yeah, that’s it, sticks. Big sticks.) Surrounding the bed, they all raised their sticks up in the air and waited for the signal from the hotel owner.

“Welcome to Lago, you offspring of a female dog!*” he shouted, and the pounding commenced. Oh, it was brutal. I mean, these townspeople were whaling on the bed so hard, there is no possible way Clint could’ve survived.

…Unless, of course, he had previously prepared the old “two pillows under the covers look exactly like a sleeping man” trick, and was currently standing outside the window, lighting a stick of dynamite to toss into the room. Which he was.

Oops. Nasty club-wielding bed-whompers go boom. And Clint is off to torment the other townspeople. And as far as I know, our Bill Spahn look-alike actor never made another movie. (The coach himself did, though…he appeared as…what else? A hotel staffer – in “Dr. Thunderfinger is Forever”… but that’s another story.)

Anyway, the bed-pummeling scene was etched into our pliable young minds. So, for the next several years, it became very dangerous to be the last one asleep in a hotel room at a swim meet.

“Where’s Nyberg?” someone would ask. “Still asleep? Well, OK then, let’s welcome him to Lago.” And with that, we’d gather a half-dozen strapping young athletes and surround Nyberg’s bed armed with pillows, sleeping bags, and the occasional beach towel. “Welcome to Lago!” we’d shout, and then whale away.

Now, pillows may seem to be soft and cuddly things, but trust me, you DO NOT want to be welcomed to Lago. It can really hurt.

But that was years ago. It’s funny, though – I can still blast 6 backstroke flags in less than two seconds, and I continue to practice between workout sets. But I haven’t welcomed anyone to Lago in years and years. I no longer share motel rooms with other swimmers, so there aren’t really any opportunities.

But come to think of it, it’s sometimes a bit difficult to wake my teenage son in the mornings. Hmmm…now where’s that extra pillow?

*  This is not an exact quote, but this is a family column, so you’ll have to use your imagination.

For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women, please visit www.shyperson.com. For Terry Heggy's other writing, please see www.terryheggy.com.

The Swimmers and the Blind Man – Part 2 ~1974

WARNING: If you are offended by insensitivity and cruel attitudes from eras prior to the advent of Political Correctness, stop reading now. I’m sure none of the people involved in the following story would behave this way today – we’ve all gained maturity and wisdom (well, at least to some degree) – but back in 1974, we would sometimes behave like jerks. (Just like everybody else in the ‘70s.) Anyway, you’ve been warned.

What would you do if you had an unusable pool cue, a pair of sunglasses, and some paint that was left over from when you vandalized your high school? Of course — you’d pretend to be a blind man, right?

Well, OK, maybe that’s not what you would do, but it is what I did. Why? I dunno. I suppose you could get all Freudian about the symbolism of a guy who can’t get a date carrying around a 4-foot-long cane, or maybe attribute this behavior to a pitiable cry for attention by a geek who was not even noticed (“seen”) by the “cool” kids.

Or maybe I just wanted an excuse to do that Stevie Wonder head-wobbling thing in public. Who knows?

Anyway, I had this broken pool cue, and was determined to find a use for it. Being a former Boy Scout, of course I considered using it to create fire. It was good wood – ought to burn well – but…well, I could burn all sorts of other stuff. This was a very straight stick. It just seemed a shame to treat it like some gnarly old twig.

Whatever the motivation, I ended up sawing the broken part off the end of the cue, and then covering the whole thing with white paint. After it dried, I “borrowed” some of my sister’s red nail polish and created a glossy and alluring red tip for what I was now thinking of as my “cane”. I knew that I could go to the library and perform some research on the proper length of the red section; but I also knew that being nabbed by the “cane painting police” was far less likely than having my disguise penetrated because of the fact that I could, well, see. So I just slopped on the nail polish until I thought it looked good. “Looks good,” I said to myself, and laid it aside to dry.

The Wichita Swim Club was taking a bus trip to a swim meet in Omaha that weekend. I took my new cane along with no particular agenda in mind, other than to show the guys what I’d done with the damaged pool cue. But when you put a bunch of scheming deviant swimmers on a bus with nothing to do for hours, well, ideas get bounced around. At some point, the ideas congeal into a full-blown plot. My fellow conspirators and I would use the cane to see how badly we could dupe the local Omahanians. (Omaha-ians? Omygoshicans? What do you call them? Cornhuskers? I don’t think I even want to know what that means…)

Every time the bus stopped, I’d put on the sunglasses, grab the cane, and proceed to wander around the bus stop bumping into things. With one of the other kids acting as my well-intentioned but incompetent “guide”, I’d be led into knocking over store displays, entering women’s restrooms, and tumbling down flights of stairs.

I found it amazing that I could walk up to a stranger, whack them in the ankle with a pool cue, and they would apologize. And to this particular group of immature Kansas teenagers, such cruelty seemed to represent the pinnacle of humor.

That evening, the team went to the local buffet steakhouse for dinner. This presented a bit of a challenge for me for two reasons: One, it’s hard to carry a buffet tray while holding your guide’s elbow in one hand and a cane in the other. And, two, when you wear sunglasses at night, well… it’s really dark.

In other words, I was starting to understand how really crappy it would be to actually be blind.

Still, I had an audience with rather high expectations. And since the entire team was watching my every move, well, the show must go on.

I ended up tucking the cane under an armpit, and following Bruce VanBebber through the food line.

The hair-netted buffet attendant was happy to read the entire menu to me, describing each dish in detail. He didn’t know it, of course, but I could see the agony on his face as he tried to find words to make the rubbery-looking macaroni sound delicious and the brick-like carrot cake sound edible. He got stuck for a moment when he said “THIS is a large drink, and THIS is a medium,” before he realized that a sightless person would have no clue which cup he was indicating. I gave him the raised Spock eyebrow, and he changed his description. “Uh,” he said, “the large cup is pretty big and the medium cup is, uh, medium.” I nodded my understanding, and ordered a large Dr. Pepper.

(Side thought: is the "arched eyebrow" an instinctive expression of incredulity, or is it a learned behavior that would only be exhibited by sighted Star Trek fans? I’ll have to do some research.)

Once my tray was loaded, I held VanBebber’s upper arm and let him guide me to a table. He wasn’t paying much attention to the route we took, so I hoped that no spectators noticed that I neatly stepped around a couple of floor-level obstacles that I wasn’t supposed to be able to see. But then he led me into a situation where I needed to make a quick decision; either smack my tray into the back of Vickie Ingham’s head, or swerve to avoid her and reveal my deception.

I hope it didn’t hurt her too badly.

She did end up with a little bit of chocolate pudding in her hair, but she was an amazingly good sport about it. I managed to get seated without further incident.

I actually closed my eyes to eat, and found that it was possible to feed myself without looking at my food. It does change the dining experience, though – you should try it sometime.

“Oh, no,” somebody groaned, and I instinctively looked up. Sure enough, here came trouble. A couple of swimmers from the Topeka team were moving toward our table. And if being from Topeka weren’t bad enough, the group included the dreaded Ian Simpson.

I didn’t know him personally, but Ian Simpson had a reputation. He was huge and muscular, an incredibly fast swimmer, and he had a habit of false-starting in every single race. He didn’t talk much with his competitors, and he usually won every event he swam. Therefore, we assumed that he was a cocky and conceited jerk.

He sat down right across the table from me. Apparently he not only knew my name, but he also knew that my cane was a pool cue and my sightlessness was a sham. “Hi, Terry,” he said. “Good to see you.”

Then, as if immediately realizing that a blind guy might be sensitive to the word “see”, he apologized. “Sorry. I meant it’s good to, uh, sit with you.” And it went downhill from there.

“How did you guys handle the starting blocks today?” he asked the group. “Every time I got up there, the sun was in my eyes.” Pause. “Oh, sorry Terry.”

“I need to find out what heat I’m in for the 100 fly. Can I look at the heat sheet? Sorry Terry.” “We put our sleeping bags and stuff right next to the concession stand; it’s a great camp site. Sorry Terry.” “I’m gonna get more shrimp; I love sea food. Sorry.” “I think my brother is on the ‘C’ relay. Oops, sorry.” “Who’s on the ‘A’ relay? I am…sorry.” (Took me a while to understand that one. I/eye, get it?)

And it went on and on. Before the meal was over, Ian had uttered every conceivable variant on the theme of insensitivity. And his audience ate it up. The guy we had thought was nothing more than a muscle-bound aquatic automaton turned out to be quite the entertainer. Several strong inter-team friendships were formed that night thanks to Ian’s unfortunate treatment of Terry the blind man. While we still hated the town of Topeka, we no longer detested their swimmers.

So you could say that by cruelly mocking the misfortunes of others, I was able to become a catalyst for positive human growth and interaction. Or not.

As for the converted pool cue, well, it got safely tucked away under the seats of the bus for the remainder of the trip. From then on I only wore sunglasses when it was too bright outside. As a team, we swam pretty well, and our newly formed friendships with our northern-Kansas counterparts enabled us to direct our animosity in the proper direction – toward the damn Nebraskans. It was a good trip.

For the next few months, I continued to use my blind man’s cane, but only as it was meant to be used…as an air guitar. The only other time it appeared in public was when I took it on a camping trip shortly after I moved to Colorado.

It burned real good.

For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women, please visit www.shyperson.com. For Terry Heggy's other writing, please see www.terryheggy.com.

The Swimmers and the Blind Man – Part 1 ~1974

Our story begins in the living room of the Smith family. Duane and Pat Smith (or DuaneR and Pitter Pat, as they were known to the swimmers) were the most generous and friendly folks imaginable. Everyone from the entire Wichita Swim Club was automatically considered to be a member of the Smith family, and was welcome to drop by and hang out any time. And if this openness and kindness weren’t enough, well, they had a bitchin’ stereo system and a pool table.

Hey, if we weren’t in the swimming pool working out, chances were good that we were over at the Smith’s, playing 8-ball and listening to the tunes.

I’d imagine that most kids who spent so many hours with a pool cue in their hand would eventually begin to take the game seriously; learning about physics – you know, angles, momentum, spin, and how energy is transferred during a collision. But we didn’t. There really wasn’t any point in it. First of all, we were swimmers, so we already had a venue of expertise. And second, it didn’t matter how skilled you were, because Daniel Smith was always going to cheat, anyway.

Daniel was a con man. He sold contraband at school (fireworks, fake IDs, and the one thing that really torqued off the school officials, cinnamon toothpicks). His oft-quoted ambition was to eventually leverage his extra-curricular experience into a lucrative career…in the Mafia. I won’t go into details here; further description of Daniel’s experiences as a “legitimate businessman” will be explored in other chapters. But what’s important to this story is that Daniel proclaimed himself to be the designated authority on the rules pertaining to conduct around the pool table.

If Daniel found himself stuck with a difficult shot, he’d move the cue ball to a more agreeable position and explain the maneuver by proclaiming “House Rules”. If an opponent was looking at an easy shot, Daniel would again cite “House Rules” and move the cue ball to a less advantageous spot. Since the walls of the room were fairly close to the table, it was not unusual to hear Daniel say, “House Rules allow me to climb up on the table”, or if it was YOUR shot, he’d say “House Rules prohibit climbing on the table, you quaester!”

“But YOU just climbed on the table…”, you’d say.

“Of course I did,” Daniel would respond. “I was on the NORTH side of the room. It’s in the House Rules.”

(By the way, the word “quaester” – pronounced “kwee'-ster” – was something he picked up in his World History class. Even though he didn’t expect to need to use any “book-learnin’” in his future career as an extortionist and racketeer, he did pay enough attention to latch on to any words that sounded like some sort of insult, and were esoteric enough to confuse his victims. We were all called “queaters” for quite some time. He later moved on to the use of “dust bunny”, but that’s another story.)

Anyway, depending on which direction the wind was blowing, or what color your socks were, or how many days it had been since your last haircut, there was sure to be a House Rule that would ensure your defeat at the pool table. Therefore, the games took on secondary importance – we were really there to listen to the music.

DuaneR (Daniel’s dad) had purchased a state-of-the-art “Bang & Olofson” stereo system, with speakers the size of a Volkswagen. (Hmm, is it possible that teenage boys would try to make jokes out of the initials “B&O”? Do ya think?) It sounded SO sweet, and it was SO loud that you just couldn’t help yourself – you had to move to the beat.

(Another side note: For some reason, Daniel’s older brother Doug was under the impression that turning up the “bass” knob would somehow “suck the bass right out of the record”. If you turned the bass up just one time, it would deplete the vinyl disc’s ability to ever reproduce those bass lines again. Therefore, if Doug was around, we tended to only hear the treble parts. But it still sounded great!)

So… if you had a pool cue in your hand, the music was awesome, and Daniel was running the table with help from his imaginary rule book – well, you really couldn’t help yourself; you played the cue as if it were a guitar.

Yes, this was before the term “air guitar” came into existence. The originators of the concept (us!) called it “playing cue”. We’d jump, strum, spin, and grimace-on-the-high-notes, just like the real rock stars. And if Hendrix was on the B&O, we might even play the cue with our teeth, or behind the back. There was some serious style being cranked out in the Smith’s living room.

Our favorites were the Blue Öyster Cult, Alice Cooper, Cat Stevens, and of course, Jimi. But believe it or not, we even saw some wicked Elton John piano parts interpreted for cue – I’m telling you, this was a talented group.

And then came the accident. While the closeness of the walls worked in Daniel’s favor in developing advantageous rules, it wasn’t really a benefit to the wide-open, frenzied actions of your typical world-class musical cue player. A cue-to-wall collision was inevitable.

I don’t really remember who did it, but since most undesirable events were eventually blamed on Nyberg, we’ll just stick with what works. So, here we were, right in the middle of the part where BÖC’s “ME-262” transitioned into a reprise of “Buck’s Boogie”, when we hear a loud crack as Nyberg’s cue smacked up against the wall.

“I knew it!” Doug shouted upon hearing the noise. “We sucked the bass out!” He immediately ran over and turned off the stereo. Suddenly, all you could hear was the ragged breathing of the cue-players as they panted from exertion.

“Uh, no, Doug,” said Nyberg. “I think it was my cue.”

“You gotta buy a new one,” Daniel said. “House…”

“Shut up, Daniel,” I said. “Now that it’s already broken, we’ve got nothing to lose by using it upside your head.” I took the cue from Nyberg and waved it threateningly.

“Actually,” I said, looking at the cue, “it’s not that bad. Just broke the tip off. We could probably repair this before DuaneR gets home and has a cow.” Instantly, as all good teams will do, we became a force united with a single thought – how are we going to cover up the accident?

The bad news is that we weren’t able to repair it. The good news is that DuaneR really hadn’t been paying attention to how many cues there were in the house, and never even missed it. It seemed a shame to throw it away, so I took it home and tried to think of something useful to do with it.

Thus begins the story of how I became a blind man for a weekend.

Stay tuned.

For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women, please visit www.shyperson.com. For Terry Heggy's other writing, please see www.terryheggy.com.

My Gorgeous Spanish Teacher ~1974

Hey, even Beaver Cleaver once had a crush on his teacher; don’t tell me it never happened to you.

My biggest teacher crush came in my “Advanced Spanish Composition” class* in college. I wasn’t particularly interested in writing novels and essays en Español, but I figured that such a class would be easier than, oh, say, Organic Chemistry or something, so I signed up. I knew that I’d made the right decision when the teacher walked in. Wow!

Her name was Ana María, and she was beautiful. She had the smoothest bronze-colored skin I’d ever seen, and the silky hair tumbling about her face seemed to exert an almost magnetic pull on me. Looking into her huge brown eyes made the rest of the world fade from existence, and her lips promised a sweetness beyond anything I’d ever experienced.

And if those features weren’t enough, her body was the type that made chiropractors rich from all the heads snapping around when she walked through a room.

It was as if all my adolescent fantasies had come to life…but, (deep breath)…no – she was WAY out of my league. Hey, at that point in my life I wasn’t even confident enough to pursue the hygiene-impaired chicks who constantly mumbled curse words through their clenched and crooked yellow teeth as they rummaged through garbage cans, looking for discarded socks. No, if it wasn’t enough that Ana María was one of the beauty elite, she was also a teacher, and she was totally older than me; probably as ancient as 22 or 23.

I knew that I’d have to be content with the blessed opportunity to attend her classes a couple of times a week and gaze longingly upon her loveliness from my chair in the back of the room.

But wait a minute…it turns out that she just that day got off an airplane from Argentina. She’d never visited the USA before, and (maybe there’s hope) she doesn’t speak a single word of English! In our very first class, she confessed (in Spanish, naturally) that she was facing a bit of a challenge; being new in the country, having no friends, and not having a clue how to talk with anyone other than her advanced Spanish students.

Now, I’m the first to admit that at that time I had no experience in dealing with women. Heck, it was rare that I even talked with a female…but I was at least literate enough to recognize an opportunity for chivalry when it was thrust in my face. “Have no fear, teacher dear,” I said. “I’ll help you get acclimated!”

She smiled and said, “¿Qué?”

Well, whaddaya expect? She couldn’t understand English. Geez.

Anyway, after several attempts (frequently interrupted with her corrections of my amateurish Spanish grammar), I was finally able to get the point across. She actually seemed happy to know that she could call on me to help her settle in and become comfortable in her new land.

Over the next several weeks, we ended up spending quite a bit of time together. We went shopping, talked on the phone, and sampled the local restaurants. Her favorite was IHOP, though it took repeated attempts on my part to explain that in America, we don’t have to pronounce every vowel. She kept ordering “pan-kay-kees” and a nice pulpy glass of fresh-squeezed “or-anj-hee joo-ees-uh”.

During the course of our conversations, I learned a lot about my Argentina goddess. She seemed to genuinely like me, and one day when we were talking about movies, she really got my heart pounding. She casually mentioned that her favorite actor was Richard Boone – because she liked ugly guys. “Damn!” I thought. “I’m perfect for her!”

I’m not sure I’d go so far as to say I fell in love, but there was definitely some serious hormonal action going on. I was moving slowly, of course, because I really didn’t know how to move at all – but I felt that I was making progress. When she told me how much she enjoyed the romantic music of “Raphael”, well, I created a plan to really kick start the romance.

I did a little research, and found out that this Raphael fellow was a HUGE star in Europe and South America. He was sometimes referred to as “The Spanish Elvis”, and was one of those steamy love-song kind of guys who always had panties and room keys thrown at him on stage. (That sounds kinda sexy, but seriously, would you want to get hit in the face with pointy metal objects, much less someone’s used underwear? I doubt it.) It took a while, but I was finally able to find one of his records in the cut-out (severe discount) bin at the local drug store.

The plan was to pick her up at her sorority house, take her back to my apartment for an evening of candlelight, wine, and romantic, panty-throwing music. Of course, I had to figure out a way to get rid of my obnoxious roommate, and I’d have to buy some candles. As a college boy from Kansas, I naturally had cans of Sterno, road flares, and a couple of gallons of Coleman Fuel, but those weren’t the right types of flammables. I may have even had a Roman candle or two, but she was from Argentina, so those wouldn’t work.

My roommate, Mickey, was continually taunting me for not being able to date any American girls, and was actually quite creative in his quest for new and powerful ethnic insults to hurl at me because of my Latin obsession. But when I pointed out that HE wasn’t dating anyone, and promised that I’d tell him all the romantic details, he agreed to disappear for the evening. The stage was set.

Her sorority was apparently the female equivalent of Delta House. Upon my arrival, I noticed that all of the girls seemed to be encumbered by afflictions that would keep them out of all the uppity sororities – you know, things like baldness, leprosy, resemblance to Dom DeLuise, etc. And being unable to speak English.

The house actually had a Front Desk, staffed by a stern, shampoo-challenged receptionist. “I’m here to see Ana María,” I said. “Could you please direct me to her room?”

She looked at me as if I’d asked if I could cook and eat her favorite puppy. “Certainly NOT!” she said. “We don’t allow boys in our rooms.” She shuddered at the thought, and then continued in a snotty tone. “I’ll let her know that you’re here.”

“Hmmm,” I thought, “this severe non-fraternization attitude may indicate possible reluctance toward my visions of a naked candlelight Raphael romp.” I knew now that I’d have to be extra-suave to implement my seductive plans. I started practicing my best Richard Boone smile.

As usual, Ana María was radiant. She impressed me even more by speaking English as she greeted me. “We go for pan-kay-kees, yes?”

No, I wanted to explain – we go for smooching and fondling. Yes. Yes. Yes!

Sigh. You know what happened, though, don’t you? We ended up at IHOP, and by asking questions about the sorority, I quickly learned that she was fully supportive of the “no-boys rule”. I could spend time with her, and she’d teach me all the Spanish I wanted, but…there weren’t enough Raphael records in the world to deliver me to the promised land of hanky panky with her.

Sigh.

The bad news is that even after the class was over and I quit spending time with her, Mickey still continued to make fun of my futile attempt to woo my Argentinean teacher. Even to the present day, he’ll occasionally bring it up, the jerk.

The good news is that I still sometimes get nostalgic and throw my old Raphael record on the turntable. He really is a very powerful and emotional singer – why else would I get those tears in my eyes whenever I listen, right?

Buenos noches, amigos.
Terry

*Addendum:

The only memory I’ve retained about the Spanish Composition class is about the “magazine article review” assignment. We were supposed to read an article in an English-language magazine, and then write a synopsis/analysis of it in Spanish. Well, it seemed like too much trouble to actually go find a magazine somewhere, and I figured she was still pretty new to the country – so I thought I could probably get away with simply making something up.

I decided to write about a mythical article that I’d read in the imaginary “Inventions of Applied Science” magazine. It was about the invention of the proverbial better mousetrap. Not a bad idea, huh?

The problem was that by the time I was finished, I had endowed my mythical mousetrap with motion-sensor technology capable of discriminating between mice and other (desirable) household pets, as well as the ability to fry the offending rodent with a miniature laser beam. The zap only lasted 3.4 milliseconds, meaning that the device was also environmentally friendly with its low energy consumption.

Once the little mousy corpse had cooled, the trap used a remote manipulator arm to retrieve its victim and to stuff it in the “decomposition chamber”. The chamber (I wrote) could hold up to a dozen expired mice, and would process them all into a single odor-free bio-pellet that could then be used to fertilize one’s garden. Good stuff, eh?

I was having so much fun envisioning all the Rube Goldberginess I could cram into the dang thing that I forgot what the original assignment was. By the time I remembered that she was expecting a review of a real article, it was too late to come up with anything new. I finished my hasty translation mere moments before it was time to rush off to class and hand it in. I was sure I’d be busted for plagiarism. (No, wait. Plagiarism is stealing from someone else. This was original. So what’s the word I’m looking for? Oh yeah – lying. That’s it.)

Epilog: I didn’t get busted. In fact, she gave me an “A” on that assignment. There was a moment of panic when she said she’d like to read the article, and maybe even buy one of those funky traps…but I thought fast and told her that my roommate had accidentally burned the magazine during an experiment for his Chemistry class. Anyway, the close call had taught me a lesson, and I never ever again cheated on a school assignment.

Well, almost never.

For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women, please visit www.shyperson.com. For Terry Heggy's other writing, please see www.terryheggy.com.

Motel Shenanigans – Part 2 ~1975

When you’re a teenager, you don’t really worry too much about how much sleep you get. You can stay up late at night without worrying about next-day consequences. Hey, if you fall asleep in the middle of the day, what’re ya gonna miss? Part of an Algebra class? Who cares? Government studies? Ha! I laugh at your society’s pitiful attempts to educate me. BWAH Haa ha ha zzzzzzzzz.

But while normal students can party all night (or more likely in MY peer group, watch TV, or even [choke] study), teenage swimmers at an out-of-town meet are abnormally concerned with getting enough rest. For a competitive athlete, it’s important to be able to wake up early enough to perform all the necessary rituals before the designated warm-up time. Back then, in pre-Atkins days, our preparation included having a giant carbo-loading breakfast (typically pancakes with lots of syrup), followed by some warm-up stretching, touch-up leg shaving (for championship meets only), and finally, the all-important visit to the locker room toilet to dump as much of remnants of the pancake breakfast as possible. (Some guys put more energy into purging their bowels than they did in their races, but let’s not go there, OK?)

Anyway, at the end of the day when we finished up with bed-bouncing competitions, harassing other motel guests, and sneaking into potentially revealing drive-in vampire movies, we actually did look forward to getting some restful sleep. I don’t know whether various political correctness movements have changed this or not, but when I was a teen, we had to share a motel bed with one of the other boys. Some guys talked in their sleep, some kicked, or stole covers, and some took great pride in the audio volume and olfactory stench they could generate with their incredible flatulence. So... there were enough challenges to getting a good night’s sleep without a bunch of drunken partiers in the room down the hall.

Yep, that’s right…one of our meets coincided with some sort of lodge convention. I’m not sure exactly who these guys were, but they wore those funny purple Moroccan upside-down-bucket hats with tassels. They drank heavily and laughed heartily. Even from within our room, we could hear their portable stereo playing “Music to Strip By”, while some guy shouted lame farmer’s daughter jokes over the music. And since his compatriots were laughing at each joke, one had to assume that the general level of inebriation in the room was approaching critical.

We couldn’t sleep, and with some of our teammates’ penchant for making prank phone calls to the front desk, we didn’t expect to be taken seriously if we went through official channels. Nonetheless, action was required.

I’m sorry to say that my memory is a little fuzzy about those who participated in “Operation Silence the Drunks”, but I think the group included Nyberg, Jackson, and my brother, the Ant. We quietly left our rooms and performed reconnaissance.

The partiers were in the last guest room at the end of the hallway. Beyond that was only the motel storage and laundry room. It was a long way back to the next corridor, so once we got down to the target room, we’d be highly exposed for the entire time it took to run back to the hallway intersection. We were leaning toward smearing something on the doorknob – hopefully some leftover glop from someone’s room-service tray. Or maybe trying to rig the door with some sort of booby trap. Closer investigation was needed.

But before we stood directly in front of their room for any period of time, we thought it would be a good idea to increase our escape options. If the storage room was unlocked, we could possibly hide in there if anything went wrong.

Sure enough, the storage room door opened with only a little persuasion from a credit-card against the bolt. And once that door was opened, our plans became complete in an instant.

The storage room was full of old mattresses. Perfect. Thank you, God.

Now all we needed was a little bit of time. No one had passed through the party room door for some time now, and it sounded as if the party was still in crescendo mode. We huddled in the storage room, coordinated assignments, and even went through a bit of a dry run to practice our teamwork. Then it was time to move.

Two athletes were assigned to each mattress. Our loads were bulky and fairly heavy, but we were charged with adrenaline, and highly motivated. It took only 8 seconds to get the first mattress in place, completely covering the door to the party room. Assault Team Two had the next mattress propped up against the first a few seconds later. Then, a moment of panic…the door opened!

“Hey!” someone yelled from behind the mattress. “Whuzgononhere?” The sound was actually muffled pretty well by the dual mattresses, but the message was clear – we were in deep trouble if these guys got out before we could escape. Nyberg and I leaned against the mattress with all our strength, which for the moment was enough to overcome the occupants’ half-hearted efforts to push their way out. The other guys grabbed the next mattress, and then the next.

Before the partiers realized the extent of their predicament, we had stuffed enough mattresses in the hallway to fill all the space between the door and the opposite wall. It was a lot of work to wedge the last one in there, especially since we were giggling hysterically as we listened to the barrage of creative cursing coming from behind our barrier. But by the time we kicked the last mattress into place, it was clear that those fez-wearing inebriates were not going to be leaving that room without assistance from the outside.

Because the barrier was so snug, we felt secure in taking the time to taunt them for a bit. “You’re gonna ROT in there, you scumbags!” we yelled. And of course, being teenagers, we also had to say fiendishly clever things such as “You suck,” and “We’re smarter than you. Buttheads!”

Suddenly, though, the Ant stopped yelling and looked thoughtful. “What?” I asked him. “Um, I was just thinking... what if they’ve called the desk?”

The giggling stopped abruptly, and the running began. We tore down the hall, fumbling with room keys in the fading hope that we’d be able to duck into our room before the authorities arrived. Oh NO! We heard the elevator bell ding.

Tumbling through and slamming the room door behind us, we still weren’t sure whether we’d escaped unseen. The four of us huddled together with our ears against the door, trying very hard to breathe quietly while our hearts pounded away. “I heard a door slam,” a voice said. “Yeah, but which one?”

Whew! They’d probably eventually figure out what had happened, but they couldn’t prove anything. We began to relax.

Of course, we then had to stay up for quite a while to talk about what studly adventurers we were – thwarting the evil adults, and all that. We probably ended up getting less sleep than we would have if we’d have just put up with the party. But it was worth it.

The next day, the coach and the chaperones loudly expressed their dissatisfaction with the hoodlums who had so cruelly harassed those innocent conventioneers. There were a few times where a particularly steely adult gaze made me think that they somehow knew which of us were responsible…but no consequences were ever sanctioned.

But even with our eyelids feeling a little droopy that morning, and our prospects of swimming fast not looking too positive, well, those pancakes still tasted pretty good.

Have fun, my friends, but keep the noise down, OK?

For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women, please visit www.shyperson.com. For Terry Heggy's other writing, please see www.terryheggy.com.

Motel Shenanigans – Part 1 ~1975

Road trips with the swim team were golden opportunities for kids in their late teens to experiment with their burgeoning sexuality, and to solidify their relationships with their teenage sweethearts. Oh, there were chaperones, all right, but there weren’t enough of them to keep an eye on us all the time, and besides, they were enjoying being away from home, as well.

I mean, they could have alcohol, you know? Now, I’m not saying that they did, but the theory does provide an explanation for why they didn’t spend much time watching over the rambunctious youth in their charge.

In any case, there were very few obstacles to prevent the kids from getting together in the motel rooms and engaging in all sorts of hanky panky.

Unfortunately, the one obstacle that did exist was a HUGE one – we were socially retarded nerds who were years away from getting a clue…about much of anything. The boys I hung around with presented no threat whatsoever to the virtue of the young ladies on the team.

(Sigh.)

And yet, we had the unbridled energy and enthusiasm of the youthful athletes that we were, so something had to give.

(Explanatory note: The era I’m describing pre-dated the omnipresence of Cable TV, and the invention of video games. Today’s youth would be likely to expend their extra energy in marathon sessions of GameBoy competition, or perhaps in fighting over the TV remote in bloody battles for channel-selector supremacy. But we had none of those options. Without cable, the only thing to do within the room during certain times of the evening would be to watch the News – and since that might accidentally be educational, we shunned it the way we would shun Oklahomans. When the News came on, we went out.)

One night, we were staying in a motel that was next to a Drive-In theatre. A bunch of us decided that it would be fun to sneak into the Drive-In and watch the movie. As I recall, the picture was “Blood of the Zombie” or “Zombie Bloodbath” or some damn thing – so it seemed likely that at some point during the evening there might be the opportunity to view one or more naked female breasts on the silver screen. (Hey, I said we were lacking social skills, not hormones.)

We gathered most of the regular gang, but knew that such an adventure required the participation of Roger Neugent. When Neugent joined an operation, well, interesting things just happened. I was selected to go get Roger.

It was around 9pm, and all the swimmers were supposed to be nestled in their rooms. The chaperones may have already been tucked in themselves…or they may have been down the street at the local bar – who knows? – All I know is that at that moment, they were not in the motel hallways dropping the iron fist of discipline on wayward, curfew-busting swimmers like myself.

I found Neugent’s room and banged on the door. I heard a muffled “Who is it?” from within. Hey, it’s Neugent, I thought; he’s used to being hassled by the Man – let’s have a little fun here. I banged again. Then, doing my best to sound mature and burly, I grunted “Hotel Security! Open up!”

“Just a minute.” I was already chuckling, anticipating Neugent’s grin when he saw it was only me and realizing that he hadn’t been busted for…well, whatever he happened to be feeling guilty about.

It took longer than I thought it should, but finally the door opened. There stood some old guy (probably 30) that I had never seen before. He was in his underwear, and behind him I could see a woman in the bed, looking anxiously toward the door while hugging the bedcovers up under her chin. Even with my nerdy naïveté, I instantly realized that I had interrupted a romantic encounter between two people I did not know. This was not Neugent’s room.

My eyes went wide and my heart started pounding. “Uh, sorry, wrong room,” I stammered, then turned and ran down the hall. I expected to be grabbed from behind and rightly pummeled for my unwarranted interruption of the couple’s private activity. And if I somehow managed to escape that, I expected to encounter the real hotel security force, complete with handcuffs, billy clubs, and a complete lack of respect for my Miranda rights.

In retrospect, I’m guessing that the poor guy I disturbed simply turned to his wife, grumbled something about disrespectful punks and the sad state of the youth in this country, then returned to his previous activity. Since the motel hallways did not echo with the expected “Red Alert” horn, and I did not see squadrons of badge-wearing enforcement drones searching down every stairwell and inside every ice machine, I assume that the guy didn’t even call the front desk to complain.

Either that, or they were like most other small-town Kansas motels that were next to vampire-movie drive-ins – where “Security” consisted of the same pimple-faced teenager who had the job of restocking the soda machines and using an old broom to chase away the stray cats who wanted to sleep under the housekeeping carts.

To be honest with you, though, I don’t even remember if we got around to sneaking into the movie. I was so traumatized by the incident that I don’t remember anything except looking over my shoulder as we left the motel the next morning; expecting to see my prank victim coming after me with an ax or a loaded ice bucket or something. I showed my face as little as possible, furtively ducking behind other swimmers until we could load up and drive away from the place.

(Of course, it didn’t help that all my buddies with whom I’d shared the story were taking great delight in shouting “Here he comes!” every time I started to relax a little. Sigh.)

The good news is that I overcame that trauma reasonably quickly. By the time the next out-of-town swim meet rolled around, I was ready for further authority-flouting adventures, which will follow shortly.

Get a good night’s rest, my friends.

For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women, please visit www.shyperson.com. For Terry Heggy's other writing, please see www.terryheggy.com.

Motel Room Olympics ~1975

The best thing about being on the Wichita Swim Club was going to out-of-town swim meets.

Well, OK, the best thing about being on the Wichita Swim Club was getting to spend several hours every day in a swimming pool with fabulously fit and attractive young girls in their tight Speedos. Nothing else came close. But out-of-town swim meets were pretty fun, too.

I could tell stories of the awesome and epic competitive aquatic battles waged in various exotic pool locations (Topeka, Wellington, Bartlesville, etc.), but they were witnessed by hundreds of spectators. You can ask them for a description. Heck, you can see stuff like those swim meets on ESPN.

No, the really interesting competitions were not open to the general public. They took place in dimly lit private rooms tucked away at the ends of the long hallways of various Ramada and Holiday Inns. I’m talking about the Bedroom Olympics.

No, not that kind of Bedroom Olympics…get your mind out of the gutter! Remember, my friends and I were all certified nerds, and in most cases were still years away from holding hands with a girl, much less (gasp!) kissing one. But we were intensely competitive, and when the day’s swimming races were done, there were still challenges issued among the restless young athletes.

It usually started with a warm-up competition in “bed bouncing”. This is where you simply jump up and down on the motel room bed, trying to get as much altitude as possible. The ultimate goal would be to control your bounce with such precision that your hair would lightly touch the ceiling. High enough to touch the ceiling, but not so high that you suffered a bloody concussion while knocking ceiling plaster onto the sheets you were planning to sleep on later.

(Yes, there was occasionally blood. But most of the time, our heads stayed well under the noggin-bump threshold.)

The “bed bounce” competition naturally discriminated against those kids who were, shall we say... less gifted in the verticality department. One such individual was Danny Robinson; shorter than most of his teammates, but ferociously competitive. An extremely talented and intense swimmer, “Rosbo” clearly felt that a rule change was needed to even up the playing field. Thus, the sport of “ceiling toe touch” was invented.

It started the same as bed bouncing, but the ultimate goal was to kick your feet upwards in much the same manner that a pole vaulter changes his bodily direction. If you timed it right, and if you had a high enough bounce, you could touch your feet on the ceiling.

What a feeling of accomplishment! To slip the surly bonds of gravity and for that one shining moment reach the highest altitude allowed by motel architects…and then to feel the warm enveloping feeling of being gently cradled back to earth by the soft and luxurious bedcoverings of one of the country’s finest discount travel accommodation chains.

Well, OK, at some of the cheaper motels, the descent back from the ceiling was more like plummeting onto a sandpaper-covered hunk of plywood, but you get the idea.

To the best of my knowledge, though, we never had any serious injuries. Oh yeah, the bed springs probably suffered some fatigue damage, and the sheets were probably burned after each of our visits, but it’s probably a miracle that we never had to call room service for a body bag pickup.

Rosbo, though the shortest in the group, was undoubtedly the champ. I didn’t perform too badly, myself, considering that my competitors were all much finer athletes than I was. In the pool, I was always last among this group, but when it came to doing weird crap like jumping on hotel beds, well, I wasn’t half bad.

But the all-time award for most memorable bed-jump had to go to my best friend, Mickey Canaday. Though Mickey was a very talented athlete, he didn’t possess the same ultra-lean physique that most of the boys on the team had – his nickname was “The Fat Man”. At this point in his life, he was not really fat (and not really a man, either, but we won’t go there) – yet he did have a certain “smoothness” that set him apart visually from his teammates.

Anyway, Mickey enjoyed competing in the bed bouncing events, but was not satisfied with such a simple challenge. Always innovative, “The Fat Man” came up with a method for increasing the degree of difficulty; style points for the landing.

For most of us, simple survival was enough. As we came down from the ceiling, we figured that avoiding paralysis was complex enough. But not for Mickey.

I honestly don’t remember how many different types of maneuvers he attempted as he explored ways to expand the competition. There are no photographic records of his creativity in this limited arena. But no one will ever forget his finest moment in bed bouncing – the Cannonball Landing.

The idea was to see how high your second bounce would take you, if you jumped really high, then curled up into a tight ball before the primary impact. With years of diving board cannonballs under his belt, Mickey felt that he might as well “go for it” on his first attempt.

It was beautiful. He leapt high. He curled up. He bounced.

Wrapped up as a tight aerodynamic human sphere, Mickey sprang off the bed with fearsome velocity. He held form throughout most of his bounce, until the moment he realized that he’d failed to think about his post-bounce trajectory. And by then it was too late.

With arms still wrapped around himself, our intrepid human cannonball shot out over the edge of the bed, and landed directly on top of the little round-topped table that crappy motel rooms always place between the bed and the ineffective heater unit. There was a loud “POP”, followed by an even louder moan as the table fragmented and the bouncing fatman smacked the floor.

The witnesses each held their breath for that one second that you always do when you’ve witness a bloody and potentially deadly accident. But then, even before we were sure Mickey was still alive, the laughter started. Amid gasps of laughter, we did manage to pull ourselves together enough to check on our buddy’s survival. No obvious blood, and no apparent broken bones; it was OK to laugh. Which we did... for quite some time.

The table was in pieces. After moving the still aching Mickey onto the bed to recover, the rest of us tried to assess the damage to the room, and predict the punishments we’d receive when the smashed furniture was discovered. Several possible cover stories were hastily developed (it was broken when we got here, the maid did it, it was Odle’s fault, etc.).

But the story has a happy ending. Mickey’s injuries were not significant, but that wasn’t the happy part – none of the rest of us really cared how badly he was hurt. Besides, any injuries received in the process of delivering belly laughs to your buddies are worth whatever pain they cause. No, the happy ending to the story was that we were able to (sort of) put the pieces of the table back together before checking out of the motel. It was a very shaky repair job – if an anorexic cockroach walked across it, it would again fly apart into splinters – but chances were good that we would be long gone from this town before the damage was discovered. With any luck, the housekeeping staff would believe that the destruction was caused by an errant vacuum cleaner or something.

We may have been young, but we learned from this potentially disastrous incident. At the next hotel, we moved all the peripheral furniture out of the way before we started the bouncing competition. Hey, we weren’t stupid.

Were we?

For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women, please visit www.shyperson.com. For Terry Heggy's other writing, please see www.terryheggy.com.

How Did THAT Get in My Tub? ~1990

I like mornings. If I don’t have a morning swim practice to attend, I’ll still get up and take my time fixing breakfast, reading the paper, etc. before it’s time to go to work. I would hate to be one of those folks who frantically have to scramble to do all their morning chores within the 15 minutes between when they awaken and when they’re supposed to be at work.

One morning, though, I ended up having to spend a little bit of time on an unplanned activity.

I lived on the bottom floor of the apartment complex. I hadn’t lived there long, so I didn’t know any of my neighbors.

-- OK, it doesn’t matter how long I’d lived there…I’m a socially-challenged introvert, and probably would not have met them ever, unless they dropped by sometime to ask me to turn down the Ted Nugent records I was playing. (C’mon, you try listening to “The Great White Buffalo” at low volume – it just ain’t right.)

Anyway, as I prepared to take my morning shower, I noticed that there was already water in the tub. “Hmm,” I thought, “isn’t that peculiar?” I checked the position of the drain handle – seemed to be in the correct position. The bathtub spout was not dripping. By everything I knew about the science of plumbing, the tub should have been draining. It should have been empty.

But as I watched, I noticed that the water level seemed to be rising. “That’s odd,” I thought. “I must consider this phenomenon whilst I go to retrieve the morning paper.”

A few minutes later, the water level had risen dangerously high. “My goodness,” I thought to myself, “If it fills up much more, it could run over onto the bathroom floor. What should I do?”

I went into the kitchen closet and got the bucket I intended to use if I ever decided to mop the linoleum (which was about as likely as winning Lotto a dozen times in a row). I filled the bucket by dipping it in the tub, and then strolled outside to dump the water into the apartment’s garden. “Not bad,” I thought. “I’ll be able to empty the tub, and water the plants at the same time. It’s a win-win situation.”

After about two more buckets-full, it became apparent that the tub was filling faster than my one-man bucket brigade could dump out. Looking around frantically, I noticed my laundry basket. For some reason, when I had gone shopping for apartment fixin’s, the solid-sided Rubbermaid containers were on sale for less than the flimsy criss-crossed ones, so I had bought the one that turned out to be leak proof. My current little bathtub emergency made it clear that I had made a wise purchasing decision.

I dumped my dirty clothes onto the bed, grabbed the tub and headed for the bathroom. Shortly thereafter, I was frantically running to and from the apartment, carrying a full liquid load, and worry about the poor drowning garden plants on the way back in. As more people in the apartment complex were waking up and doing their morning business, it became apparent that a good portion of whatever went down their drains was surfacing up through mine.

I will spare you a description of the mixture that was filling my tub, but it was indeed a foul batch of stuff. I did NOT want it running onto the floor of my apartment. After a couple of particularly athletic trips to the garden, I had gained a small advantage on the growing flood – so I took time to start making phone calls.

The apartment managers weren’t on duty yet, of course. And the recording on the maintenance “emergency” line assured me that someone would call back “as soon as possible”. I also called Roto-Rooter, just in case the apartment staff didn’t call back in time. Of course, these calls were sandwiched in between my dip n’ fill/dump and run round trips to the garden.

My arms were starting to get tired. Even though I was an athlete in the prime of youth, it’s still a challenge to even pick up a full-sized laundry basket full of, uh, “liquid”, much less running frantically up the steps from the garden level and out to a spot far enough away from the apartment that I wouldn’t have to smell it. A new strategy was called for.

I started yelling at the doors of my neighbors as I went up the steps, and of course, my clomping alone was creating a pretty decent racket. After a couple such screaming and clomping trips, one of the other apartment doors opened, and a sleepy-eyed young lady peeked out. “Man, you gotta help me…” I pleaded. “We’ve got a bit of an emergency here.”

Thank goodness that she was able to overlook the fact that I was a half-dressed and wild-eyed maniac with a bucketful of sewage. She ducked back into her apartment, hastily pulled on a bathrobe, and then accompanied me on my next circuit, which gave me a chance to explain.

Within minutes, she had pounded on every door in the complex and had told people to stop their showers, quit flushing their toilets, and refrain from brushing their teeth. At about that time, the emergency maintenance guy returned my call, and promised to “zip over” in a heartbeat.

It was nice to know that most of the neighbors had the courtesy to respect the “no drainage” request, at least for a little while. But everyone was up by now, and there were some who felt that their biological and employment-oriented needs outweighed the needs of the aching-armed nerd from the garden level. My tub’s fill rate decreased, but did not stop. I continued to haul sludge while my neighbor continued to place frantic phone calls.

The maintenance guy finally showed up and diagnosed the problem as “a clog somewhere”. He said he’d go get some tools and be back in about 15 minutes. “NO!” I shouted. “Before you go anywhere, you need to turn off all the water in the building. NOW!”

He made the “I didn’t think of that” face, and then nodded agreement. Within minutes, the water was shut off, and with nothing to fill toilets or to come out of faucets, people stopped contributing to my problem. A couple more trips with the laundry bucket, and I could finally take a rest break.

Shortly thereafter, the Roto-Rooter guy showed up and worked his magic. When asked what the problem had been, he simply responded “roots” (which I guess is to be expected from a Roto-Rooter guy).

The drains were running freely, and the water supply was restored within a very short period. All was well again.

EPILOG

As far as I know, everyone in the building was still able to perform their morning ablutions and to make it to where they were going without being too late. The management hired a crew to come in and clean my bathroom thoroughly, though it still smelled a bit for the next couple of weeks. Sadly, my workhorse of a laundry basket was unable to recover – but instead got a hero’s sendoff and was lovingly consigned to the nearest dumpster. My helpful neighbor and I began saying “hi” when we saw each other in the hallways. After a while, I even got up the courage to ask her for a date, but she declined, saying that the memories were simply too much to overcome. Sigh.

When my lease ran out, I decided to move to the complex across the street. Those adventures are described elsewhere.

For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women, please visit www.shyperson.com. For Terry Heggy's other writing, please see www.terryheggy.com.

The Bargain Apartment Phone ~1990

Whenever I’ve lived alone in an apartment, I’ve chosen the “Garden Level”. It’s cheaper, there are generally fewer steps to negotiate, and it’s tougher for the Commies to beam microwaves at you from space when you’re shielded by the floors above.

Oh sure, the people above can be annoying with all their tromping around in lead snowshoes, and with their 3am Barry Manilow karaoke – but you’re gonna hear noises from neighbors if you’re on the top floor, too. Might as well save the extra few bucks each month. You can always sleep with earplugs, or wear your stereo headphones to bed. (If I’m in the mood for soothing sleep music, it’ll be Blood Sweat & Tears, or maybe Alice Cooper. If I want text, it’ll be Frank Zane’s dihoctic motivation tapes.)

Anyway, most of my bottom floor experiences have been mostly pleasant and non-traumatic. I did have one cross-the-hall neighbor who dealt drugs, and had all sorts of unsavory characters calling upon him at all hours of the night. One day, I had just installed a used portable phone that I’d bought at a garage sale from my buddy Harp. He charged me $10 for it, which seemed like a good deal at the time – cordless phone technology was in its infancy, and such luxurious devices were pretty pricey. Anyway, when I came home from a quick trip to the store, I was not surprised to see a couple of uniformed police officers standing by the apartment door.

“Good!” I thought, “They’ve finally come to arrest the drug dealer.” But, no, as it turned out, they were here to see ME.

Thankfully, it was not to arrest me for having accidentally “forgotten” to return the Martin Marietta stapler that had somehow made its way home from work with me one day. And it was not to harass me about my connection with radical Lyndon LaRouche supporters that I had inadvertently chatted with one day at the airport.

It was because the piece of crap phone that Harp had sold me had spontaneously dialed “911” while I was out. Since there was no voice on the line, the dispatcher had immediately scrambled a team of officers to discover the problem.

It took a few minutes to straighten out the situation. The officers went into my apartment first, perhaps expecting to find the remains of a victim I’d mutilated before running off to King Soopers to buy my gallon of milk and 10-pack of Top Ramen. They apparently thought that I had not finished the job before I left, and the poor hacked-up creature I had left behind had somehow found the strength to dial 911 before they expired.

But, no. The apartment was clean. (Well, clean in the sense of not being the scene of a violent crime – certainly not clean by the Felix Unger definition.) But over in the corner of the room, the renegade telephone was happily clicking away, dialing who knows what numbers. For all I knew, it was scheduling appointments for carpet cleaning, enrolling me in the “Cheese of the Month” club, and making donations to Greenpeace…with only an occasional emergency call to the cops.

Anyway, after a brief investigation, the extremely polite officers simply suggested that maybe I ought to discontinue using that particular telephone device. They watched as I unplugged it, but left before I took a hammer to it and mashed it into a zillion shards.

Final footnote: Though the cops didn’t seem very interested in my assertion that my neighbor was a felon, they did quietly listen to what I had to say. A few days later, I noticed that the apartment across the hall was now empty, and I never saw the guy again. Whether he was taken away, or simply decided to move to Sheboygin, I never did find out. But I did start sleeping better.

For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women, please visit www.shyperson.com. For Terry Heggy's other writing, please see www.terryheggy.com.

The Dim-Witted Apartment Manager, Part 2 ~1979

When it was time to move into my first post-collegiate apartment, I was delighted to find a brand new complex in a location that was convenient to my job, my swim team, and many fine retail establishments. I had assumed that, as a previously-unoccupied establishment, everything would be in A-1 unmolested operating condition. Sparkling shiny appliances; pristine paint on the walls, and window coverings that would glide smoothly into their appointed positions. Right?

Since everything I owned could easily fit into the back seat of my 1978 Ford Pinto, it didn’t take long to move in. My temporary roommate, Brent, owned little more than a duffel bag, so we spent very little time on assuming occupancy and got right to work on the important stuff – cooking a frozen Tony’s pizza. The oven worked, and the freezer light came on to show that there was room enough for 7 such pizzas. After a trip to the local Dillon’s store, the freezer was stocked up and life was good.

Since Brent and I both started our day by swimming and then showering at the Wichita Swim Club, we had no immediate reason to test the apartment’s pre-fab bath/shower combo unit. The water worked, and the toilet flushed, so we assumed things were just peachy.

The next evening, though, Brent came out of the bathroom with a puzzled look on his face. “What’s wrong?” I asked. He thought about it a moment, then answered. “My sock is wet.”

Good Lord, I thought, I’m rooming with a guy who pees on himself. At the very best, this makes me question his competence with his male equipment; and at the worst represents what could become a serious hygiene challenge. “Good Lord,” I said, “How could you pee on yourself?”

“I don’t know,” he said, continuing to look confused. “My sock is wet on the bottom. If I peed on myself, wouldn’t it be wet on the top?” He looked at me as if expecting me to unravel this perplexing mystery.

Rather than replying, I got up and walked into the bathroom. “Aw, man. There’s water all over the place.”

A quick observation of the shape and position of the puddle left no doubt that it was not the result of any sort of toiletry accident, but in fact, was a leak coming in from underneath the wall. Brent and I were both relieved; I sopped up the water with a towel, and he simply wore one sock for the rest of the evening.

The next day, I reported the incident to Joyce, our dependable apartment manager. She let out a deep sigh and shook her head. “I’ll bet the guy next door let his tub overflow.” She nodded as if agreeing with herself. “That happens sometimes.” She nodded some more.

I hesitated a moment to see if she was going to continue with the thought, but finally concluded that she thought she was done. “Um,” I said, “could you maybe see what you could do to prevent the problem from happening again? Please?”

“Oh, sure. Yeah. I guess. Um, I guess I probably ought to talk with the guy. Yeah. No problem.” I thanked her and left, anticipating no future puddles.

The next day, it took two towels to sop up the flood from under the wall. Joyce said that she’d talk to the gentleman again. I took a trip to the laundry room to run a load of towels, just in case. (Most of my towels were pretty low on the absorbency scale. I had received them as “gifts” of the University of Kansas Department of Health, Physical Education, and Recreation, and most of them still had faint remnants of the “HPER” stamp on them, but some were pretty threadbare.)

The next time I reported a bathroom flood, Joyce was indignant. “Hmmph!” she snorted. “That guy told me he was going to be out of town all week, and yet here he is filling up his tub until it runs over and soaks the floor again, even though he’s not even supposed to be there.”

“Perhaps,” I suggested, “there may be some other problem – like a malfunction with the plumbing.” I mean, after all, how many people do you know who overfill the bathtub until it runs under the neighbor’s wall – over and over again? It just didn’t sound right.

“No, I’m sure it’s simply a repetitive bathtub overfill problem.” She was quite sure of herself. “I’ll give him a good talking-to when he gets back in town.”

“But if he’s out of town, and we’ve just been flooded…” I began, but then stopped when I realized that she’d already forgotten I was there. Sighing deeply, I walked back to my apartment.

After that, I carefully watched the parking lot for the return of the neighbor who shared my bathroom wall. We’d never met before, but I made a point of zipping out to meet him as he prepared to enter his apartment. When I introduced myself as his neighbor, he immediately said, “So you’re the SOB who fills his tub until it overflows so that it leaks into my bathroom. What the hell is wrong with you?”

After a brief but enlightening discussion, my new friend and I were unable to conclude whether Joyce was actually evil, or just abominably stupid – but we did agree on the next course of action. It ended up requiring a call to the investment group who actually owned the apartment complex, but we finally got some action. A carpenter came by and knocked a hole in my bathroom wall, revealing a quarter inch puncture in one of the main pipes in the system feeding the showers for not only our two adjacent apartments, but also the two above us. Whenever any of the four tenants turned on the shower, the feed pipe spurted water into the space between the adjacent unit walls, which would eventually leak out into both of our bathrooms.

Whatever made Joyce think she could solve the problem by telling each of us the same lame “neighbor is a psycho” story remains a mystery. Shortly after the repairs were made, the management company replaced her* with another manager, and the remainder of my tenure in this complex was comparatively blissful.

While I was there, though, I did have some interesting episodes with the cute girls across the hall, and at the McDonalds adjacent to the complex parking lot. But those stories will have to wait until later…

*Footnote: I have no idea what other complaints the apartment management company may have received about Joyce’s incompetence, but here’s one additional look at her “problem-solving” skills:

My apartment was on the “garden” level, which meant that my apartment was not completely underground, but that you did have to descend stairs in order to enter. The apartments on the “1st” floor, then, could have balconies, which were only a few feet off the ground, but gave the illusion of being luxuriously elevated.

The problem was that birds found the underside of those balconies to be an inviting spot to build a home. Unfortunately, the acoustics of the support beams channeled any bird noises directly into my bedroom, which made it very difficult to get any sleep. The constant directed peeping and chirping, while considered soothing to some people, served to deprive me of rest and drive me into the depth of annoyance. I asked my good buddy Joyce if it would be possible to relocate the nest.

“No. We can’t do that,” she said. But the next day, I saw her approaching the nest with a box of matches. Apparently, she was going to burn them out, assuming of course that the chemical-soaked wood of the balcony structure and the pressboard siding of the building would remain immune to any flames that happened to flare up.

I’m not sure if she thought better of the idea, or if she just couldn’t get a match lit, but she ended up not going through with her original plan. By this time, I had more or less gotten used to the bird sounds, and figured that they’d be moving on soon anyway, and pretty much forgot about it.

However, when I returned from a weeklong trip, I discovered that there was now an additional board covering the spot where the bird’s nest had been, and all was quiet. I’m not sure if the birds had vacated the nest, or if perhaps the nest had been moved to a more acceptable spot…but my suspicion is that she boarded the baby birds up inside the beam gap just like characters in an Edgar Allen Poe story. Since she disappeared shortly after the resolution of the “overflowing bathtub” problem, I was never able to find out what really happened.

For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women, please visit www.shyperson.com. For Terry Heggy's other writing, please see www.terryheggy.com.

The Dim-Witted Apartment Manager -- Part 1 ~1979

Have you ever noticed how someone might appear to be attractive, until you get to know them?

I suppose that’s where the phrase “beauty is only skin deep” comes from, but I never quite figured out how that’s supposed to work. If this oft-used expression is talking about physical beauty, well, yeah, I guess it makes sense – if you didn’t have skin you’d be all gross and muscle-y, with blood oozing out all over the place, like those bug-eyed half-skeleton guys whose picture you see pasted on the walls of the doctor’s office. Not the classic definition of beauty, at all… But if you’re talking about inner beauty, then the expression makes no sense at all – cuz inner beauty is, well, inner, you know? The beauty wouldn’t even start until you got below the skin.

Anyhow…when I first moved to Denver, I had a list of what I thought I wanted in a woman. I suspect it pretty closely matched the lists that most shallow guys have – you know, a certain color of hair, just about so tall, eyes the color of limpid pools (whatever the hell those are), and a body like a brick house (whatever that means). Well, I was stunned when I met my “list girl” at my new-hire orientation on the first day at my new job. She was stunning, and I was pretty sure that she was “the one”.

The only problem was that she was a vapid reefer addict who had no interest in anything I cared about. She looked great, but my wind-up set of chattering teeth provided more interesting company. Our “relationship” lasted about 3 days.

I should’ve known better, because I’d learned the lesson once before. Here’s what had happened:

During my last couple of college years I had lived in apartments. But I never really considered it “independent living” for several reasons. 1) I had a roommate, 2) I still came home to my dad’s house every summer, and used that address as my “permanent residence” on legal forms, and 3) my dad was still paying nearly all my expenses. Therefore, when I finally got a real job (after the whole “joining the Army” thing didn’t work out) I was pretty excited about finding (and subsequently paying for) an apartment of my own.

The place I was looking for had to be 1) cheap, 2) not too far from the Wichita Swim Club pool, and 3) reasonably free of rats, roaches, Communists, and other vermin. Then, if I found several complexes where all other factors were equal, I’d opt for the place with the best looking chicks.

Shortly after I started looking at apartments, I decided to take on Brent Barnes as a summer roommate. He’d be going back to school at the end of the summer, so his needs didn’t play a major factor in the decision, but he came along on the fact-finding tour.

We stopped at a brand-new complex at the corner of 13th & Woodlawn. Two advantages were immediately obvious; 1) it was new, and therefore unlikely to be vermin-infested, and 2) the parking lot abutted the parking lot of a McDonalds. In the likely event that we’d find our not-quite-responsible selves with an empty fridge on a Friday night, having a McDs right next door was a definite plus. After all, it was well-known among swimmers at the time that the Big Mac was the highest rated “performance food”.

But those factors alone wouldn’t seal the deal. We needed more. OK, the price was right…and guess what? The manager was a cute chick.

Well, OK, she was older than dirt, probably getting close to 30, but she had a nice smile, Farrah Fawcett hair, and was wearing a flimsy shirt that somehow didn’t quite button at the top. Even before talking to her, we concluded that she was not only a super-nice person, but that we could trust her to the ends of the earth.

And therein lies the lesson, my friends. This woman (to whom I’ll refer only as “Joyce”) was a pinhead. Oh, she knew how to instruct us in the finer details of filling out the rental paperwork, all right… but we were about to find out how totally clueless she was about anything beyond those simple duties.

“We’d like to look at a one-bedroom apartment, please,” I said. She raised an eyebrow, and appeared to be doing some complex math in her head. After a lengthy pause, she frowned and said, “…but there’s two of you.” I explained that the apartment would actually be for only me, but that Brent would be staying as a paying guest throughout the summer. Since he was still in college, and I had but recently gained my freedom, we were both comfortable with the cramped lifestyle necessitated by frugality.

“Oh,” she said, nodding. “You’re homos, then.”

“No,” I said. “We’re poor. And Brent is only staying for a couple of months. I don’t want to be stuck with a two-bedroom obligation after he’s gone.”

“I’ve had lots of girlfriends,” Brent added.

“You guys can be as queer as you want in a two-bedroom,” Joyce said, “but at least it would look proper.” She wrinkled her brow. “Two guys in one bedroom just don’t look right.”

“Look,” I said. “Just think of us as university roommates. Guys share dorm rooms all the time, and it’s no problem. It’s just like it was at college.”

“Call – idge?” Apparently the concept was beyond her grasp. I imagined that at any moment, there’d be smoke coming out of her ears from all the brain circuits that were frying. The skin of her forehead was twitching.

“Hey, I read Playboy!” Brent said. “I’ve got a copy in the car. Want me to get it?” When no one answered him, he continued, “Well, at least I’m sure I’m not a homo.” Then he looked at me with a newfound suspicion.

This wasn’t going well.

I put on my most mature and comforting smile. “Joyce,” I said, “I’ll tell you what…why don’t you just lease me the apartment and forget about our manly friend over here?” I waved my hand at Brent in the universal “shush” sign, and after a moment’s confusion, he seemed to catch on. He stayed quiet from that point on.

I think she actually did forget about him, and the rental process went smoothly after that. I signed a 6-month lease on a “garden level” one-bedroom apartment. (There wasn’t a garden at that level, or anywhere else on the premises for that matter, but it sounded better than saying that our new place was at “coffin depth” or that the windows had an “ankle-high view”.)

It didn’t take long to move in. My furniture consisted of a TV, a lamp, a twin bed, and one of those saddle-shaped pillows that’s designed to support your back on a sofa, but actually works pretty well as a makeshift chair when leaned against the wall. I had a couple of boxes of random kitchen items – most had “accidentally” found their way into my possession after various visits to the campus cafeteria – and a couple of handfuls of clothing. The clothing was all of the “wad up and stuff into a drawer” variety; none of this fancy “hang it in a closet” stuff for me. I had enough underwear that I could go for several weeks without doing laundry – three pair.

I stored everything in the same dresser that I’d had as a kid. (Though I no longer have it, I regret having let it get away. It was a classic, with intricate woodworking and ornate brass fixtures. I’m quite certain that if I had it today and were to take it on the Antiques Roadshow, a delicately-accented Sotheby’s employee would astonish me with his analytical conclusion that my beloved childhood dresser was a rare example of poorly-painted cheap pinewood crap.)

Brent and I began our free-wheeling lives as independent bachelors. We both swam every day, and I went to work at Beechcraft while Brent stayed home to study the “articles” in his magazines. As far as I know, though, our bachelor pad was severely underused for the kind of fun ‘n’ games romping that most bachelor pads were used for in the late 70’s. In other words, there was no hanky panky going on there, heterosexual or otherwise.

Well, OK, there was this one time. I brought a girl to the apartment with the intention of giving hanky panky a solid shot. But Brent would not leave us alone. I tried subtle hints, such as “we’d just like some quiet time”…followed by less subtle hints such as “leave us alone, Brent”. But he attended to us like a dog watching the chef at a barbecue. Finally, several hours later, he picked up on my implied meaning when I said, “Brent, GO THE HELL AWAY!”

Well, he performed a very convincing fake yawn and said he was tired. He went into the bedroom and shut the door, leaving the young lady and I free to entangle ourselves in the uncrowded living room. I figured I was in for some serious tongue-wrestling at the very least, and maybe a lot more.

But no. She said it was late, and that she was tired. She probably meant that she simply was not attracted to me, but I blamed Brent and his failure to vacate at a decent hour. She may not have wanted to make out with me, but she couldn’t have used the “it’s too late” excuse if my idiot roommate had vanished a little bit earlier. I hurled mental curses at the closed bedroom door.

Later, after parting company with my guest, I silently crept into the bedroom to try to get some shuteye. Well, I shouldn’t have been surprised; Brent was wide awake and sitting up in his bed. I’m pretty sure he’d been listening at the door for the never-to-come sounds of whoopee being made, but when none were forthcoming, had decided to interrogate me about the results. “Whad ya get?” he asked.

“Huh?”

“C’mon, tell me. Whad ya get? How far did she go?” He was practically levitating in his excitement to hear the filthy details of my “so much better than his” sex life.

Lacking anything heavier, I threw my pillow at him. “You @#!$%! Idiot!” I yelled. “Absolutely NOTHING happened! And you know why?” I could see his wide eyes, even in the dark. “Because you are an idiot!”

I then proceeded to pummel him with pillows for the next 15 minutes, stopping occasionally to explain that his voyeuristic haunting of our s'posed-to-be-private moments had vacuumed any potential romance from the situation, and that he was an idiot, his relatives were all idiots, and that his children would be idiots, except that he’ll never have any children because no girl would ever even go out with such an idiot!

Geez.

Anyway, I was supposed to be talking about the dim-witted apartment manager. I’m certainly not done with that story. I guess the saga will have to continue later.

To be continued…

For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women, please visit www.shyperson.com. For Terry Heggy's other writing, please see www.terryheggy.com.

Moonies ~1979 (Warning: contains scenes of regrettably damp violence)

Have you ever noticed those spider webs that sometimes occur in relationships? Sometimes known as the “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon”, this phenomenon suggests that we are all closely connected. And it’s absolutely true.

During the summers, those of us in the Wichita Swim Club would compete in several swim meets. Some were road trip adventures to exotic places such as Bartlesville or Omaha…and some were held at the Wichita East Branch YMCA. Kids would decide which meets to attend based on how tough the competition was expected to be, whether the team needed their support to score points, and how much money their parents were willing to spend in shipping their ungrateful offspring all around the planet just so they could swim back and forth in a cement pond.

Most of the kids only went to the big meets – the Air Capital Meet, the Region 8 Championships, etc. But those of us who weren’t quite up to that rarefied level often attended less competitive meets; Winfield, for example, or maybe Manhattan.

No, not Manhattan, New York – Manhattan, Kansas. Home of Kansas State University, which is where kids went if their grades weren’t good enough to get them in to KU, Wichita State, or Butler County Community College (BuCo JuCo). (OK, maybe I’m being unfair. K-State actually has a pretty good reputation as an agricultural college – in fact my brother in law went there, and his IQ is approaching the double digits.)

Anyway, the Manhattan swim meet was a place where less-than-elite swimmers could go to tune up and gain experience that would come in handy as their expertise increased. Some competition venues would only accept swimmers who had already made certain qualifying time standards (known as “A” times). But Manhattan would let anybody in. Even me.

We got there early, and as was our habit, we wandered around the pool grounds trying to scope out our competition. My little group consisted of myself, the Ant, Doug Smith, and Tom Jackson (no, not the former Broncos linebacker and broadcaster). We were pretty good at strutting around, acting cocky, and giving the evil eye to any other kids we ran into. Most of our opponents, subjected to our haughty glares, would duck their heads and sheepishly wander off in another direction.

But our little gang soon met its match. One group did not back down. In fact, they puffed themselves up and strutted right up to us. “We’re from Lawrence,” their leader bragged.

“I’m sorry,” Jackson said, shaking his head sadly. “Perhaps some day you’ll be able to join a good team.”

I’m pretty sure that the Lawrence spokesman growled a little bit. He was a big fellow, with platinum blond hair, brutishly handsome features, and a chiseled physique. When we talked about him later, we always referred to him as “Muscle Beach”, due to his resemblance to the Hollywood ideal of a bronze god. He responded to Tom’s insult. “I swim butterfly. I have my ‘A’ time.”

Since almost every swimmer from our team had reached the “A” time standard in nearly every event, there wasn’t much reaction to Beach’s proclamation. We smiled, but no one said anything.

“How many ‘A’ times do you have?” asked Muscle Beach.

Tom responded. “Well, all of them,” he said matter-of-factly.

There was a collective gasp from the Lawrence group. “Ha!” said Beach. “No one has all their ‘A’ times.” He snorted, then turned and walked away with his gang following close behind.

We laughed about that one for days afterward. But what does that have to do with Kevin Bacon? Well, the next year at school, I developed an unrequited crush on a goddess in my psychology class named Sherilyn Barnes. She was an angel, and I eventually got up enough courage to make a few misguided attempts to talk with her. She had no use for me, of course, since this was before I discovered the secrets. And besides, she already had a boyfriend; yeah, that’s right…Muscle Beach.

It turns out that his name was Randy Johnson (no, not the pitcher), and he turned out to be a really nice guy. Well, he was really good friends with Sherilyn’s brother Brent, who later swam on the team at KU and became good friends with my buddy, Doug Smith. To make a long story short, Brent came to Wichita a couple of summers later to swim with WSC, and needed a place to live. I was about to move into my own apartment, so Brent and I decided to share the rent.

Brent had very few possessions, and not too many changes of clothes, either. But he did have the “Frampton Comes Alive” double album, and a pressure-operated fire extinguisher. You know the kind I’m talking about; it’s essentially nothing more than a big steel can with a pump handle that you crank to get the water to squirt out. You don’t see too many of those any more, but they used to be in a cubby hole in every wall in every public school. In fact, I think this one might have come from just such a cubby hole…

Though there have been times in my life when I’ve been bored enough to have long conversations with anyone who happened to knock upon my door, I did not have that experience while living with Brent. We always had something going on. And so when a young man and young woman from the Unification Church stopped by to enlighten me regarding their religion, I politely told them I was not interested.

As they were walking away, Brent was just entering the apartment hallway. He glanced over his shoulder at the departing evangelists, and asked me who they were. “Churchers,” I responded. “Moonies, I think.”

“No kidding?” He got excited. “Moonies? Really? Moonies?”

“Yeah. So?”

“So, we gotta get ‘em.”

“Get ‘em?”

“Yeah. C’mon. Get the car keys.”

I wasn’t sure what he meant until he opened the closet and pulled out the fire extinguisher. He tucked the can under one arm and grabbed the nozzle in his other hand. “Let’s go!” he said.

“Dude, we can’t go squirting these people. Their all dressed up and stuff.”

“Yeah, but they’re Moonies. Moonies!”

Well, you gotta admit that there’s no way to argue with that kind of logic. We piled into my Pinto and took off down the street in search of the pious duo. While I shifted gears, Brent pumped the extinguisher like mad.

Our quarry hadn’t gone far. I pulled over to the curb a dozen feet behind them, and Brent leapt out of the car. He tip-toed up to point-blank range and, grinning like a maniac, shouted “HEY, MOONIES!” Then he let fly with everything that extinguisher had.

The Moonies felt the spray on their back, and, of course, turned around to see what was happening. Brent was sort of hopping up and down and laughing while he held the sprayer full on them. I expected his victims to react in some way, but they just kinda stood there watching their clothing turn dark from the water. So he kept spraying. The whole incident probably only took seconds, but it actually went on long enough that Brent became rather bored – especially since his targets had such a deer-in-the-headlights response. Finally, he quit shooting and jumped back in the car. I popped the clutch and peeled out.

I think it’s safe to say that Brent enjoyed that moment more than anything else that happened during that summer. Oh, sure, he easily achieved all his “A” times, and he probably made out with half the girls on our swim team at some point. I also think that his sister and Mr. Muscle Beach became happily married that summer – but the only thing Brent still enjoys talking about is the day he heroically stood up for the honor of non-cult members everywhere in vanquishing the minions of the evil Dr. Moon.

And the town of Lawrence still beams with pride.

Peace be with you, my children.

Next: The Dim-Witted Apartment Manager

For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women, please visit www.shyperson.com. For Terry Heggy's other writing, please see www.terryheggy.com.

How I Became a Country/Western Disc Jockey ~1979

It’s hard for me to imagine this nowadays, but there was a time in my life where I actually experienced boredom. Sometimes (especially on weekends), I’d say to myself, “Gosh, what should I do this afternoon?”

I know…it’s a tough memory for me to grasp, especially since the most common thing I say these days is “Auuggghhh! There’s never enough time! I have too much to do!” But, there was a time in my youth when I would sit in my apartment and pray for anything that could disrupt the tedium of my dull and boring life.

It got so bad that one day I actually invited a door-to-door insurance salesman to come into my apartment.

Good gravy! A door-to-door insurance salesman? C’mon! Now that’s boredom, my friends…when a conversation with an annoying and pushy stranger is more appealing than anything on TV, any book on the shelf, or even another game of solitaire. (Remember, though; this was pre-Internet & Windows® – the only thing we had were those “real” decks of cards with that mutant old-timey bicyclist on the box. It’s a wonder that humanity could even survive in those oh-so-primitive times.)

Anyway, this guy knocks on my door and asks me if I’ve had a recent “Insurance Needs Checkup”. (Such a question ranks right up there with “Have you recently bathed in sulphuric acid?” or “Have you recently spent 12 consecutive hours listening to William Shatner record albums?” – the answer should ALWAYS be “No, I haven’t. Now, begone before I release the hounds!”)

“I have not, my friend,” I said. “Please come in and tell me all about it.”

He was a handsome black kid, probably in his early 20s, and I’m sorry to say that I’ve forgotten his name. He had the kind of charisma that could easily make him a successful insurance salesman, but I don’t think his heart was really in it. After about 2 minutes, he had confessed to me that what he really wanted was a career in radio. “What a coincidence!” I said, “I happen to have an FCC 3rd Class Broadcasting License, myself.”

“Oh, man,” he replied, “If you’ve got your ticket, well then, have I got an opportunity for you…”

Explanatory interlude: One of the benefits of my Radio/TV/Film education at the University of Kansas was that I had passed the FCC exam that allowed a person to go on the air. I’m not at all sure this requirement still exists, but back then, you weren’t allowed to host a radio program unless you had at least passed the “3rd class” test. To obtain this license, you had to demonstrate knowledge of radio basics (the difference between AM and FM, how to perform a test of the Emergency Broadcast System, and why the knobs only went up to “10”, for example*). In addition, you had to know how to do all the technical tasks involved in running the transmitter – reading meters, calculating voltages, and finding the “off” switch in case of a meltdown.

(Related question: at one time, the Emergency Broadcast System was tested on a regular basis. And for a while, one of the test spots included a jazzy little song in a “Nelson Riddle Singers” mode. It ended with a duck quacking for some reason, and it was more fun than most of the lame music that was being played at the time. Does anybody know what happened to that jingle? Please let me know. Thanks.)

Anyway, the insiders referred to the FCC license as your “ticket”, and if you had one, then you could be considered for an on-air job. It turned out that my insurance-selling friend knew someone who knew someone who knew that one of the local stations was looking for a DJ. He gave me a name and a phone number, and suggested that I call.

That boredom-induced chat turned out to be the best insurance sales experience I’ve ever had. The kid left feeling good about himself, and I had a solid contact for a potential entry into the exciting world of commercial broadcast radio.

I called the station first thing Monday morning. I got the impression that they were desperate to find someone quickly, because we set up an interview for my lunch hour that very day.

The station was KICT, 95.7 Stereo Country/Western. It was located, appropriately enough, on the western edge of town. It was quite a drive from my office at Boeing, but I told my co-workers that I might be late getting back from lunch, and headed out.

The interview didn’t last long. They asked me to do a cold-reading of some news copy, demonstrate that I knew how to use the audio board, and how to cue up a record on the turntable. Basically, I turned a few knobs, said a few words into a microphone, shook a few hands, and drove back to my office. During the drive, of course, I thought about all the mistakes I’d made during the interview, and mentally listed all the reasons that they wouldn’t hire me.

There was a message waiting on my phone when I returned to my desk. “This is David over at KICT”, it said. “Can you start this Saturday? Call us back. Thanks.”

How ‘bout that? And I didn’t even have to display my vast knowledge of the Emergency Broadcast System. Pretty cool. I called David and told him I’d be happy to start whenever they needed me. And thus began my illustrious career as a country & western DJ.

I’ll share my KICT tales of hilarity and depravity in other installments. But for now, I’ll conclude by saying this: If you’re ever bored to death on a weekend and an insurance salesman drops over, by all means, invite him in.

Next: Moonies

* Licensed radio stations are only permitted to have knobs that go up to 10. Why? Because "11" would just be too darn loud.