My Gift

Just now I need to affirm a good thing in my life and, especially, my family. My daughter Mary, who married last Fall and is now both my daughter as well as a good friend, prompted the following essay about twelve years ago.

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Do you remember Feb. 9, 1964? It was a Sunday night. At 8:00pm, The Ed Sullivan Show came on, and, of course, The Beatles debuted on American TV. Girls panicked in the audience, and they were all older than I.

When she was just a ‘tween, my child asked me to take her and a friend to Walmart......not in itself an unusual request. They needed to be there at 4pm sharp, thank you. A "boy group" was gonna be there who would be signing autographs from 6-9pm. I asked her if she was planning on shopping for two hours (like, you know, before 6?), and she just gave me one of those looks that says---"Please, Dad, don't think too hard or your brain will melt and run out of your ears and down into your shoes". So we went and got her friend. I dutifully deposited them at the front door, and parked the car. I went in to find a bench to sit on, so I could read for a couple of hours (this was not the Walmart near our home, it was the other one, and I wasn't making two trips, you see).

Anyway, as I entered the store, I was immediately aware of a very large crowd at the center of the store. They were all clones of my daughter: straight, shoulder-length hair, wind-breaker, jeans, and shoes that appeared to have been prescribed by an orthopedic surgeon. And they were all in a queue. I went all the way to the rear and found my two charges. WHO are these boys? She gave me the look again, so I went and sat down near the front door. The nice Greeter Lady was about my age, maybe a tad older. We chatted about how unusual it was that this group, whose first CD was released on Wednesday, could already have garnered such a large fan base. I sat in the entrance to the store, and observed the gathering urchins. It was as though someone had placed an ad in the paper saying---"Will everyone who wears orthodontia please show up at Walmart at 5:00pm on Saturday?!". And they were breathless with excitement, literally tripping over me with their dangerous footwear to get past the Greeter Lady and into that line-----Who ARE these boys?

I tried to read for awhile, but it was impossible. Every trailer park in the state must have hired buses today to transport their tenants to this particular store, because I saw more poofy hare, sweatpants, purple finger-nail polish, cowboy boots, and tee-shirts saying "Travis Tritt for President" than I thought existed on this side of the Mason-Dixon line. There was WAY too much noise to read. After about 45 minutes, I became aware of a sound from behind me, for all the world like someone placing their foot on a cat's tail and holding it firmly to the floor. I looked around to see a mother and child at one of those toy cars that the kids love to ride in front of Walmart, K-Mart, and anywhere else that discerning patrons with too little makeup, bushy eyebrows, huge purses, and dirty sneakers shop. Mercifully, a quarter only gets you 25 seconds in one of these machines nowadays, and this tot was the only future Richard Petty at the store today. His aunt, another in this group of portly and seriously fashion-challenged women, sat down next to me on the bench, while her youngun's jumped up and down on the other side, and when she began slapping her son, I got up and went back over to commiserate with the nice GL.

Time crept on, the way it does at work, and the crowd continued to grow. The line was now all the way from the front of the store to the back, and then wrapped around the edge to the other end, Disney-style. It was composed entirely of girls and their mothers, and the band was late (it was now 6:45).

Screams began to emanate from various parts of the store, like maybe someone had spotted a UFO. There was a slew of people at the front of the store, near a large table; they had STAFF written on their black tee-shirts, wires coming out of their ears, and spoke in hushed tones into their wrists, looking all nervous n’ stuff, like they were part of the Secret Service or something. They were pacing back and forth, and kept telling the crowd to move back, and that they wouldn't be able to get pictures from the front anyway, because they were going to form a human shield to keep the band from sight till the last minute. I suppressed the urge to tell one of them that if the boys didn't arrive soon there where going to be serious bathroom issues in this crowd of teenage girls and their mothers. WHO ARE THESE BOYS?*

When they finally did arrive, all Hades erupted. The shrieking, the screaming, the crying----Oh, the Humanity!! All of the registers were closed, but I did spot an occasional blue-haired woman with a buggy full of Actual Store Items, wandering past in utter confusion. As each girl exited the line, many were openly weeping, and I felt sad, somehow. We lose them so soon to the superficial values of our culture, and I shouldn't have been baffled by the display I saw that day. Another hour went by before my two came through the gauntlet to have their moment of up-close-and-personal. As we finally left the store, I winked at the nice GL and told her I had permission to go home now, and she bade me farewell. We had bonded, after all. On the way home in the car, the girls complained about being rushed at the last moment, a small price to pay to meet the boys in the band.

One of my earliest memories is of me, my parents, and my sister, all waiting in the freezing cold, in the middle of New Brunswick, N.J., in front of the courthouse, for what seemed an eternity to see Richard Greene (early TV's Robin Hood). We were in a sizable crowd, and when he finally appeared, it was only to briefly wave from the courthouse steps, and then to disappear back into the building. We were far away, and he looked so small, and he was wearing not his costume, but a suit. What a let-down. They are all very much larger on TV was my judgment.

I was proud that Mary seemed more composed than most of her peers----"After all, they're just people", she told her friend.

*O-Town