Mostly Anecdotal

Who is this girl, that spurns Joey, Jimmy, and Bill for a guy named Norman. Why did John write about it, and Sue sing about it in her little girl voice, and why did my mother name me Norman? Why was I just turning 16 when this campy little song got stuck in everybody’s head, and why was I the only Norman in a school of over 2,000?

Why did everybody know my name, and why did I just want to get away? Why did all the hotties who had ignored me before suddenly want to serenade me on the way to class? And who changed the lyrics from Norman oooo, to Norman ew-ee-ew-ee-ew? The fact that it reached number three on Billboard was a plus for Sue who made it popular, but not for me. Why, please tell me why did the song stay popular in my school when it was no longer being played on the radio?

I graduated from high school in 1963 and spent six months in the army as part of my National Guard service. I trained at Fort Ord California where nobody knew my name, and where the singing was limited to marching songs about pussy and not looking at the ground. I escaped Vietnam by joining the Guard and thought I’d finally escaped the last mention of darlin’ Norman, but it was not to be. All it takes now is a family gathering and talk of music and the past, and my sweet sister is likely to break into song.

Norman is my only love
Norman's all I'm thinking of
Norman gives me all his lovin', kissin', huggin', lovey dovin'
Norman, Oooo, Norman, Oooo
Norman, Norman my love

What, you’ve never heard the song before? I invite you to listen:

It starts innocently enough, you like her and she likes you. A bit of boy meets a girl and sparks fly. She asks you to go to church with her on Sunday, and you say yes, for already you’ll follow her anywhere. The relationship deepens, you meet her parents and they like you, and you like them. They invite you for dinner after church.

You kiss her, and she kisses you. You’d like to get to second base, but you go to church instead. You embrace. You’d like to get to third base, but you go to church instead. You’re thinking below the waist and she above the clouds.

The relationship is good, but you believe it can be better. You join her church and the kissing seems deeper, more passionate. She tells you how much it would mean to her if you would go on a mission for your church. It was her church, but now it’s yours too. Everything seems possible, second base, third base—a mission?

She promises to wait for you while you serve the Lord. You suppress any doubts, but they are there, hidden behind the kisses and the hugs, hidden behind your desires. You are looking for a way out and just don’t know it yet. You say a mission sounds great, her touch makes it feel right. You spend your days wondering where you’ll serve your mission, and thinking about her.

You ask your Dad what he thinks, he once said religion, this religion was a mistake but he lets you make your own mistakes. You want to know more. You ask questions. The answers weaken your resolve, the doubts hidden behind your desires reappear; you question your belief. The answers lead you to the truth, but the kisses linger on your lips.

You tell the Church you have changed your mind. Your Mom asks why and you tell her—I’m not stupid. The Church asks you to pray about it. She asks you to pray about it. Her parents ask you to pray about it, but the prayers don’t provide any answers. They all think that when the mission call arrives, the spirit will tell you it’s true. You don’t think so.

The call arrives; they want you to serve in Florida. You kiss her, and she kisses you. She’s holding the letter, her God’s call for you to serve, she turns and gazes into your eyes. Do you feel the spirit she says, only when you touch it you respond. You see the hurt in her eyes, you reach out and take her hands; the letter falls to the floor.

I’m sorry you say, it’s you I love not your Church. You still care for her and she for you, but you’re not willing to trade reason for faith or even a trip around the bases. It may yet work out. You still kiss her and she you, but the relationship if it is to last will be built upon love and respect, not God.

Clothespins are neat, and using them to attach baseball cards to the spokes of your bike was a cool thing to do when you were ten, but now when I think about Willy Mays, Duke Snider, and Mickey Mantle providing the engine for my Schwinn/motorcycle, I get a little misty-eyed.

Clothespins are designed to attach freshly washed clothes to a line to dry, but when you’re ten you find more creative uses for them, an earing for your sister, or one on your nose to block an unpleasant odor. Pins everywhere, on your nose, on your lips, on your ears, and voilà you look like the pictures of Africans in National Geographic. Today you’d look more like the teenager next door with a three ring circus on his face.

I like the smell of sheets freshly off the line. I liked helping my mom put them on the line. I liked holding the sheet so it didn’t touch the ground while she attached one end and then the other. I liked lying on the grass under the sheets imagining I was on a sailing ship and watching as the wind filled the sails, and dreaming of voyages to distant lands.

In those days, we separated our trash into wet and dry and burned the dry so you had to be careful not to dry your sheets on burning day. That is unless you liked sleeping next to a campfire. Maybe drying our clothes on a line is something we should return to, for there is nothing more annoying than a buzzing dryer that no one will turn off. And if you forget to bring in the wash the worst that will happen is that you’ll have to wait a bit longer for it to dry.

Do I regret the loss of the baseball cards, a little, but I suspect I’d regret the loss of the memories even more. For what is my life but the memory of burying my face in a sheet freshly off the line, or hearing the roar of my Schwinn/motorcycle.

I like to drive the shopping cart when we’re at the grocery store, and my wife humors me.

She says I’m practicing for my old age. “It’s a rolling walker,” she says, “all you need are those little hand brakes and you’ll be set.”

One day I’ll make a mistake and say “Whatever do you mean?”

She’ll say, “well you know sometimes when you get older you get unsteady on your feet.

“I’m steady,” I’ll say

“But someday you may not be.”

“And”

“You’ll be old an unsteady and need a walker, and walking around with a shopping cart is your way of preparing.”

I don’t use a shopping cart to prepare for a walker.

“Then why the obsession with the cart?”

“I’d rather not say.”

“That’s just your way of not admitting that it’s walker practice. ” “No really, it’s not walker practice.”

“I’m not buying it until you explain yourself.”

“Oh all right.”

“I’m waiting.”

“I do it because I like controlling the cart, deciding where it goes, what aisle we go down next.”

“That’s it.”

“Yep, that’s it.”

I explain, when I control the shopping cart I can skip the junk-food aisle. You know, the aisle that is packed with stuff that clogs your veins and puts extra padding on your hiney.

“I control the cart for you Dear, because I love you, and because I don’t ever want to see a bubble on your butt.”

“You’ve never skipped the junk-food aisle before” she’ll say, “and without your walker to hold on to your bubble butt would go bouncing down the aisle.”

You might have heard that Elvis is dead, he’s not. He drives the delivery truck for our local thrift store.

We have enough junk to supply all the thrift stores in our area for years. We’re like a giant distribution center. Our house is so full of crap that we are in danger of being trapped in an upstairs bedroom, surrounded by junk. The house is full; it’s reached flood stage. One day soon the roof will pop off, and our stuff will flow over the sides and into the neighborhood. A yard sale three yards wide, and on the move.

My stuff is mostly books, they’re double parked throughout the house. The problem is 650 feet of books and only 300 feet of shelves. I need a little voice in my head saying you don’t really need another book. I need a little voice to say go to the library, don’t buy it. I probably wouldn’t listen to a voice like that, but I need one. I give books away, and I sell some, but somehow they accumulate faster than I dispose of them.

Gail is a crafter, and a painter, a deadly combination, her half finished projects are stuck in every corner, and stacked to the ceiling. Coke stuff, she collects Coke stuff, and not the kind you recycle, it’s the kind you keep forever because it will be valuable. Then there are the Furbies, she thinks they are cute, and collectible; of course. I think they were designed specifically to annoy me. I’d like to rip their little heads right off, but I want to stay married too, so I don’t. She has half-finished painting projects in every room. They’re affecting my sleep. The boxes cast shadows that look like monsters creeping through our house at night, and there are voices. The Furbie is singing Figaro in the spare room. Who woke him up, a bad guy, or maybe it’s a homeless person staying for the night.

I put my foot down, like in sweetie can we talk about our junk problem. I put my foot down figuratively, because there really is nowhere to literally put it down without stubbing a toe. Gail recently spent three days cleaning out her craft room and barely scratched the surface. She’s like a tornado that comes through periodically, she doesn’t remove anything she just rearranges stuff leaving it in a different order. “Some of this stuff will be valuable some day,” she says. “Sell it on Ebay, or you could have a thrift store pick it up,” I say.

The guys from the thrift store came today. I know they came because I heard the truck, and then a ruckus. My wife was yelling, was she yelling because she was having second thoughts. Her words, muffled at first, were now clear; she was yelling for me to get out there and quick. Had she changed her mind, was she arguing with the thrift store guys, was she trying to unload the truck?

“Look, at this guy,” she said, “he looks just like Elvis.” “Listen to him talk,” she said, “he sounds just like Elvis.” ‘Say something,” she said to him. Elvis was ready, “I don’t know nothing about music,” he said, “in my business you don’t have to.” “Not bad, not bad at all,” I said. “He’s great,” she said, “I can’t believe it; Elvis is picking up our stuff.” “Nice meeting you Elvis,” I said. He smiled, “just taken care of business,” he said.

There may be hope on the junk front, my wife is talking about getting another load ready for the thrift store. “Do you think Elvis will come again?” she says.