Friday, October 14, 2011

DATIN'-ITE?

Don’t you think it would have prevented a lot of anxiety in our youth if we could have glimpsed our adult selves through some kind of crystal ball?  I mean, dating in high school, for example, would have been a lot less fraught with melodrama if I had only known that one day I would be living every woman’s dream yes, me, though I could never have imagined it at the time.  For, you see, I go out on date night every weekend – sometimes on Friday AND Saturday!  How has this happened to a formerly shy, 95-pound, flat-chested, braces-toothed, arts-nerd in glasses such as I was in high school?

I married a man in show biz!  You can’t get luckier than that.  Dinner and a show? Darn near standard fare for us!  Broadway musical? By all means!  A play? Play on!  Philharmonic?  Phabulous!  Opera?  Oh, we’re there!  Comedy and concerts?  Can’t miss ‘em!  Ballet? I married a man who likes ballet!

For us, it’s nice to stay home once in a while for heaven’s sake!

A far cry from my teenage years, let me tell you, when staying home was monotonously the norm!  I longed to go out. My parents kept saying things like, “These are the best years of your life!” And I was thinking, “Oh, my God! You mean it gets worse?”

From grades 7 to 9 I had a steady boyfriend, but our dates were limited, well, by being 13 and 14 years old, as well as by a lack of transportation and cash. He had a paper route but his earning power wasn’t great enough to take me to the movies. Sometimes we’d ride a bus to the end of its run and back again just for something to do.  When he broke up with me, I was heartbroken and went into deep introspection, getting my hair cut as short as a nun’s (if I hadn’t been brought up Protestant I would have taken vows right then and there.) I stayed home every weekend to watch TV with the folks.  This was not the Seventeen magazine recommended way to get into the “A” group.  

I accepted the odd date (odd being the operative word) from guys who needed to practice dating pretty much pity dates on both our parts like the sweet, but overly-serious guy who sang to me all through West Side Story, and the kid who sat in front of me in home room who sniffed his armpits during class. My self-banishment lasted until grade 12 when I got my braces off.  I decided to face the world again.

It took a few months before I got the hang of going out with boys again, but I did crawl my way back to social acceptability, eventually, mostly with the help of my best friend who was beautiful, charming and popular, and who mentored me out of exile.

I met the man of my dreams in university.  He was cute, funny, easy to be with, in the theatre program, played the guitar (he had me at “You’ve Got a Friend”) and was totally into the arts. It was love. The rest is history.

So, 40 years later, he and I were in the audience last Friday night when the Flying Karamazov Brothers performed at the Victoria Theatre here in Dayton.  The Vic is a beautifully restored vaudeville/movie house that is part of the complex that Ken heads, and makes the perfect venue for a show like the FKB’s which is mostly juggling, but also old fashioned, silly vaudevillian schtick.  In one of their routines, the four guys juggled those things that look like bowling pins, three against one, in different patterns and rhythms, for a very long time mesmerizing to watch all the while keeping up a patter of conversation and jokes.  They peppered in some local references and riffed on what a citizen of Dayton is called.

A “Daytonian”?  No, they said, sounds too much like Daytona Beach.

(This was followed by a few more that I don’t remember.)

And finally, a “Daytonite”?  No, sounds too much like Date Night.
That’s when it hit me.  I’m the luckiest girl in the world!  Why?  Because every weekend is Date Night for

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