Saturday Night, and Nothing To Do

It was 1949. Slow music was playing on the radio. A young, handsome fast-talking 24 year old named Dick was driving around small town Iowa in a yellow convertible with red interior, feeling pretty cocky until his car went off a bridge and he found himself on foot. He had not been on foot since he was 16, and he was pretty pouty about it. Let’s go to the skating rink, a friend said. He was about as interested in skating as he was interested in staying home on a Saturday night, to listen to the radio. The friend kept hounding him, trying to lure him there with the promise of pretty girls, cheap pop, snacks, finally breaking him down because there was nothing else to do, on foot. Dick had to scramble over many years of junk in the shed, and open a multitude Of boxes before he found his skates. By the time they arrived, he’d set his mind hard against having a good time. Until this tiny waif of a girl with snapping brown eyes started showing off her skills. She was doing circles, figure eights, dizzy lous, and pretty sallies, skating around the floor with the expertise of a nymph, turning herself backwards, forwards and upside down. The competition was now on. Dick laced up those skates lickety split. He could not wait to show her his skills. She was young, focused, and not interested in the least. She was the champion ignorer of all times, and it drove him nuts. Pretty soon he was hanging around the office where she worked, daily, trying to get her to look up. She ignored him there too. He told me the story and I laughed. She ignores you at home too, Dad, I told him. She didn’t even look up.