My senior year of high school, all the yell kings and cheerleaders from the six high schools from Long Beach were invited to a fashion show and luncheon at the Riviera Hotel in downtown Long Beach. The hotel is right on the beach. In those days of the early 1960’s the weather in pre-school August was mild and sunny. Those of us born and raised there thought, that is just the way the weather was.
(I can remember watching the Rose Bowl game Jan. 1, and the announcers would talk about the mild weather. I was proud to be from Southern California, especially because I was a USC fan and it seemed like it was either Michigan or Ohio State that would lose to the Trojans every time. The reason given was that they came from cold weather. I felt special to be from SoCal.)
Back to the Riviera Hotel.
Yell kings and cheerleaders would clap and yell as the models walked down the runway. They were beautiful and pencil thin. Anyway, after the models finished, music started playing. It was Beach Boys surfing music. I got word from one of the show’s directors to get up on the runway and dance: one of the female cheerleaders from Wilson High School had requested I dance with her. I looked over at her and she pierced her lips and threw me a kiss. She was beautiful and . . . and “Maybe a bit worldly?” I asked the director if we would be the only ones dancing on the walkway. Yes came the reply: that would be a freakin dream come true for a guy like myself. At sixteen, I loved girls. Especially cute girls who wanted to dance with me in front of everyone. And I loved being the center of attention. She came up to the top step and waved me on to the runway. I had never wanted to do something more in my life than get up and dance with this beautiful creature. But I could not move a bone in my body. In that second she took a step back from the walkway and disappeared into the crowd. At that moment I felt like Richard Dreyfus trying to find the seductress, blond Suzanne Sommers in the T-Bird in the movie American Graffiti. “Where is she? Where the hell is she?”
She’s gone.
The music finally stops.The fashion show comes to an end.
And there I stood, frozen in time until my buddy, Dennis, who would become student body president next semester, approached me laughing his head off, telling me it was time to leave.
What do you think is the moral of this story? I’m not quite sure. Let’s try a couple:
-Don’t hesitate too long between two points? No, too obvious.
-Missed opportunity in the imaginative mind of a sixteen year old? Did she blow me a kiss, or was she yawning? Give the teenager the benefit of the doubt.