- Share This Post
- Pin It
- 0
- 5
-
Sparkle (2)
At age sixteen I started my first part-time job at an insurance agency in Ridgefield, Connecticut. I now realize that I was undoubtedly a breath-of-fresh air in this stuffy office of manila folders and pink 'While You Were Out' pads. I bounced in every afternoon at 3:00 full of school gossip looking impossibly young and perky. One of the insurance agents, to me an old man but he was probably 40, was married and having a steamy clandestine affair with a buxomy waitress at Marcus Dairy. His plan was to divorce his frosted-hair, polyester-wearing wife and whisk the waitress off to one of the U.S. Virgin Islands! Having grown up in a Gran Torino station wagon family that did incredibly predictable things like eat Lipton Onion Soup meatloaf and go to the $1.00 Cameo movie theater in Carmel, New York, this was certainly an eye-opener. The agent flirted with me, but not in a creepy way, and as I filed the bottomless pile of pale yellow claim reports in files I learned were called Pendaflex, he would croon the 1940 show tune "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered." Years later, I learned that he actually did run off with the waitress. I like to think of him in his white shirt and wingtips and her in her ruffled apron and plastic name badge cavorting on some tropical beach.
The next time I heard "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered" I was about the same age as the 'old man' insurance agent. This time it was Rod Stewart, accompanied by Cher, who serenaded me on CD as I drove around in a burgundy Chevy Tahoe. Our two kids were pre-teens and we had just gotten a Cairn terrier puppy named Chauncey. Both kids briefly humored me as I popped "As Time Goes By...The Great American Songbook: Volume II" into the CD player. They knew it was this, or a (boring) book tape. As Rod and Cher were belting out their sultry, double entendre duet, Rod, in his distinctive raspy voice croaked, "Horizontally speaking, she's at her very best!" and Chauncey gave a little bark. As it was a long trip in the Tahoe, we heard the song a second time and only then realized that Chauncey hadn't barked. Rather, Cher had laughed; a deep throaty chuckle that sounded exactly like a dog barking. This came to be a family joke as we listened to the song over and over again.
A few months later, my brother, a professional musician, was touring with "The Curtain Up Orchestra," which played big band arrangements of Broadway songs. His one Connecticut appearance was to be at the University of Connecticut and, of course, we made arrangements to attend. The venue was an on-campus auditorium but the seating was at intimate round tables with white tablecloths and flickering votive candles. I do not know what came over me that night, but it has come to be one of those stories that is retold at every family gathering. I cringe just thinking about it.
At intermission, my daughter and I went in search of the ladies' room and found it under the auditorium in a huge, and I mean huge, lobby. It's grandeur with thick, ornate columns, gilding, velvet curtains and plush armchairs was inspiring. Too inspiring, perhaps!
Before intermission, "The Curtain Up Orchestra" had played a tune from "Pal Joey" which got me thinking about "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered." I toured the lobby, waiting for my daughter and started humming the tune. Little did I know that the climactic scene was about to reach its dramatic high point. Have you ever done that thing - that horrible oh-no-I-didn't-really-do-that thing - where you say something aloud that you've been thinking to yourself? I decided to wander over to a water fountain and was wondering to myself if I could sing "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered" and imitate Cher's dog-barking laugh. It was at that moment, leaning over the stainless steel water fountain in that cavernous, acoustically-perfect lobby that I barked aloud, not to myself. I will never forget the look on my daughter's
