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she turned every head in town - excerpt...
"You know, I haven't seen you smile like this in a long time." said Judith.
Wally hadn't realized he was still smiling. He almost touched his face to see if it were true. Something even more amazing followed.
"Let's go for a ride!" Judith insisted, smiling too. "Top off and everything!"
Wally went for his hat.
"No hat, lover. I want to see your hair blowing in the wind."
"All four strands?"
They drove for an hour with the wind in his teeth, ordered burgers and shakes, then watched the sun set at the lake near Great Kills Park. Wally hadn't parked there with his wife for as long as he could remember. In a golden twilight he put his arm around Judith, held her close despite the stick shift between them. She looked at him strangely, unable to hide her smile.
goldman speaks...
At my last high school reunion I noted the banquet hall had filled with
persons who seemed strangers. Here were men who toted walrus guts and had hairlines
that had retreated behind their ears; here also were women whose matronly
girth or shriveled flesh suggested that time had been less than benevolent.
There were hairpieces resembling road kill and grapefruit sized boob jobs that
bordered on the grotesque, and I’m thinking, “Who are you people and what have
you done with my graduating class?”
Once upon a time the senior class of Philadelphia’s Overbrook High School
included the cutest most nubile girls a horny kid like myself could imagine, the
kind of babes The Beach Boys used to sing about. In that other lifetime most
of my male classmates had managed to escape the far side of adolescence pimple
free, and like those young girls still haunting my memory the guys weren’t too
shabby either. But that was then and this is now, yada yada and yada.
Unfortunately, ‘Now’ has the nasty habit of trumping ‘Then’ every time.
Where had all those kids gone? Standing in that banquet room I felt I was in
some bad sit-com sketch where the cast is heavily made up to look like
everyone had aged badly and some are already dribbling into their soup. It came as
a shock when I introduced myself to The Class Of . . . well, I’m not going to
tell you the year. But a good number of my former classmates had no idea
who I was. Sadly, more than one woman had to check the senior year photo of me
on my lapel. If Barbara Hoffman with the incredible knockers didn’t remember
me, that was bad enough. But if she remembered the teenaged Ken Goldman and
couldn’t reconcile him with the guy that stood before her, well, that should
have been a hint right there.
My dreaded maturation revealed itself in other ways. On a sad day in 1998 I
moved my parents into an adult community. (Okay, for you realists out there it
was an old age home. ) My father, completely intolerant of old farthood,
turned to me after scrutinizing the residents who would be his new neighbors.
“Everyone here is so old,” he said with no hint of the irony in his remark.
The man had recently broken his hip and was 89 years old. My mother, 83, kept
silent that day, but she echoed Dad’s sentiment virtually every time I visited.
Within the next seven years both my parents would be gone.
Waitresses and polite little kids now refer to me as “sir.” It’s a moniker
I really hate, and this isn’t only because of my advancing years. When I was
an idealistic young teacher in my early twenties I insisted my students call
me Ken. I hated that ‘Mr. Goldman’ tag. Hell, Mr. Goldman was my father,
not me! The principal eventually called me into his office and gave me a
lecture about needing to win my students’ respect, beginning with my acceptance of
my grown up appellation.
The Stones got it right when they sang “What a drag it is getting old.”
Recently, as I neared the start of a new decade of my life (again, don’t
ask!) I decided to goose up what vestiges remained of my departed youth. I
needed an elixir, a cleansing bathe in the fountain of youth to confront the next
ten years. I figured Kid Rock might be pissed if I rang up Pamela Anderson,
so I went with what seemed a pretty good next best thing.
I bought me a shiny new red Corvette!
Va-room! Va-room!
(Yes, when you push that keyless ignition, that is exactly the sound you
hear!)
What I know about cars you could stick inside a gnat’s colostomy bag, but I
know what I like and I’ve never been a big fan of delayed gratification. I
don’t care who you are or what you look like, my friend, you’re going to
feel like Mario Andretti when you climb behind the wheel of a ‘Vette. It’s no
accident that most of the drivers you see tooling around in that car are middle
aged guys, and I have no doubt that a sizable percentage of those dudes are
grappling with their mid-life crises just like me. Young girls look at my car
and smile, sometimes they even wave or give me the thumbs up. Hell, Ponce
De Leon should have tried driving one of these babies. It beats cosmetic
surgery and therapy by a mile. Make that 0-60 miles in 4.5 seconds.
George Jones sang in “The Corvette song” :
She was the fastest thing around
Long and lean, every young man's dream,
She turned every head in town”
Need I say more? Enjoy my story. Me, I’m going for a ride.
Va-room! Va-room!
goldman bio...
Ken Goldman is an American writer, HWA member, and former teacher with
homes in Bucks County Pennsylvania and the South Jersey shore. He has published stories in over 435 publications and has appeared in such anthologies as Vicious Shivers, The Witching Hour, The Fear Within, New Traditions in Terror, Spooks!, Raging Horrormoans, The Blackest Death Volumes 1 and 2, Chimera World 1 and 2, Cold Glass Pain, Monsters Ink, Potter's FieldTrip The Light Horrific, Dream The Dark Majestic, Tabloid Purposes II, and Revelation Volumes I and II.
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