Modesty Doesn't Become Him

I was in our bedroom last night, surrounded by wrapping paper, tape, scissors, and yarn, listening to my old albums on that fabulous new record player my daddy gave me for Christmas. The album de jour was the J. Geils Band Freeze Frame. [For the record (pun intended), if this album was not an important part of your 80s experience, then you simply didn't inhabit the same 80s that I did.] I flipped to side 2, which started with "Flamethrower," and I immediately remembered performing a drill team routine to it in the 11th grade. If you were a member of a drill team or cheerleading squad, you have probably experienced the phenomenon which happened to me: although that was over half my lifetime ago, I remembered some of the basic moves of the routine, and began performing them in a manner which would have caused much pain to my former drill team sponsor.

At this point, Hubby Dearest comments, "I remember watching you performing to this song at a basketball game. Didn't I tell you about that?" [We attended rival high schools and didn't meet until May of my senior year. The performance in question would have occurred during the winter of my junior year.]

"Yes, but I thought you must have been mistaken."

"You were on the left hand side, right?"

"My left or your left?"

"Mine."

After a little more discussion, I realized that as amazing as it sounded, he had in fact been watching me. One of his best friends had been with him and had been watching another one of the girls, whom he remembered by name.

"Except he didn't marry her," he said.

And then with a look of what can only be described as smug male pride, nodded and said, "I guess we know who the better man was," and managed to make me feel like he still thinks I'm a catch.