{"id":418,"date":"2009-08-30T09:19:19","date_gmt":"2009-08-30T14:19:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/byers\/wp\/?p=418"},"modified":"2009-09-08T19:21:28","modified_gmt":"2009-09-09T00:21:28","slug":"the-day-randys-mother-asked-a-key-question","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/byers\/wp\/?p=418","title":{"rendered":"The day Randy&#8217;s mother asked a key question"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My friend Randy was a really nice kid and a natural leader&#8211;smart, focused, creative, bold, able, and he really knew how to present himself in a pleasing manner, whether to child or adult.\u00a0 I was lucky to have known him, to be his neighbor, to be his friend.<\/p>\n<p>As it turned out, he was a testament to the fact that sometimes the apple drops really, really far from the tree, and often it&#8217;s a good thing it does.\u00a0 His parents were clueless, self-involved, mean-spirited, and, luckily for me, distant.\u00a0 He was no more like them than he was like any random pair of adults you might pick out of a line-up.<\/p>\n<p>Being his friend, I had occasion to go to his house from time to time.\u00a0 I mean, he came to mine a couple of times a week.\u00a0 When he&#8217;d come over, he&#8217;d be so ingratiating, so grateful for any little kindness shown to him.\u00a0 My Mom thought he was the greatest kid ever.\u00a0 And he was.<\/p>\n<p>But sometimes he and I would have to go to his house.\u00a0 He&#8217;d get an idea for something he wanted to do, remember something he needed at home to make it happen, and that was that; no matter what he had to deal with once he got there, he&#8217;d go.\u00a0 It was real simple for him on that level.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>I usually waited outside.\u00a0 My rare ventures inside his home were, shall we say, somewhat different from what I was used to.\u00a0 I never knew what I&#8217;d be getting in to, but I knew it would be eerily strange.\u00a0 Orders and demands would come our way, and most of these we would manage to accommodate if we could do it quickly.\u00a0 If we couldn&#8217;t, well, Randy was pretty confident that his parents&#8211;his mother, mainly&#8211;would forget about it eventually or go on to ask for something else and forget about what she had begun with in the first place.\u00a0 Randy was skillful at claiming that he had already accomplished whatever feat his mother was requiring of him, weaving the magic, filling in the details that convinced his Mom that he really had done whatever it was she was asking of him.\u00a0 He knew she&#8217;d never check.\u00a0 That would involve getting up and walking around the house, perhaps&#8211;gasp&#8211;even venturing outside.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"Mrs. Robinson, before there was a Mrs. Robinson\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/byers\/wp-img\/memoir\/heres2u.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"191\" height=\"250\" align=\"right\" \/>Yes, going to Randy&#8217;s was kind of unpleasant, usually.\u00a0 One day, though, I failed to follow my usual dictum:\u00a0 &#8220;Let Randy go in his house alone.&#8221;\u00a0 I think it was the extreme heat that day.\u00a0 Tulsa could have such a variable climate, changing from day to day, even moment to moment, but when it got really hot, hovering over 100 degrees for days on end, you knew it wouldn&#8217;t change, not until you were good and tired of it.\u00a0 I think it was the heat that drove me inside that day.<\/p>\n<p>So, in we went, through the kitchen, past the cream-themed living room, on the way to Randy&#8217;s room at the far end of the hall.\u00a0 We paused in the entry to the living room, just to check in with his mother, and there she was, reclining on the couch in her underwear, watching TV.\u00a0 She made no effort to cover up, showed no shame at all.\u00a0 I just couldn&#8217;t help staring.\u00a0 These were the days of the <a id=\"x2in\" title=\"Madonna\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Madonna_%28entertainer%29\">Madonna<\/a>-style &#8220;rocket bras,&#8221; and hers was something pretty extravagant.\u00a0 She might have had her flaws inwardly, but outwardly, she was quite striking.<\/p>\n<p>Well, obviously, in retrospect, I must have been staring, slack-jawed.\u00a0 The whole situation was so unexpected, so unnatural to me, I felt that I was not in the real world, but in a movie, and the only appropriate response was to take in the scene as fully as possible.<\/p>\n<p>Randy&#8217;s mom brought me back to reality in her straightforward manner.\u00a0 She stared right back at me and asked, sluringy, &#8220;What&#8217;re you looking at?<\/p>\n<p>Well, I have to say, I was looking at a woman.\u00a0 Gaping mouth aside, I was looking at a woman the way a man looks at a woman.\u00a0 And I was, what?\u00a0 In the fourth or fifth grade?\u00a0 Yep, believe it or not, even in the chaste and hypocritical 50s, guys had <a id=\"rgqm\" title=\"hormones\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Testosterone\">hormones<\/a>&#8211;even little guys.\u00a0 Little guys got little erections, too.<\/p>\n<p>Did I mention Randy&#8217;s last name?\u00a0 It explains my response to Randy&#8217;s mom.\u00a0 I said, &#8220;Nothing, <a id=\"p75m\" title=\"Mrs. Robinson\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mrs._Robinson\">Mrs. Robinson<\/a>.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>All these years later, I might add, &#8220;And here&#8217;s to you.&#8221;<sup>[<a id=\"nj9j\" title=\"1\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Graduate\">1<\/a>]<\/sup><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My friend Randy was a really nice kid and a natural leader&#8211;smart, focused, creative, bold, able, and he really knew how to present himself in a pleasing manner, whether to child or adult.\u00a0 I was lucky to have known him, to be his neighbor, to be his friend. As it turned out, he was a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[25],"class_list":["post-418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-memoirs","tag-life-events"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/byers\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/byers\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/byers\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/byers\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/byers\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=418"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/byers\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":565,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/byers\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418\/revisions\/565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/byers\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/byers\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/byers\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}