Further Affairs Remembered

I used to be skinny. Not thin, skinny. I had to grow into thin. There's a mindset that goes with skinny and yesterday I relapsed into that mindset. What happened is, I forgot to eat. Well not completely, somewhere about noon I had a small cup of yogurt and later some popcorn. This gluttony would have sustained me in my skinny days, but here in my look he's swallowed a volleyball days, I found myself hungry right at five o'clock. The feast I participated in the night before at precisely that hour might have been partly responsible for my sudden pang along with the absence of breakfast and lunch, but I had had those wholesome snacks to tide me over, so it caught my monkeymind quite by surprise when my volleyball rumbled and I became aware of the unlikely here in retirement where the fridge is but steps away, hunger.

Not to worry, you say, go get something to eat.

The problem was that five o,clock de la tarde ayer, I was sitting in a high school gym along with Woowoo Chuck, RTGFKAR, Larry, Bonnie and some hundred or so other folk watching assorted decorating committees hang balloons and paste cardboard horses on the walls. The announced starting time of the event, "Adventures In The Old West" was this very same five o,clock and not being daughter Kira whose timing would have been perfect, we had plopped onto our folding chairs at precisely five of. The show would begin a little over an hour later. Okay, a lot over. We did, however, get to see bored gringo women attempting line dances in the aisles to the country music being piped over the sound system and we were further amused by an hombre testing microphones. Uno dos. Uno dos. Chick chick chick.

The reason we were in attendance was not entertainment desperation but to give support to a young woman named Demorris who works for Larry and Bon and who in fact was a part of our after flood cleanup crew. Demorris was in the cast and a member of the Learn To Speak English group that was putting on the night's performance. She got to show her stuff in a dance number near the end and I'm told she was quite good, but I have to confess to not really noticing as the lead dancer was one of those women who have the ability to move their parts separately and in different directions. I find this, ahem...interesting.

Long before that welcomed distraction from the "mean green mutha from outer space" saying "feed me!" that now resided in my gut, several things had occurred. First off, we learned that an early escape would be impossible. Having arrived promptly for the five o,clock showtime and achieved a premium, up front parking space, we were now hemmed in by dozens of other cars. Rats! was the word Larry would have used in place of the one he actually did employ if he had thought of it. I can't use his actual word as this is a family blog, but I can tell you it was a synonym of fuck. The other important thing that occurred was the show itself.

The curtain opened to an ensemble dance number that was not too bad. Not exactly The Rockettes, but not bad. Of course they were dancing to John Denver's Take Me Home Country Road which is about West Virginia, a state not usually associated with our "Old West" but, c'mon, what do we know about Panama? Slack was cut. Following that the judges were introduced. You see there was a contest running throughout the show to determine the prince and princess. Of what was never clear but then just being elected was apparently enough and each contestant had their own rabidly cheering fan club seated in specially decorated sections throughout the gym. After the judges, all Gringos, had been introduced we were treated to sketch 1 called "Law and Disorder" which featured a dozen or so Panamanians in American western garb milling around the stage saying things to each other. What they were saying I have no idea, because "uno dos chick chick chick" man apparently didn't realize that a mike at the front of the stage picks up nothing further than a foot or so away. Ah well, the costumes were nice. After that we got sketch 2 "Wild Wild West" with a hand held mike being awkwardly passed from person to person and it was about Jim West and Artemus Gordon from the television show of the same name, but that's all I really understood as even though all the actors were displaying their best English, it was much like what Panamanians get when I display my best Spanish. We then got another group dance, performances by the princess and prince candidates, another sketch called "Silent Love" which featured a pregnant Indian, played, I think by a pregnant Indian, a fourth sketch entitled "The Lost Bullet" that took place in a saloon and featured the line "not all women who come in bars are prostitutes or pussycats" and then, and then, we bolted. Okay bolted may not be the right word. What happened was we returned to the parking lot and directed traffic for other bolters so that we could bolt behind them. Orderly bolting. Disorderly bolting. Chaotic bolting in slow motion. Whatever, we made our escape. Unfortunately we missed: 1. Questions to the competitors. 2. The Election of the King and Queen. (I thought they were going to be elected Prince and Princess but the show took so long I guess the old monarchs must have died.)3. Presentation of the Winners in the Contest. We will never know, but my vote went to the dancer with the, ah, good rhythm.

It was nine when we finally made it home. Four hours since I first detected that I was becoming a late night Ethiopian telethon plea for food. I rushed to the fridge in near panic mode and there it was, God's own purely finest food...left over pizza. I need say no more.