178: The skating party . . .
Little Follies, “Take the Long Way Home,” Chapter 15
15
THE SKATING PARTY was scheduled for a Friday night. During school that day, I began to exhibit signs of illness. By the end of the day, I had made all the arrangements. I told Veronica that I was coming down with a twenty-four-hour virus and I was sure that I would begin vomiting at about the time that the skating-party bus left the high school lot. She was terribly disappointed, but she accepted Stretch as a substitute escort, since the party meant so much to her. Stretch was surprised. I gave him the tickets and lent him two dollars to make sure that he and Veronica had a good time.
By the time the school day ended, only one thing remained for me to do. On the way home from school, I sat in the seat right behind Porky, and I told him most—but not all—of the story.
“What?” said Porky. “You mean another guy is taking your girl to the skating party? Hey, don’t worry. I’ll keep an eye on them. I’ll make them sit right up in the front of the bus and I’ll keep the lights on the whole way back. And I’ll drive straight back to the school, too. He’s not going to get away with anything while I’m driving.”
I opened Our Town and Its People and removed from it a new five-dollar bill. “Here, Porky,” I said, handing it to him. “Do me a favor. Take the long way home.”
[to be continued on Friday, January 21, 2022]
You can listen to this episode on the Personal History podcast.
In Topical Guide 178, Mark Dorset considers Male-Female Differences: Maturation Rates from this episode.
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At Apple Books you can download free eBooks of “My Mother Takes a Tumble,” “Do Clams Bite?,” “Life on the Bolotomy,” “The Static of the Spheres,” “The Fox and the Clam,” and “The Girl with the White Fur Muff,” the first six novellas in Little Follies.
You’ll find an overview of the entire work in An Introduction to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy. It’s a pdf document.