A (Fairly) Good Tale

ONCE UPON A TIME there was a girl who was wise beyond her years. She was the third child of four children and the only girl. Her father was a Methodist minister, what people used to call a ‘circuit rider’ who would become pastor at whatever church he was sent to. The little girl was born in a town called Hope, Arkansas, which would become a famous place when another resident from there became President of the United States and a third resident became Governor of the state. But she was not slated for the political trail. She was of small-to-average height for a girl, with long, dark straight hair (which, if the summer was hot enough, sometimes grew a blond streak), small but intelligent eyes and a very wide smile that made you like her almost immediately. By the time she became a young woman, she also sported a ‘balcony you could do Shakespeare from’. Sometimes she wore glasses to correct her eyesight, but not for very long. Being the only girl among four boys, she couldn’t fit in as much as she would have liked. She was as tough as any boy her age, but the fact that she was a girl got in the way more times than not. She hung out with her mom, joined the choir in her father’s church and played with her brothers when she could, which was often. Sadly, she often did not have enough time to make long-lasting friends as she followed her family around the state to places with names like Decatur, Desha, Murfreesboro, Newport (where she eventually graduated high school) and Pottsville…well, for the last town, her family went there and a lot of her stuff went there, but the girl, now a young woman, did not follow. She went to college instead, in a place called Conway. Little did she know she would stay in this town longer than any place in her life. She took up several work-study jobs on campus, one of them as a secretary for the head of the Speech Theatre and Journalism Department. It was a small office that was right next to a very loud place, which was the campus radio station. Many was the time she would be typing away at some document or official paper (which she was very good at) when she would hear all sorts of whoops and hollers from the station next door. ‘What sort of person would work in a place like that?’ she would often ask herself. One day she had left the office for the short walk back to her dorm room when she spied two young men almost literally hanging out of the radio station window. One was a tousle-headed big-boned youth with a mischievous twinkle in his eye and a happy-go lucky smirk on his face. The other was a bit more austere, a tall, lanky man with as much black hair on his head as there was on his face. He looked like the end product of a relationship between Abraham Lincoln and Rasputin. “Hi…how would you like to have a deep and meaningful relationship?’ the tall boy joked. “Not today, I can’t. Catch me tomorrow.” she retorted. This was the start of a long friendship between the two. She would later find out he was born in Memphis and raised in Little Rock before moving to Conway when he was 13. He was also a Catholic, which wasn’t far from being a Methodist, but she didn’t fault him for that. He was one of seven children comprised of both brothers and sisters. She also found he was also a bit of a changeling. One day he would cavort around in cut-off military surplus, the next time he would be clean-shaven and in a three-piece suit. She preferred the latter look. For the next year or so, she went through her life in the dormitory, making friends and even a boyfriend who offered her an engagement ring. One day, she showed it to the tall boy who, for a split-second, looked like the world ended before reasserting himself to offer his congratulations. He hoped she didn’t notice his crest-fallen look for that brief moment. As it turned out, she had noticed. The ‘engagement’ didn’t last long. A short time later, the two would meet again, this time outside of the radio station. They had both gotten parts in a school play. She got the role of a teenaged waitress while he got the role of a drunken disgraced school professor who tried to pick her up for a date. The on-stage date didn’t work. Off-stage, it became another story. As time passed, they slowly became inseparable. He would visit her at her dorm room on the weekends or she would walk the long distance to his house, several blocks from campus. His mom and all his brothers and sisters took a shine to the girl almost immediately. Even his grandmother, who was very sick at the time, said she was a lovely young lady. Her parents took a little longer to find what their daughter had found in the boy, but eventually warmed to his charm and quirkiness. I’m not saying all was idyllic with the two. There had their arguments like any two people in love would, followed by reconciliation. He was also a bit slow on the uptake with his studies, preferring to spend his time either in the radio station or in the theatre. He was even put on academic probation a couple of times so that, by the time they were ready to graduate, she had caught up with him. She was there for him when his grandmother died, and later when his eldest brother tragically died as well. He would be there for her when her own grandparents and great-grandparents passed away. He even helped her family move a couple of times and was there again, this time as a son-in-law, when her own father passed away a few years later. All in all, they dated for about five years before he finally asked her to marry him at one of his sister’s wedding reception. Or she asked him…I forget. They were married a month after they graduated college in a Catholic ceremony co-officiated by her father and by the man who would become his step-father. His best man was the tousle-headed friend who first saw her walk past the station window all those years ago. By now, they were both working at a commercial radio station downtown. In fact, they borrowed their boss’ pick-up truck to drive to their honeymoon because their own car would not have made the trip. They moved into a little grey duplex between the college and downtown. She soon found a full-time job back at the college where she had graduated barely a year earlier. He stayed at the radio station. They found a community theatre group in town and kept doing plays together. Many was the time she was called to direct a show and found a place for her new husband. She became very good at directing, even through tech rehearsals she called ‘Go To Mexico Week’. They found a couple of other places to live in the interim. One was an old house where there were more mice than people. Another was on the second floor of a quadroplex they shared with a plethora of strange and unique individuals. Over the years, other family members would get married or get divorce and re-married. Eventually, they would become the oldest married couple on either side of their joined families. Shortly after he got his first full-time job, they discovered they would have a baby. This was after doctors had told them the chances were very small they would ever have children. “Ho ho”, they laughed. The first, a little girl, was born on the first day of spring before their tenth anniversary. Less than two years later, the new family welcomed a little boy. …Which leads us to the here and now. There are still the occasional disagreements, mostly over finances or raising the children, but the great love that had flourished all those years ago is still as strong as ever. They rarely end a phone call with anything but ‘I love you’. They still go out of their way to find at least one birthday or Christmas present that isn’t necessarily new, but has a special romantic or nostalgic connection. I don’t know if they will live happily ever after, but they’ve already lived happy longer than lots of more famous couples (Cruise and Kidman, for instance). Happy Birthday, Carla!