Boy Did I get a wrong number

 Boy Did I get a wrong number




     Very sound life lessons in this tale that involves one of the many missteps in romance I took during the desperate years in my 20's and 30's. Once upon a time Maureen was a wonderful host and a kind tutor when she taught at UCLA. She had a nice apartment very near campus I think near Sepulveda boulevard and she invited me to a cocktail party up there as I had depended on her to pass my Italian classes at UCLA and I lived in the old hometown in South Gate where a social life was non-existant. Most of the guests there were somewhat over my head intellectually and also older than my very immature 30-somehing. I was pretty happy with myself, having achieved the very difficult to get post at Central Library. I was on my way and I needed a mate to share my good fortune with and become a family man. At the party there was actually only one woman in my age group and she was tall and attrractive. Her name was Marla Brown. I really did not talk to her that much but I somehow saw this stranger as my future bride: Mrs. Marla Creason. It helped me that she was tall and she had a decent job as a paralegal in firm based at Century City. Maureen acted as a matchmaker and got me her phone number and I was not enthralled by her conversation but after all she was to become my wife you see. I drove out to Century City for lunch and ordered a Cobb salad because I was too nervous to eat a hamburger with the full beard I had at the time. It went OK and despite some strange looks we parted agreeably. When I went out to my car to drive home I looked in the mirror to kind of say "you cool dude" and I spotted a large chunk of mayo greased cabbage clinging to my chin beard! Oh God, I wince to think of it now. However, I could not quit and I called her to try and salvage the wreakage of lunch.  We agreed to go out to Santa Anita and it was a drizzly weekend but if I was a batter in baseball the date went like this. She would not ride in my used VW Bug and insisted we take her car (Strike One!). She took over the radio and put on the totally lame Rick Dees show (steeeerike two!) In making conversaton I let her know I was a librarian at the historic Central library  in Downtown, working in the History department. Her response was "what are you going to do...work in a library the rest of your life?" (steeeerike three...you are out!) I remember smoking a lot and sort of counting the hours until I could get dropped off and head home to get stoned and drunk and forget about Miss Marla Brown. Years later when I was assigned to WLA branch after the fire I saw her coming out of a small, cheap apartment off of Santa Monica boulevard and Maureen told me she was slowly going to Law School at Southwestern




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