Did I mention the Calvin Klein ads? They were all the talk for a spell in ninth grade study hall. Which makes the Run-DMC diss a few years later in the mid-eighties all the more significant: “Your Calvin Klein’s no friend of mine, don’t want nobody’s name on my behind.” During this era, a friend of ours from the University of North Dakota dorm carried a 4.0 GPA in chemistry. (He went to the bar with us exactly once, needless to say my grades weren’t as stellar.) He went on to graduate school at Princeton. Back at UND we received a postcard. He said that one night he was leaving the chem lab and a passionate Brooke jumped him. Good thing, he wrote, that he was wearing his tearaway jersey and escaped. (An all-time great …)
And despite remembering so many random things from my youth, I forgot Brooke Shields’ name. Aging is bad enough with chronic pains triggering physical therapy appointments, two different blood pressure meds, forgetting the names of friends from my school days, prescription orthotics, hands not always working when I’m trying to do something as simple as holding a spatula, knees that don’t always do well on stairs, changing the sports app on my phone because the old one started using a smaller font, etc., etc. … but this one trip-up got to me. Future nights will bring more disappointments and maybe some small triumphs, yet I am certain something ominous happened that night.