The Death of the Petite Red Head

I was standing behind the tiki bar when my friend Mike came up the side steps. "What's up, Big Mon?" he asked. He could see that I was upset.

"Oh, hell!" I responded as I slammed a bottle of something onto the bar, shot glasses bounced and a couple rolled to the edge where Mike's cop-reflexes caught them. "Woa! Woa! Take it easy!" He set the glasses upright and reached into the cooler for a cold beer. "Now," he continued. "What's the problem?"

"The Petite Red Head is dead." I stated flatly.

"Really?" he raised one eyebrow. "I thought she was fictional?"

"She mostly was."

"So how can she be dead?"

"Well, as you know, she was a composite character. A little feistiness from one girl, a little stubbornness from another, a little playfulness from another, and the intellect from my dream girl. The red hair was from several other girls I've known and the petite part just seemed to fit into the Johnny B character's arms."

"Yeah, I know that." Mike said. "But that doesn't explain how she can die."

I looked at the gloomy sky, thunderheads roiling in the distance. A slight breeze was picking up and I could smell the honey suckle at the far end of the tiki deck. I chose not to answer his question directly. "Remember when she first showed up in the Help Yourself blog? The one about the "A" and "B" type hosts and guests?"

"Sure."

"She was just a minor bit of window dressing. A bit player. A walk on part. But she just felt right, man. You know what I mean?"

"No, not really. But then, you are the writer." He answered truthfully.

"Then a little later, I had a mis-understanding with a girl I was dating and I brought the petite red head back in I Can Do That! to help me illustrate the humorous contrasts between how men and women think."

"Uh, huh."

"At this point, I was beginning to see the potential of a female character who was slightly smarter than the Johnny B character and I began using her sometimes as a straight man and sometimes to set him up as the fall guy of the piece. I did this in The Trouble with Hairy (Legs) and in Giving Good Foot. But she really came into her own in Breakin' ALL the Rules!. That's the one where she gets me for being so anal. Remember?"

"Yeah, I do." he smiled. "It was actually pretty funny."

"That's when I knew she had to die." I said.

"What!"

"That's when I knew she had to die."

"I didn't mean what did you say. Didn't you see the exclamation mark? I said 'what' in the sense of 'what the hell are you talking about!'." He explained.

"Oh." ...

... "So? Like, what the hell are you talking about?"

"Well... it's just that... well, she was stealing my thunder, man."

Suddenly Mike got very patient and began talking in slower, more measured tones. "Johnny, how can she steal your thunder? You are the one making it up."

"Hey, this stuff isn't easy. And it's even harder to explain. It's sort of like when you date a girl and after about a month or so you realize she has this whole other life going on outside of you. Like... who knew? You know what I mean?"

"Uhhh... No."

"Anyway, I figured if I let her have her way, she was about a couple of weeks away from having her own blog. Which could have been one way to get rid of her but, logistically, that would have been a nightmare."

"Uh, huh."

"So I decided to phase her out."

"How did you do that?" The skin around his eyes tightened and I could tell he was sorry he asked the question. So he took another sip of his beer.

"Well, that was when I wrote The Stripper and the Toilet Bowl. I was kinda hoping to divert the attention away from the petite red head." I explained. "That was also about the same time I quit dating red heads... I figured maybe I was channeling some of their crazy energy into the petite red head. It's a shame, too. There was this one chick..."

"Ummm, Johnny. Back to the story."

"Oh. Yeah." I said shaking the fog from my head. "Anyway, I still needed her. She was a good foil and my raison d'etre. So she popped up again in The Great Beard Rebellion."

"That's when I began playing around with different female characters. Trying to find one that resonated. I thought I hit pay dirt with the Frankie character in So This is Love, but it turned out that she was too flighty."

"But... never mind."

"This is when I started writing more introspective stuff and the true stories from my life. Things like The Polish Blog and The Gift. I even tried my hand at writing a country/western song. Remember Every Fool has a Heart?"

"Yep. And if I remember correctly, you haven't written about the petite red head since. But isn't that kind of what you wanted? Is the character irreplaceable?"

"No. Oh, Lord, no!" I said. "In fact I'm already working on a new one."

"What's her name?"

"I'm not sure she'll have one. But I'm thinking of calling her the Blond Bombshell. What do you think?"

"Sounds cool."

"I just need to keep this one on a short leash. It is, after all, my picture on the page."

"O.K." Mike said - then he paused before continuing. "So, if you killed the petite red head on purpose and you have a replacement in the wings to serve as your straight man and foil, etc., why are you so upset?"

"Well, I was thinking about throwing a party for the Petite Red Head, sort of like a wake, but I can't remember how to mix her favorite drink."

.

...but does he LIKE like her?

What year is it? For a number of reasons I feel like I'm back in high school again. Of my group of regular friends and correspondents it seems a large number of us are recently separated or divorced or between significant others. And some of the conversations I've been involved in are straight out of third period.

(The names have been changed to protect the hapless.)

It seems that Suzie likes Joe. But even though Joe likes Suzie, he also likes Joanie. Joanie likes Joe as a friend but really isn't looking for a boyfriend and Suzie would really like a steady beau. But Joe doesn't want a committed relationship although he really likes Suzie... and Joanie.

And I'm the doofus who is passing notes for them between periods.

Then there is Bill. Bill seems to date a different girl every week. All of his friends welcome the new girls and take the time to learn their names. We all encourage Bill and the girls all seem nice. Yet, by sometime mid-week they've broken up and he's on to the next one. What I'm wondering is how he keeps getting his class ring back?

Then there is the case of Debbie and Rick who were friends of Elaine and Mike. When Elaine and Mike broke up Debbie and Rick stayed out of it. Until one day Mike got a call from Debbie wondering if she and Rick could hang out with Mike. Mike said, "Sure. C'mon over." Later on Mike found out that Elaine has been hanging out with Debbie and Rick and she was sending them to Mike's to spy on him. Which Mike thought was funny because Debbie and Rick would have been the first people Mike's hung out with since Elaine left.

And the high school analogy is apt. I mean, I'm 56 years old and actually found myself saying, "I know he likes her - but does he like like her?" What the hell's wrong with me?

At this stage of our lives you'd think the whole dating, courtship rituals would have sorted themselves out in our heads, would have begun to make some sense, and we would have a procedure for this stuff. This is, after all, the generation that gave the world the inter-web, right?

But it seems that the spark between people, that certain something that excites us and makes us act all goofy, does not go away with age. I don't truly remember the extent of my own high school goofiness but I'm sure it didn't have anything on the me of today. Recently, I've begun to think of it not so much as a spark as a short circuit.

Whatever it is, though, and however goofy it may make us seem, it is this spark between two people that brings us back to life when our prior "true love" ends. It provides us with a reason to look forward to tomorrow and to be happy today.

To quote Bobby Vinton:

Only love can break a heart... and only love can mend it again.



Now if my face would just clear up!

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