SHALL WE DANCE?
"I hate to say it, Gordo, but we may have a blivet on our hands." Hutch shook his head and regarded his best friend morosely.
"As serious as a blivet?" Starsky looked startled.
"A real blivet," nodded Hutch.
Starsky's dad had brought back the word 'blivet' from his Army days. Starsky had adopted it and naturally Hutch had followed suit.
A blivet was 10 pounds of shit in a 5 pound bag.
"A blivet," Starsky repeated. "Well," he added slowly and reflectively. "It's not like we NEVER thought it might happen."
"Yeah, Sherlock." Hutch ran a hand through his slightly thinning but still beautiful blonde flaxen hair. "But we thought of it when Kenny was five and Ollie was three."
"And now, " pointed out Starsky, unnecessarily: "Kenny is seventeen and a half and Ollie is fifteen. And you and I are pushing fifty -"
"Count again, Einstein. You were never good at math."
"Okay. A bit over fifty. Not much." Pause. "A little."
"What exactly did he say to you? Run it by me again." Hutch prepared to reason this through.
"He SAID," answered Starsky, running his own hand through a still brazen mop of curls. "He SAID that he wished Ollie wasn't so cute."
"And this was because…."
"BECAUSE…if she wasn't so cute, she wouldn't have 5 invitations to her 10th grade dance. And then Kenny could offer to take her to the dance as a benevolent, good will gesture."
"My daughter? A benevolent, good will gesture?" Hutch's nostrils flared a little.
"Well, you know what he meant," defended Starsky. "It's not bad strategy, as strategies go. You like a girl. You don't want to make it obvious, for a variety of reasons, her father's flaring nostrils not the least of them. She's all woebegone because she doesn't have a date for the major dance of the year. You, therefore, get to save the day ."
"Kenny is my beloved godson. My beloved nephew in all but chromosomes. But I never thought of him as my son-in-law."
"Your son-in-law?" Starsky raised his eyebrows. "Aren't we proceeding at warp speed here now, Captain Kirk?"
"Maybe," Hutch acknowledged. "But do you doubt that anyone who likes my daughter isn't going to want to do more than be her brotherly escort to the ball?"
Starsky was silent. He knew exactly what Hutch was intimidating, but it seemed prudent not to agree.
"And, if I still can vaguely recall what the process is: one thing leads to another and if Kenny thinks he's going to get beyond first base with Ollie until she's 25 years old, I'll have to throttle him." Pause. "And we'll have a blivet on our hands."
"Yeah," Starsky had to agree.
"Because if Sivvy and Becca see me throttle Kenny, they're both going to throttle me. And then when Becca finds out why I'm throttling Kenny, she's going to throttle everyone. Blivet."
"Hey!" Starsky bristled a little. "That's my son we're talking about."
"I rest my case, " said Hutch pointedly.
"Well, Ollie has already been asked by 5 guys to go to this shindig, so it's a moot point, isn't it?"
Starsky didn't really want to continue this particular area of discussion. Especially as he recalled some of the fatherly wisdom regarding females that he had shared with his son. It would be too much to hope that Kenny hadn't remembered most of it.
"ANYWAY," he added, attempting to change the subject. "What's the story with DC? He also has the big 10th grade dance coming up. Has your clone decided to rest his eyes on some lucky high school girl yet?"
"DC." Starsky was lucky; he had managed to distract Hutch. "Oh Lordy. DC. Now I'm getting an even bigger headache than before."
"Is he still driving the entire feminine part of the school crazy? Including teachers and the lunch ladies?"
"I tried to weasel something out of him a few days ago," admitted Hutch. And he looked at me calmly, with those eyes. By the way, I'm sorry, Starsk."
"Okay, but why? There are at least a dozen reasons why you might be offering me apologies."
"Asshole. Starsk, I never really realized until I got 'that look' from my own son how I must have tortured you throughout the years with the same look. Never saw it from the other end. It's something, isn't it?"
Starsky smiled benevolently. "Oh yeah, it's something. Well, I survived it, and the Hutchinson Finger, so the odds are that you will. But, Blintz, what did he SAY?"
"He said, " ventured Hutch. "That he liked girls, and some more than others, and he plans to ask someone to the dance, but he wasn't quite ready to put it on the line."
"Do you think the girls will get physically violent when he makes his choice?"
"Who can tell with girls? Ollie thinks it might break up a couple of friendships around her own set of buddies. She also suspects that at least a couple of the larger contingent hangs around her just because of DC. It's a miracle the twins actually like each other."
"Well, DC is the Snausage in this dogfight. Poor kid. It's hard to have his looks. How the hell did YOU get through it, Romeo?"
Hutch frowned. "Well, my parents were more or less indifferent to me, so I liked the attention I got elsewhere. " He frowned harder. "And remembering the kind of attention I got elsewhere makes me now want to lock Ollie into her bedroom and throw away the key."
"Oh, c'mon, seriously, Hutch. In this particular case I think Kenny would be very, very careful. I mean, after all, he's not stupid."
"Hormones have made many a man extremely stupid first and regretful afterwards," grumbled Hutch.
Ollie and DC made their decisions a couple of days later.
Ollie picked Jeff Banbridge, a boy in her biology class.
"I hate science, and Jeff hates science, so we've started passing notes to each other to help us get through the class. That's when I found out how funny he is."
Pause.
"He also happens to be really cute."
Hutch quirked an eyebrow. Becca quirked one back at him. 'Let sleeping dogs lie,' hers warned.
DC came home then, made himself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and announced that he had asked Dale Evans to the dance and she had said yes.
"Dale Evans?", choked Hutch.
DC nodded. "Dale Evans."
Ollie shook her head. "It's sadly true. What do you think of parents who would name their daughter Dale when their last name is Evans?"
"It could have been worse. They could have named her Trigger. Or Howdy Doody." Becca was trying so hard to subdue a giggle that she developed a pain in her left side.
DC was frowning. "Lay off. She gets enough of that crap at school."
The kitchen door opened; Sivvy and Starsky strolled in.
"I can smell a PBJ sandwich a mile away," Starsky declared. "Is there any Wonder Bread white on the premises ?"
Hutch announced, "Ollie is taking Jeff Banbridge to the dance." He signaled a 'next time, Kenny' glance towards Starsky.
"And DC," Becca informed them in a somewhat shaky voice, "is taking Dale Evans to the dance."
"The first one who laughs, "said DC crossly, "is going to get The Hutchinson Finger. I've been practicing."
Starsky slid a glob of strawberry jam on his sandwich. He also was straining not to laugh. He thought it might help to fill his mouth with food, a strategy that had worked in past circumstances.
Sivvy was the diplomat. "What's she like, DC?"
DC smiled. "Well, she's not a cheerleader type."
Ollie interjected, "She's a little toughie."
Pause.
"I actually like her. DC's surprised me. In a positive way"
"How do you know her?" Sivvy asked.
"She's in our debating seminar," mumbled DC around a bite of sandwich. "She's good."
"Good?" Ollie sounded incredulous. "Good?"
She shook her head.
"Mom, Sivvy, her challenger was Roger Martin, the best male debater in the class. She ripped him a new butt. Absolutely destructed him. Yeah, she's 'Good'," Ollie grumbled at her brother in disgust.
"Sure you can handle her?" asked Starsky, wiping a smear of jelly off his chin.
"HANDLE her?" Sivvy questioned her husband, who quickly decided that looking apologetic and abashed was by far the best way to go.
"Well, the best ones are always a handful," Hutch decided to help his friend, who was wondering if he would ever have sex again. "And the ones worth having."
"A hit in the clutch," conceded Becca.
The twins departed at that point, deciding instinctively that they had started enough brushfires to keep the grownups occupied for some time.
The end