Undies

Today, Bev and I went to the bazaar at All Saints' Westboro. It was a happy time of meeting folks that we were close to when we attended All Saints'. We decided to have lunch at the bazaar. If you are only a few people, you get seated at a table wherever there is room and not necessarily with people that you know.

We were seated with Sally. Sally and I went to public school together and we were never more than acquaintances, each having our own crowd. She was accompanied by her husband Mike. I noted his last name and asked if he was the Mike that had gone to Fisher Park High School a few grades ahead of me and indeed it was him.

Throwing all caution to the wind, I told him that I had one clear memory of him and it was of him in his underwear. He was startled and couldn't think when that might have happened. Sally was laughing and demanded to hear the story.

Mike and I were both choristers in the high school choir, the Cantabile Singers. In the summer of 1974, the choir and the band embarked on Project LAMP (London Amsterdam Music Project). In London (England of course) we stayed at a frightful dive called the Pembridge Palace Hotel. The washrooms in the hotel were all located at half levels off the landings in the stairwell.

I was having trouble sleeping one night and wishing to not awaken my roommates, I took my book out into the hallway and sat on the stairs to read. I had been there only a short time when Mike emerged from one of the bathrooms wearing only the aforementioned underwear. He must have thought that there would be no one else about at that hour. He strode very confidently past me, greeting me as he went.

That memory has stayed with me. His very fine physique, his confident manner, and the utter unexpectedness of the situation.

It was lovely to sit and have lunch with him today and to discover that his personality is just as attractive now as his 18-year-old body was then.