Stories From Candyland Read Free Page A

bathroom eventually.
    Okay. I had taken ballroom dancing lessons, gone to etiquette class, studied movie star habits, and had very polite relatives, so I could do this right.
    I casually strolled out of the bathroom, took Aaron’s hand, and we walked quickly out the front door.
    “What in the world happened? Why were you in the bathroom all night?”
    “Aaron, I was so scared. You know how shy I am. I’ve wanted to meet Rock Hudson all my life. And when it was time, I knew I’d have nothing to say or I’d sound stupid, and that I shouldn’t be with those kinds of people, and I just ended up in the bathroom.”
    Aaron took my hand and laughed. And laughed.
    I remember thinking that this suave, popular playboy wouldn’t be asking Candy the social misfit out again.
    I was wrong. We had a third date, although it was very unconventional. Aaron spent our entire third date tutoring me. We worked on looking at each other right in the eye. Weshook each other’s hands over and over. We practiced small talk. He trained me for future dates. He said I had passed. We had a fourth date, a fifth, sixth . . .
    We didn’t go to a lot of Hollywood parties on the next few dates. We went to the Cocoanut Grove nightclub and heard dreamy Eddie Fisher sing. We went backstage after the show, and I played with his puppy while he and Aaron spoke. We would go the popular local clubs, the Daisy, the Factory, or the Candy Store. Aaron was a great dancer, and I wasn’t too shy about my dancing. None of our succeeding dates involved Rock Hudson.
    I did finally get to meet Grace Kelly many times in later years. But better still, Rock and I became great friends, and he even later appeared in Aaron’s series
Dynasty
. I don’t know if he ever remembered that I was the perfectly coiffed young woman who had occupied his bathroom for hours. He was such a nice man. If he did remember, he would probably have been too polite to mention it. I liked thinking that he didn’t know it was me.
    Aaron and I had a very happy marriage for thirty-eight years. We loved the time we spent laughing with Rock and his friends. I never told Rock any of my stories about my infatuation for him and my plans for when I grew up. I probably would have locked myself in the bathroom in embarrassment if he had ever found out.
    But I have kept many of the magazine stories about him all these years.

 
     
     

Chapter 2

Dr. Spock or Mr. Spock:
Did We Really Listen to
These Guys?
     

     
     
    I ’ve lost count of how many e-mails I’ve received about how we baby boomers grew up to be such independent people because we rode our bikes without helmets, were herded into cars without seat belts, car seats, or air bags, lived in homes painted in pretty lead-based colors, filled up on white bread and butter, drank tap water, got Band-Aids instead of trips to the emergency room for cuts and scrapes, played outdoors after dark, and engaged in all kinds ofnow-primitive-sounding activities. The punch line is that, by today’s standards, it’s a miracle we survived.
    I think we had more fun. We had more freedom, were encouraged to be creative and less structured, and learned those good old values and work ethics. (No, I’m not running for office.)
    And all this despite all the parenting experts who, like us, were breathing lead-based paint fumes and risking their lives in station wagons and on scooters.
    I wonder how many more virtues we could give ourselves if we and our parents hadn’t spent so much time listening to people like Dr. Spock and Mr. Spock.
    Sometimes, when I try to figure out what my mother was thinking during her child-rearing years, I remember the copy of
Dr. Spock’s Baby and Child Care
that never seemed to be too far out of her reach.
    My mother wasn’t the only Spock devotee. I recognized his child care manual at all my friends’ houses, too. The book was published the year I was born, and I bought the updated versions of the “timeless bestseller” when