The Voices In My Head: Harper Lee Weinstock

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A COLLECTION OF COLUMNS BY HARPER LEE WEINSTOCK

Roadkill on the highway of love

Harper Lee Weinstock

When I was in the seventh grade, I had a huge crush on a classmate by the name of Lou Anne Wilson. Lou Anne, who was named after both her mom and dad, was a cute little thing with long, blonde, Marcia Brady-style hair, a mouthful of perfect teeth, and big, blue eyes that could reduce even the most worldly twelve year old boy to a shivering mass of pubescent jelly, myself included.

I was luckier than most of the guys who lusted after Lou Anne because I got to sit in front of her in homeroom (thanks to the Grace of God and alphabetical seating). Whenever my name was called on the role, she'd poke me in the back with her pencil eraser and giggle.

"Hocker Lee!" she'd say in that angelic voice of hers. "Hocker Lee Whiny Snot."

Dumbstruck, I'd manage a weak, "Here..." and the whole class laughed at the crack in my voice. Most boys my age would have been racked with embarrassment, I suppose, but not me. With a name like Harper Lee Weinstock, you come to expect a fair amount of teasing. Plus, I knew the only reason Lou Anne poked fun at my name was because she was sweet on me. At least that's what my best friend Scooter Turner said. And Scooter should have known because he was an old hand at love. He'd been getting laughed at by girls since the fourth grade.

At Scooter's urging, I decided to ask Lou Anne to the annual harvest dance. Being twelve and having absolutely no practical experience with the opposite sex, I turned to my dad for advice. My dad was a poor, dirt farmer with a third grade education, but that never stopped him from dispensing pearls of wisdom when his boy was in need.

"Son, there are just two things you gotta remember about women: One, they're always right, even when they're not; and two, you can put a dress on a pig and take it to the school dance, but when the music stops and the lights come up, you're still gonna be left holding a pig."

I said he dispensed pearls of wisdom. I didn't say they were coherent pearls of wisdom. The fact is, I had no idea what he was talking about. I do recall that my next question was, "Daddy, why don't we have a pig?"

By the time I got the nerve to ask Lou Anne to the dance she had already accepted an invitation from Earl Ray Shively, the captain of the junior varsity football team. I went to the dance with Scooter Turner and we spent the entire night sitting on the bleachers with the other losers who had gotten lousy advice from their fathers. Lou Anne didn't make fun of me after that. She was too busy making fun of Earl Ray.

Lou Anne married Earl Ray right out of high school and they moved to Athens, where I think he works as a plucker at the Sweet Sue chicken plant. Last I heard they were raising six boys and Lou Anne had put on so much weight she was being considered for her own zip code. Next time I see Earl Ray, I'll have to remember to shake his hand. And thank him. A lot.

I thought of Lou Anne today while reading the newspaper account of another young man in love, an Egyptian fellow named Farouk. Farouk was innocently seeking love and companionship in his native Cairo, but like me, all he found was heartbreak and pain. Here's his story. Most of it is true.

Farouk courted his beloved Fatima for over a year without seeing what lay beneath the veils that covered her face. He spent thousands of dollars on jewels and clothes and rented a fine house for them to live in after the wedding. Farouk suspected nothing out of the ordinary since it's customary for the women of his culture to keep their faces covered until their wedding night. Only then may the groom unwrap his bride to see what he got. It's kind of like getting a Christmas present from your aunt who lives out of town. You never know what's in the box until you open it up.

When the wedding night finally arrived, Farouk, quaking with anticipation, removed his new bride's veils to find not the voluptuous young virgin her family had promised, but a wrinkled hag old enough to be his grandmother! His blushing bride wasn't blushing, after all. It was high blood pressure making her face red!

Farouk passed out cold and had to be revived by paramedics. Fatima claims to have tried to give him mouth-to-mouth, but her false teeth kept getting in the way.

"We thought he knew it was Granny under there," the bride's grandson later told reporters. "We just thought he liked older women." The bride, who was sound asleep in a rocking chair, could not be awakened for further comment.

Farouk says he is permanently scarred by his ordeal and may never have a meaningful relationship again. "I will never trust another woman. Never."

Farouk is suing his estranged wife's family for misrepresentation and fraud because they failed to mention that Granny was old enough to qualify for the free government mummification program. When asked what he will do with the money if he wins the lawsuit, Farouk says, "I will move far away from here. And I will buy a pig."

A pig? Maybe Farouk is going to be okay, after all.

Read last week's column: Who Cracked My Crystal Ball?

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