Fun Monday # 8

This week's host is Jo Beaufoix and our assignment is:

I want to know about your first ‘celebrity’ crush. You know, the one you fancied from that band, or that film, or who read the news, or who won Gold at the Olympics. Did you have their pictures on your wall or in your locker? Did you dress like them, style or colour your hair like them, follow them, meet them, marry them? (It could happen.)
Photos of THEM would be good, photos of YOU at the time you liked them would be even better. Also, if you have time, I’d like to know whether they had any influence over your life, the person you became, or if they were just an embarrassing blip you would kind of rather forget about.

Here's the sad truth. I've racked my brains. Nope. None.

I loved the music of James Taylor, Cat Stevens, and Simon and Garfunkel, but I didn't love them.

I was too busy being horse crazy. I spent every waking moment at the barn. Really, I had a crush on a horse. and she was a little, wild thoroughbred who had put several other riders unceremoniously in the dirt. So they let me, the scholarship kid, ride her.

We understood each other perfectly.

I will tell you a funny story. I went to an all girls boarding school. My father was head of the math department and my mom was the nurse. (Hence the scholarship.) By senior year, everyone but I had been able to giggle about having some sexy dream about some movie star. Paul Newman was Deetzie's dream man. My sophomore year roommate was infatuated with Paul McCartney and would dream about him in various compromising situations weekly. Not me.

Then finally I realized I was having one of "those" dreams. I dreamed we were camp counsellors, but we were being paired up with movie stars as roommates! This was it! Someone got Robert Redford. Someone else got Gregory Peck. And even in my dream, Deetzie got Paul Newman. I waited. Who would I get? The next person got James Taylor. Oh my gosh, I could hardly stand myself! I was having a sexy dream, finally. In the dream, they called my name. I stepped forward, provocatively shy in a va va voom kind of way. I fiddled with my long, curly hair.

"Phil Silvers," they called out.

I stopped looking provocative and just looked stunned. That was the clear emotion as I dreamed: duh, huh? nuh-uh.

Sure enough Phil Silvers, Mr. No Time for Sergeants himself, appears and takes my hand and leads me to our camp cabin. I thought to my dreaming self, "Phil Silvers? I'm finally having a sexy dream and I get Phil Silvers? Nuh-UH!"

And I wasn't even fortunate enough to have it end there. Nope. My inaugural sexy dream had to go on. I could hear Deetzie giggling with Paul Newman in the next room. I looked at Phil Silvers. "Nuh-UH!"

I don't have a photo of me right here from that time period. (I graduated from high school in 1972.) But I do have a photo of my dog, Rex.

I wrote about him; he was a fantastic dog. Would have done better dreaming about some adventure or another with Rex.

But no. Phil Silvers.

Hug your hounds, awake or asleep