Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe - Dave Goes Back to School - Dave Gives a Speech & Planet Boy

Episode Date: September 6, 2024

“He came downstairs in a Grateful Dead t-shirt and a pair of bell bottoms.” Welcome back for Season 4 of Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe! This week, two stories about school: Dave gets nervous about presenting to a class at university; while Sam and Murphy go to their first school dance. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From the Apostrophe Podcast Network. Hello, I'm Jess Milton and this is Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe. Welcome back. Back from, well, wherever it is that you've been. Because even if you haven't been away, you haven't been here. Not only because it's our first show of this new season, Season 4, but because even if nothing's changed in your life from last week, I suspect something feels different. It usually does at this time of year. There's just something about September. The light changes, the wind changes, the feeling changes. I guess it's all those memories, both personal and inherited. Nervousness mixed with

nostalgia. Anyway, I'm glad to be here, and I'm glad you're here too. For those of you who are new to the podcast, let me introduce myself. I'm the longtime producer of The Vinyl Cafe, a radio show hosted by my friend, the late, great Stuart McLean. On this podcast, we're playing Stuart's stories about the fictional world of Dave, his wife Morley, and their kids, Sam and Stephanie. And I'll be sharing some of my Vinyl Café stories too, stories about Stuart and about our years together on the road and in studio with the Vinyl Café. Today, we've got two stories about school. And for those of you who used to dread September, don't worry.

Both of these stories are funny. No books, no teachers' dirty looks. I promise. That's actually not true. There are a couple of dirty looks. But these are funny stories, and a surprising one, too. In the first half of the show, Dave goes back to school. In the second half, we're going to visit Sam at school.

But we're going to start with this one. This is Stuart McClain with Dave Gives a Speech. It was one of those funerals that just didn't make sense. Scotty Hornicle had played drums with Burton Cummings before Burton got famous. Scotty saw the fame coming before anyone else, and he quit. That's not the life I want, he said. Instead of fame, he opened a little music store.

He was the kind of guy you wanted to know. And over the years, everyone went to the store. Deep Purple, Alice Cooper, Ozzy Osbourne, Iggy Pop. David lost track of the nights he had sat around the store talking and listening to musicians jam. Scotty sitting there watching everything philosophically. He's one of those guys you thought would go on forever. The funeral was just what you would have expected. There was a doo-wop band and a six-foot-eight, 120-pound Wayne Newton impersonator.

He looked ridiculous, but he sure could sing Donkashane. It was after the service, when a fog of sadness had settled upon him, it was after the service, while Dave was staring vacantly into his cup of coffee, that Austin Shoup emerged out of the fog. Shoup, a bald man with bad clothes and earrings in both ears, looked at Dave and said, Dave, jeez, I didn't know you were still around. Someone told me you were dead.

It was a melancholy drive home. Dave put on a George Harrison tape and brooded his way through the night. My sweet Lord, all those years ago. The music didn't make him feel any better. It was two weeks later when Austin Shoup called Dave at work. I've been thinking about you, he said. I teach at the university, you know. Dave didn't know. Ethnomusicology, said Austin Shoup. Pop culture, the 60s. Anyway, Scotty used to come to my class every spring and, you know, talk to the kids.

And now, well, being dead and everything, he isn't going to be available this year. And I was thinking you could take his place. Dave didn't go to university. When the kids he grew up with were going to university, Dave headed out on the road instead. He stayed there for 15 years, working as a technical director, road manager, and tour organizer for many of the biggest acts in the music business. Certainly some of the craziest. It was a decision he had never questioned. Not seriously. Not until his daughter Stephanie left for college last fall.

When Stephanie headed out to have this experience that he had never had, Dave began for the first time ever to wonder about the choice that he had made. And that sneaky, most unanswerable of all questions raised its nagging head, the what-if question. The call from Austin Shoup made Dave feel good. His experience obviously counted for something. The life he had constructed was obviously not unimportant in the world of academe. As soon as he hung up the phone, however, he had second thoughts. Now, why did I agree to that?

Dave hated public speaking. Didn't mind speaking one-on-one, especially if he was speaking to people he knew. But if he was in the spotlight, if he was asked a question in front of others, the moths of anxiety always began their dance. Giving this speech was a big deal. Dave began to prepare three weeks before he was scheduled to visit Austin Shoup's class. He began by writing out his ideas on index cards. He decided he'd begin by talking about his friend Scotty. Dorothy, who runs Woodsworth's Books just down the street from Dave's record store,

bought him an out-of-date Toastmasters pamphlet on public speaking. She meant it as a joke. As soon as she left, Dave read it from cover to cover. There was a section on lazy lips. Booklet said you should be able to wrap your lips around each word of your speech as if it was a tasty morsel. There was a series of lip exercises for stiff lips. Dave began the lip exercises, stretching his lower lip over his upper lip and then stretching the upper lip down over the lower one, alternating with increasing rapidity, humming while he did it. He did the exercises whenever the store was empty, sitting behind the counter with his booklet in his lap, rounding his lips tightly as it advised,

grooving his tongue and pushing it through the opening as fast as he could. More than once, he was so caught up in these oral isometrics that he didn't notice someone come into the store. More than once a customer had come in and caught him sitting there with his tongue flicking in and out. His eyes crossed as he tried to follow it. They always left without announcing themselves. He came home one evening and he told Morley that over half of all human communication takes place on a nonverbal level.

This is documented, he told her, by research. Smile at the audience, he wrote. Select one person in the crowd and talk to them personally. He underlined one person three times. And gestures. He should gesture. All good speakers use gestures. He stood in front of the bathroom mirror at night trying out various gestures. Holding out his hands,

palm up at shoulder height. That implied openness. He put together a bag of his favorite records, the only album ever released by the international submarine band, Graham Parsons' first country rock group, a copy of the ultimate cult album Forever Changes by the doomed psychedelic group Love a 45 RPM recording of the Nancy Sinatra Lee Hazelwood duet Some Velvet Morning a song that his friend Richie Underburger believed might be the strangest song ever to enter the top 40

the night before he was supposed to leave, he went upstairs into the attic to get a suitcase. He came downstairs grinning gleefully in a grateful dead t-shirt, a leather vest, and a pair of bell-bottom jeans with embroidered cuffs. The pants were not unfortunately done up at the waist because my hips are bigger, he said. The pants were not, unfortunately, done up at the waist. Because my hips are bigger, he said. I'm hipper than I used to be. He didn't look hipper than he used to be.

He looked like Homer Simpson, ready to sneak out for Halloween. Morley stared at Dave's belly looming over his jeans like a meteorite. She was thinking, I remember those jeans. But she looked so distressed, so horrified, so defeated, so beyond speech that Dave didn't wait for her to answer. I'm just joking, he said uncertainly. But he wasn't joking. He was holding his all-time favorite poncho behind his back, fashioned from a gray blanket. Seriously, he said, how do you think I should dress for this? Like an adult, said Morley. He arrived on the campus four hours before he was scheduled to give his talk. The auditorium was bigger than he had expected.

He'd been thinking classroom. He'd been thinking grade six. This was more of a theater. It was three quarters full when he arrived. Backstage, Austin Shoup introduced him to a fussy young man. I'm doing audio, he said. Where's your disc? Dave stared at him blankly. You're not doing PowerPoint, he asked incredulously. Dave looked at Austin Shoup in confusion. Am I, he asked. Am I, he asked.

Just a microphone, Dwayne, he said. Shoop took Dave by the arm and led him to a small group of students standing by the Coke machine. My committee, he said. It's so good of you to come, said a well-scrubbed girl in a bright yellow sweater. It's so important for us to hear about the 60s before everyone's passed away and everything's forgotten. A second girl leaned forward. We imagine you may not want to stand for the whole thing, she said. We have a chair for you on stage in case you want to sit while you talk. for you on stage in case you want to sit while you talk. Austin Shoup, now at the podium, was not making him feel any better. Dave was sitting in his easy chair in the middle of the stage, and mostly he was not understanding one word of what Austin Shoup was saying.

Something about upcoming lectures, something about the process of canon formation and the contemporary understanding of musical meaning. Shoup was in full academic flight. He was on about semiotic and critical theory and the neo-Republicanism of Elton John. And now Madonna, who he was describing as a post-modern goddess of commodification who had proclaimed the long-awaited emergence of matriarchy and the decay of the fallen Western male-dominated post-war, post-industrial world. Dave glanced at his speech nervously. He was doing his best to look as if he understood what Austin Shoup was saying, but he wasn't understanding. He wasn't even trying to understand, because a horrible thought had occurred to him.

What if, when it was his turn, he went to the lectern and he froze? What if his mind went blank? What if, when he got to the podium and opened his mouth, nothing came out? It had happened once to his son, his own flesh and blood. Sam had stood on stage at a spring recital, stood and stood and stood, and then into the immense and awful silence that had settled over the auditorium, he had said one small word. He had said, sorry.

And then he'd walked off stage. What if it was genetic? Dave's reverie was interrupted when he heard a ripple of polite applause, and he looked up and he realized Austin Shoup was staring at him. He looked around uncertainly. There was some uncomfortable laughter. He looked back at Austin, who was nodding, and Dave stood up and took a tentative step toward the podium.

He looked like he was being led to his execution. He set his notes down awkwardly, and then he began to look for his glasses, patting his pockets. He found them, and he leaned forward, and he gripped the podium stiffly with both hands. And now there was dead silence in the hall, and he grimaced, and he cleared his throat, and he sighed heavily, and he began reading. It's a great pleasure to be here this evening, he said, unconvincingly. Of course, that's not what the audience heard him say. They heard him say, I'd rather have a needle in my eye than go any further. it's a great pleasure to be here this evening he said again gripping the podium with all his might

and then he remembered what he had practiced and he leaned forward and he squinted out at the audience he was looking for someone with whom he could make eye contact there was a shuffling like the wind as people looked away uncomfortably He was looking for someone with whom he could make eye contact. There was a shuffling like the wind as people looked away uncomfortably. And he couldn't catch anyone's eye. And he felt the stirring of anxiety in his stomach, and then he spotted the girl in the yellow sweater. And when their eyes met, the girl swallowed nervously. But Dave felt a

sense of relief. He looked down at his speech and then back at the girl and he began again. It's a great pleasure to be here tonight, he said for the third time. There was some nervous laughter at the back of the hall. But Dave didn't hear it. Dave was thinking the first couple of minutes set the tone for the whole speech. Dave was thinking, if I screw up here, I'm going to spend the rest of this speech thinking about what I should have said at the beginning instead of thinking about what I should be thinking. And Dave knew if that happened, his brain could go into a split, and then that could only lead to disaster.

And that's when he noticed his hands, which were gripping the podium so tightly his knuckles had turned white. He looked out to see if the girl in the yellow sweater had noticed. He looked at her so plaintively that she nodded at him. She was trying to be encouraging. He misunderstood. He thought she was telling him, yes, I see them too. And suddenly his hands felt like big clown hands, like swollen white gloved cartoon hands, hands two times too big for his body, spatula hands. And he had to get them out of sight before everyone noticed them. And he started to inch his hands slowly off the podium. And as he did this, he realized that his arms didn't feel like his own arms anymore. They felt like penguin wings rather than arms. Big, flapping penguin

wings with his swollen hands stuck on the end, sliding down the podium as if they had a mind of their own. And it was while Dave was watching them move and wondering where they might be heading that it suddenly occurred to him that he'd already begun his speech. He looked down and he saw he was, in fact, on page six. Words had been and in fact were still coming out of his mouth, though he had no idea whatsoever what he was saying. He'd been too busy thinking about his spatula hands to pay attention, and now he heard himself talking and his voice sounded peculiar to him. It didn't sound like his voice. It sounded like someone doing a not very good imitation of his father, which is when he noticed he had reached the bottom of the page.

He turned the page quickly so no one would notice his big, fat cartoon hands, and he began reading at the top of the other side of the page, and he was a third of the way down before he realized that he had been there before. He turned back to page 5 instead of on to page seven. So he said sorry and he flipped the page over and started down page six for the second time, not noticing what he had done because he was too busy looking at the girl in the yellow sweater who had stopped nodding and begun to frown, which is when Dave remembered what he was supposed to do with his hands.

He was supposed to make gestures. And he thought, where are my hands anyway? And he began to pat himself down looking for his hands the way he looked for his glasses and he thought isn't that silly and that is the precise moment when his mind clicked over dave had been reading the words on the pages in front of him mechanically while he fretted privately about everything else. Now, unbeknownst to Dave, deep in his brain a synapse misfired, some wires crossed, and he began reading his speech silently and speaking out loud the inner dialogue that was running through his head. And what was running through his head at that

moment that the wires crossed were the instructions about breathing. Breathe easily and at a natural pace, he said to the startled class. If you're using a microphone, it's especially important to be careful that your breathing sounds aren't taken up by the mic and magnified to your audience. Students began to glance at each other uncomfortably. Except for a boy in the first row, an engineering student who was taking Austin Shoup's course as an elective and had been mystified by everything Austin Shoup had said. This boy began to nod earnestly. This was the first thing that had made sense all year. He opened his notebook and began taking notes. Dave was so totally focused on the girl in the yellow sweater that he had no idea what he was doing, and the expression of alarm that he read on her face

wasn't helping. The look of horror on her face had activated Dave's adrenal glands. His heartbeat was quickening. His breathing was becoming shallower and more rapid. His muscles were becoming tense. Dave was scaling a summit of anxiety that he had never visited before. A body will do almost anything to rid itself of tension. Dave began to sway back and forth, rocking from side to side, his head moving around the hall like an oscillating fan, his right hand jerking up and down.

Dave thought he was making emphatic gestures with his hand, except these gestures had nothing whatsoever to do with what he was saying. They looked random and furtive. The arm movements made him feel more comfortable, though, and Dave thought, maybe I should switch positions. And he leaned into the mic and he said, if you change your speaking position during a speech, you should always lead with a foot nearest your destination. The boy in the front row nodded earnestly and wrote this down carefully. But Dave wasn't looking at the boy in the front row. Dave was staring at the girl in the yellow sweater. And the more he focused on her, the more anxious she got.

This maniacal speaker waving his hands and weaving back and forth and saying all these crazy things was talking directly to her. If you're going to step to your left, lead with your left foot, said Dave. Never cross one foot over the other when you begin a movement. And when Dave said that, his arm jerked violently up into the air. And that's when his watch flew off his wrist. It sailed over ten rows and landed in the lap of the girl in the yellow sweater. And she screamed in horror. Not me, she screamed.

I'm only 18. I'm only 18. That was more or less the end of the formal presentation. After people settled down, after the girl in the yellow sweater had been taken to the counseling offices, after some semblance of order had returned to the hall, Austin Shoup suggested Dave might agree to answer questions. Dave nodded, and a hand shot up into the air. It was the engineering student in the front row. Excuse me, sir, he said, flipping through his notes frantically. Which leg did you say you led with?

After the rest of the questions, mostly about music, a small group of students gathered around Dave, a young man with a soul patch wearing army surplus pants and a V-neck blue sweater, looked at Dave and said, that was incredible, man. laughter looked at Dave and said, that was incredible, man. Do you want to go for a beer? A beer was just what Dave needed.

They went to the student pub, and then about ten of them went back to the boys' room because he had a turntable and because they wanted to hear the records that Dave had brought. And Dave more or less gave them the talk he had meant to give in class, except this time he did it without his notes. This time he did it without worrying about his hands. Kids would have stayed all night, but Dave was tired, so sometime after midnight, he left the albums with them and he went to bed. Get them to me in the morning, he said. He woke early, and he went for a walk across the campus to the river, where he watched the scholars practicing in the smoky morning mist.

He sat on the bank, and he felt glad that he had come. Even though the speech had been a disaster, talking with the kids afterwards had been nice. It made him feel good that they wanted to know what he had to say, what he had done with his life. It made him feel good that they saw value in his experience. He got on the train to go home just before lunch, and for the first while he sat quietly and watched the country rock by, the highways and the towns with their rivers and old stone mills. He waved at some kids holding onto their bikes at a level crossing. He bought a coffee when the porter came by, and then he opened his briefcase and pulled out his Walkman and put on his headsets and slipped in a homemade Beatles tape. Both John and George were gone, but Paul was still here, and he was doing the one sure thing he could do. He was still singing.

Dave turned up the volume. Scotty Hornickel was gone. Dave shook his head. They sure had some good times together, laughing, carrying on, doing what they did. He turned the tape up even louder. So what if it would deafen him? The music was making him happy like it had so many times before. Thank you. That was the story we call Dave Gives a Speech. We recorded that in Kingston, Ontario. We're going to take a short break now,

but we'll be back in a couple of minutes with another story. So stick around. Welcome back. Time for our second story now. This is Planet Boy. Morley can pinpoint the exact minute when Sam received his first phone call from a girl. Tuesday, October the 14th, 6.48 p.m. She was getting ready for book club, that's why she knows it was a Tuesday, and she was cutting it close, totally watching the clock. Could have been 647 or it could have been 649, but it wasn't 650.

She was in the car at 650. She remembers the clock on the dash. It was 650. And that meant she could make it if she was lucky with the lights. And just before that, just before 650 and she could make it if she was lucky with the lights. And just before that, just before 6.50 and she could make it if she was lucky, just as she was about to leave the house, Morley remembers the telephone ringing, remembers hesitating by the back door, conflicted, thinking she should get out of there fast in case it was for her, thinking she should stick around for the same reason. Maybe someone

was calling because they needed a ride. She remembers standing by the door, not knowing whether she should stay or go as clearly as if it happened yesterday. Sam, she said, can you get that? Sam says hello, and she's staring at him with her eyebrows up, and he's staring back at her. And that's when she felt it, before he turned away from her, before he started using the monosyllables that she was so used to hearing herself, before any of that she felt the barometric

pressure in the room drop dramatically, and she knew. She knew right away. It was like they were in a plane and the window beside her had blown out. There was a whoosh. It was the sound of his childhood being sucked out of the room. He said yes. He said I don't know. He said maybe. He said yes again. Then he said okay and hung up without saying goodbye. Morley said who was that? No one, said Sam. And he walked out of the kitchen, leaving Morley alone by the back door, 650 on the nose when she got in the car. It happened again a few weeks later, and then again, and then it began to happen a lot. Girls. Girls calling her little boy. Took a while before Morley realized that Sam wasn't getting it. Girls got it. Girls were out there on the far side of the fence, firmly in adolescence, and they were reaching over the

fence, trying to tug her little boy across it. But Sam, bless his little heart, wasn't getting it at all. He saw the fence all right. Morley was sure he knew the fence was there. He had, after all, seen the film at school every year since grade four. But he was still only interested in throwing things at it or running a stick along the pickets. The idea of scaling it, of dropping down onto the other side, hadn't occurred to him. The idea that something was going dropping down onto the other side hadn't occurred to him. The idea that something was going on over there that he might find interesting had never entered his mind. And then one Thursday night after supper, Sam said, there's a dance tomorrow at school. And there it was again, that whoosh sound, the air going out of the plane of childhood.

Morley felt her stomach drop. The plane was coming down too fast. She knew this was going to happen one day, but not so soon. She didn't want the flight to end, not yet. It was a flurry of calls between eight and nine that night. At least three of them were from girls. The dance was supposed to start at seven. Dave said, I'll drive you. Sam said, I'm going with Murphy. Sam's best friend, Murphy, moved into the neighborhood a year ago. He's smaller than Sam and he knows more about movies than any other human being than Sam has ever met. Murph, who taught Sam to sleep on his side. I figured this out at camp, he explained earnestly the first night he had a sleepover with Sam. They had really crappy beds.

He was lying on the top bunk in Sam's bedroom, Sam immediately worrying if maybe they had really crappy beds too. If I lay on my back, the mattress curled up on either side of my head. Have you ever seen King Rat? If I lay on my back, the mattress curled up on either side of my head. Have you ever seen King Rat? No, said Sam, he hadn't. This was before they learned that Sam had never seen any of the movies Murphy had seen. Doesn't matter, said Murphy.

And then he said, did you know the air you breathe out is heavier than oxygen? So if you sleep on your back, said Murphy, and the mattress is curled up, all the bad air builds up around your head and you can suffocate. I was lucky, said Murphy. I kept waking up just in time. And when I woke up, I'd wave my hand across my face, and that would clear the bad air. And that's when I figured out if I slept on my side with my face on the edge of the mattress, the bad air would fall over the edge. What about the guy on the lower bunk, said Sam?

I hated the guy on the lower bunk, said Murphy. That's Murphy. I'll drive you both to the dance, said Dave. Just to the corner, said Sam, not to the front door. Just to the corner, said Dave. We have to leave at 645, so we won't be late, said Sam. On the nose, said Dave. And so it was that on Friday night, Sam and Murphy, both of them wearing their favorite clothes, arrived at the school dance at 7 o'clock on the nose, standing at the entrance to the gym side by side as if they were standing in front of the gates of heaven, standing small and standing confused.

How come no one else is here, said Sam. Are you sure no one else is here, said Sam. Are you sure no one else is here, said Murphy. Murphy had taken off his glasses in the car. Without his glasses, Murphy was virtually blind. To Sam, the gym looked dark and foreboding, unfamiliar and empty. To Murphy, the gym looked like a blotch of mysterious colors, like a dark impressionistic painting. Are you sure this is the gym? It was the gym, all right, but it wasn't the gym they knew from gym class. There was a stage at the

far end and two huge speaker columns on either side. There was a mirrored ball and a spotlight, and in front of the spotlight there was a revolving disc with a green section and a red section and a yellow section, so the light in the room kept changing. Murphy squinting. There's something matter with the light, he said. We're too early, said Sam. We'll go to the corner. We'll come back. We're too early, said Sam. We'll go to the corner. We'll come back. Murphy reached for Sam's elbow, and they headed down the gym ramp towards the boys' locker room like two old tailors. I thought it started at seven, said Murphy.

They walked to the corner. They went into Snyder's. Murphy bought licorice nibs and a vanilla Coke. Sam didn't buy anything. Sam had exactly $5.25 in his wallet. $5 to get into the dance, 25 cents in case he needed the phone. When he finished the nibs, Murphy bought some chips and they walked around the block while they shared the chips and then they walked around the block again. Then they went into Lawler's Pharmacy and Murphy bought a stick of deodorant. His first time ever. They took it to the washroom at Snyder's and they opened it up.

How do you do this, said Murphy. You put it on where you sweat, said Sam. Murphy rubbed the bar of deodorant against his forehead and along the back of his neck. Then they went back to school. This time they weren't the only ones there. The first person Sam saw was Miss Young, their math teacher. Miss Young is six foot one inch tall. Behind her back, her colleagues refer to Miss Young as her hugeness. Miss Young was standing by the gym door talking to a girl Sam didn't know.

Miss Young was wearing a dark blue shirt and a crocheted vest and the shortest skirt Sam had ever seen. Sam took one look at Miss Young's thighs and looked away quickly. Her thighs made him nervous. His forehead felt hot and sticky. Perspiration was beating at the back of his neck. He wished he had put on deodorant. There was something vaguely familiar about the girl Ms. Young was talking to. Sam felt he knew her from somewhere. He watched the girl touch her lips self-consciously.

He thought, that girl reminds me of Alison Metcalf, except she was taller than Allison Metcalf, and her hair was fluffy, and Allison's hair wasn't like that, and Allison didn't wear lipstick or earrings, and there was something wrong with this girl's eyes. Her eyelashes were black and spiky. Hi, Sam, said the girl. Hello, Allison, mumbled Sam, feeling suddenly that this dance was not a place where he belonged. There were things happening in the gym that Sam felt he shouldn't be exposed to. Murphy said, who was that? But Sam didn't answer. Sam was staring at Mr. O'Neill. Mr. O'Neill who taught them social studies. Mr. O'Neill who always wore a corduroy suit and a knitted tie. Mr. O'Neill who was leaning against the gym wall wearing black pants,

a black turtleneck, a black leather jacket, his hair shiny and greased back. Murphy still squinting at Alice and said, who was that? And still Sam didn't answer. Sam was frozen. The whole thing was too much for him. The music was too loud. The girls were too tall. The gym too dark.

The teachers too weird. Sam felt overwhelmed. Murphy said, I'm going to ask Emily to dance. And Murphy let go of Sam's arm and Sam watched him walk across the gym, realizing too late that in his myopic state, Murphy was about to make a terrible blunder. state, Murphy was about to make a terrible blunder. Trying to navigate without glasses, Murphy was about to confuse Emily Traversy with Elliot Katz. It was an honest mistake. Elliot wears his hair long, and tonight, especially for the dance,

Elliot was wearing it in a ponytail, just like Emily. Sam took off, but he was only halfway across the room when he saw Murphy tap Elliot on the shoulder with a flourish, saw Murphy lean forward and whisper something into Elliot's ear, watched Elliot stagger backwards, watched Elliot winding up, Sam grabbing Murphy and pulling him away as Elliot's fists sailed through the air. Come on, said Sam to Murphy. He was only joking, said Sam to Elliot. Just at this moment, just as Sam was dragging Murphy out of the gym, Elliot Katz pointing at

them as they went and saying something to a group of boys hanging around the stage, at cats pointing at them as they went and saying something to a group of boys hanging around the stage. Just as Sam and Murphy were making their getaway, a girl wearing big hoop earrings, a midriff t-shirt, and low-cut jeans was standing on the front stoop of Sam's house. Just as Sam and Murphy disappeared down the ramp that leads out of the gym and into the boys' locker room, the girl who'd been waiting with her hands on her hips for her mother who had driven her there to Sam's house to leave. Just as Sam and Murphy disappeared from the gym, the girl in the midriff t-shirt and the low-cut jeans on Sam's front stoop opened her purse, took out a stick of lip gloss, cherry, ran it over her lips, checked that her mother had really gone, and reached up and rang the bell.

Hello, said Dave, who answered the door. Hello, said the girl. I'm Emma. Where's Sam? I'm his date. Now there are moments in a man's life when something happens that is so unexpected, so beyond the realm of what he's considered might happen at that moment, that a man must give himself over to the moment and not try to impose his will upon it, because under the circumstances, it's likely he will have no will. Hello, Emma, said Dave, knowing as he spoke the next three words that he was, for all intents and purposes, abandoning his own free will. Hello, Emma, he said. I'm Sam's dad.

And that's how it came to pass that as Sam and Murphy were slipping into the science room, seeking sanctuary from the posse that was seeking them. That Dave, with one last forlorn look at the television, he'd been watching a bootlegged video of a 1969 Monkees concert shot in Poland. But Dave was backing his car down the driveway, driving Emma to the dance, trying to make small talk with a girl who wasn't the least bit interested in small talk or in him. He said he would go to the dance with me, said Emma, sitting beside him but staring ahead. What a loser, said Emma. I should have asked Tim. Dave didn't know what to say to that. He had been completely thrown back on his

heels by this child. He was only intent on getting her to the dance, on finding his son, and when he found him, on instructing him in a few of the rudimentary courtesies of dating. That light was yellow, said Emma. Who taught you how to drive? Sorry, muttered Dave. Honestly, said Emma. Meanwhile, Sam and Murphy, who have sneaked into the science room and are crouched behind the demonstration table at the front,

trying to be as quiet and as unnoticeable as two boys on the lam can be, are suddenly aware that they are not the only ones in the room. There's somebody else in here. Shh! I know. Wait here. Sam, waiting himself, waiting and waiting until he thinks it's safe, and then ever so slowly

raising himself up to the height of the tabletop so he can peer over. And when he does, he peers into the gloom, peers across the room to where Miss Young and Mr. O'Neill are locked in a passionate embrace. locked in a passionate embrace. Oh my god. What, says Murphy, what is it? Oh, my God. Dave, at this moment, is not 50 yards away. Dave is standing at the gym door beside Emma. What do you mean you're leaving, Emma's saying?

You can't leave. I told my mother you'd look after me. Dave standing there wondering what could possibly happen next. And what happens next is Sam and Murphy pelting along the hallway. Sam and Murphy galloping by so fast that they don't see Dave and they don't see Emma. Sam and Murphy and hot on their heels, a pack of other boys Dave has never seen in his life. And Dave, who has arrived at this dance irritated with his son, planning to give his son a piece of his mind, misunderstands what's going on, thinks to himself, and not unkindly, they're playing tag. They're playing tag.

He thinks this with great fondness, because he is suddenly remembering the dances he went to at the community hall when he was a young boy in Cape Breton, when he was still too shy to dance himself, the nights he spent running around with his pals. They ran around all night thinking they were impressing girls with how fast they could run, how quick they could duck and weave. He once asked Morley about this. When you were a kid, he said, and you went to a dance,

what were you thinking? I used to think that the boy of my dreams would appear and ask me to dance, and it would be like dancing with a prince, she said. But as soon as you got to the dance, you learned pretty quickly that there were no princes, and that the boys who were there were the same boys from school, and they only liked the slow dances. And when you finally figured that out, it would be time for a slow dance, and you'd see someone like Jonathan McDermott walking across the gym.

Jonathan sat beside me in math, she said, and I would start to pray Jonathan McDermott walking across the gym. Jonathan sat beside me in math, she said, and I would start to pray that he wasn't walking toward me. And of course I knew he was, and there was nothing I could do about it. I couldn't say no because, you know, you didn't want to hurt his feelings. That was me, said Dave. me, said Dave. What, said Morley? I was Jonathan McDermott, said Dave. I spent years walking across the room while the girls I was walking towards were praying that I would stay put. Or not. Or not, said Morley. Or mostly, said Dave, I didn't cross at all. And that's why Dave was delighted when Sam ran past him and he thought he was playing tag. That's why Dave was happy his son was ducking and weaving instead of dancing,

even if it was totally inappropriate. Somehow his son had agreed to come to this dance with a girl who was now, by all accounts, Dave's date. And he had done this apparently without any understanding of what he had done. If Sam was capable of that level of misunderstanding, what were the chances he would have had a successful date? What were the chances he would have had a successful date. What were the chances he would have navigated the night with any grace? Dave looked down at Emma. She was standing there with her arms crossed. Dave was having enough trouble with her himself. The moment he saw him

running by, Dave realized that Sam was lost on planet boy. He'd come to the school intending to give his son a lecture, to teach him a thing or two about girls. He decided to leave him where he was. And before anything happened that would change his mind, there was Emma. I'm thirsty, she was saying. I want a Coke. The dance ended at 11. At five past 11, Emma met Dave where they'd agreed to meet. On the bench in front of the principal's office, there were three new girls with her. I told them you'd drive them home too, said Emma. Dave didn't get home until almost midnight.

Morley's still up. Where are the boys, she said. Aren't the boys with you? I thought Murphy's dad was picking them up, he said. He couldn't find them, said Morley. He called. I told him not to worry. I said they must have gone with you. When Dave got back to the school, the lights in the gymnasium were on. The DJ had left, and most of the mess had been tidied up. The stage had been put away, and the speakers were gone, and the only person left was the school janitor, alone at the far end of the gym, mopping the floor. He was wearing headphones. He didn't hear Dave, and Dave didn't disturb him.

He wasn't really worried about Sam and Murphy. There were two of them. They were good boys. They would look after each other. As he walked through the school, he started to think about the year that he was in grade six. And somehow he landed on his geography notebook and on a picture of a codfish his mother had helped him draw. He was so lost in the memory that he almost missed the boys. They were in the kindergarten.

He walked right by it, noticing at some level of his consciousness that the lights were on and thinking that that was odd, but not really noticing until he had walked past and then stopping and staring. He opened the door quickly and peered in, and there they were, the two of them, squatting on the floor. Murphy with his hair in his eyes. Sam in his faded red Spiderman sweatshirt. Most of the boys Dave had seen had been wearing oversized sports jerseys. Sam's sweatshirt was at least two sizes too small. Everything finds its level. Sam and Murphy were playing with a Lego.

They didn't notice Dave, so he just watched for a moment, watched the wonder of boys, big blocks and fire engines, toy trains and television, bikes and balls. They had a tower of Lego as high as he'd ever seen. Dave had his hands in his coat pocket. He was fiddling with something and he didn't know what it was. He pulled it out. It was Emma's cherry-flavored lip balm.

She'd given it to him to hold when she started to dance. He pulled the top off and ran it over his lips. Not bad. One day these guys would get to try it, but not now. He could have been angry with them. He could have come on heavy. He could have said, what do you think you're doing? you think you're doing? But they looked so happy. What was the point? Instead, he opened the door slowly and he wandered in and he said, hey, the dance is over. Then he squatted down on his heels and said, what are you building anyway? It's a tower, said Murphy, looking at it blearily, adding, I think. It's a pretty tall tower, said Dave. Can I help?

Thank you very much. Such a sweet story. That was Planet Boy. We recorded that story in Halifax, Nova Scotia, back in 2003. All right, that's it for today, but we'll be back here next week with more from Stuart McLean, including this. Unlike endings, beginnings are often foggy affairs. But if you were looking for a beginning, you could say it was the summer afternoon that Sam and his best friend Ben

were cruising around the neighborhood on their bikes, half-heartedly looking for their friend Alan. They had bought popsicles from a store near their school. They had hung around the wading pool in the park and they were checking out the arena when Sam said, I bet Alan's at the park. We were just at the park, said Ben. I bet, said Sam. So they went back to the park and sure enough, Alan was there. Now, there was nothing that would mark that as an auspicious moment, not until there was an accumulation of other moments like it,

and by then, of course, the first moment was long gone. But there were little moments like that all summer. Sam bet Ben that it would rain the night of the corn roast and won. How'd you know that, said Ben. I don't know, said Sam. I just knew. And later that night, the night of the corn roast, Sam won the guess how many jelly beans are in the jar contest, which is when Ben said, what's going on with you?

And that was when Sam began to believe that something was going on. I don't know, said Sam. Maybe I'm psycho. That's a sneak peek of next week's episode. I hope you can join us. In the meantime, if you want to find out more, you can go to our website, VinylCafe.com, or find us on Facebook at Vinyl Cafe. And for those of you who follow us on Instagram and thought we've been a bit quiet in recent months, don't forget we've moved to a new Instagram account last summer. It's called Vinyl Cafe Stories. Follow us there. Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe is part of the Apostrophe Podcast Network. The recording engineer is Lazy Lips Greg DeCloot. Theme music is by Danny Michelle.

And the show is produced by Louise Curtis, Greg DeCloot, and me, Jess Milton. Let's meet again next week. Until then, so long for now.