Moose Marston and Me

Dated July 31, 2020, this is the second story that I have written. It was for the belated Canada Day on-line party of my section of the company for 2020, after we had been all working from home since March 21 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Working from home has been a strange experience for me, but I have gotten used to it and if nothing else the commute is a lot easier (and cheaper).

When thinking about contributing to the talent portion of the party, I had been thinking about my relationship to the fictional Moose Marston and wondering how we would have known each other after more than 30 years. For the record, there actually was a full moon on the Summer Solstice of 1986, which I found out courtesy of TimeandDate.com

When writing this, I was under the influence of the late, sorely-missed, Stuart McLean and his stories from the CBC radio show The Vinyl Café. I'm no Stuart McLean and never will be, but I hope that you enjoy this small venture into the world of short fiction.

If you think of a person’s life as a trajectory through time and space, a large building can be considered to be a Gordian knot of tangled strands. With time and patience, and sometimes a bit of luck, pairs of strands can be teased apart and followed back to an earlier time and a different place. Such is the case with Moose Marston and me. You were briefly introduced to Moose when I told my strange and somewhat silly tale of a trip to the office at the Christmas party, which now seems to have taken place in a different world. You may have caught a glimpse or two of him during your perambulations through the halls and cubicle farms of our office building – you know, the huge security guard who follows the Big Boss around when he’s out and about, making sure that he doesn’t find trouble, and that trouble doesn’t find him. Or if it does, it gets quickly and efficiently disposed of.

The strand that is Moose and the strand that is me travel back through their separate ways to the high school that we attended, and from which we graduated in June of 1986. Even in that educational microcosm, our strands only occasionally intersected because we were in different social strata. Moose was a jock, since he was always a head taller and significantly wider than anyone else, and in general a natural athlete. I was the classic nerd, my face usually stuck in a book or in front of what passed for a computer in those days.

Moose’s real name is Charles, but he didn’t think that it fit him and in the early days of Grade 9 he had apparently been trying out various nicknames with his pals. The story goes that they were passing by me and some of my nerd friends in a hallway and they heard me saying some lame joke about one cow, one moo, two cows, two moose and then pointing at him and laughing, and then beating a very hasty retreat when that blatant lèse majesté was objected to. Nerd that I was, I could run and slip through the milling throngs more effectively than they could. But a moose is large and ungainly and definitely not to be messed with, and the name stuck. Bullwinkle, however, was painfully discouraged.

My aversion to exercise and hence Phys Ed led me to swap it for Home Economics in Grade 9. I got away with it because it wasn’t mandatory as it is now. Being the only guy in a class of girls wasn’t the thrill people said it would be, but we coexisted reasonably well, and I was only partly responsible for one of the small kitchen fires. The third strand in my story is a girl named Lydia DeWalt. I have always been a bit taller than the average guy, and her being my height made her unusually tall for a girl. Her hair was plain and brown, kept down past her shoulders, her eyes were a bright blue and her smile could light up a room. She was also a jock, being a natural at volleyball and basketball, and we got along well in the various classes that we shared, though we never got out of the "Friend Zone". As far as I know, her strand and Moose’s didn’t intersect much until our Grade 13 year. Yes, this was back when Ontario still had Grade 13, so don’t make any seniors jokes or I’ll have Moose come by to persuade you to stop.

Both Moose and Lydia were varsity athletes in that year, leading their men’s football and hockey, and women’s volleyball and basketball teams to city championships. It was a great year for our school and they were both popular. However, by the time Prom rolled around, both had suffered serious social setbacks when they had messy breakups with their respective girlfriend and boyfriend and they were facing the dismal prospect of Prom alone. Jeannie, strand number four in this tale, was in the popular crowd and a good friend of Lydia’s and, for reasons that still remain a mystery to me despite our long marriage, also found my company more preferable than that of the other boys, and she provided a lot of support. My relationship with Moose was cordial, as he was actually a decent sort and not nearly the dumb jock that he liked to portray himself.

On the 18th of June, the lunchtime eddies and currents of high school students looking forward to the end of school brought me and Moose and Jeannie and Lydia together in the relative calm in front of the Office, to which both had been summoned for some sort of consultation with its denizens. Jeannie and I stood outside the floor to ceiling windows watching them standing rather awkwardly next to each other in front of the counter, and she said to me that they really should go to Prom together, clearly expecting me to do something about it. So when they came out five minutes later, with Moose courteously holding the door for Lydia, I jokingly said, in my best fake Sergeant-Major’s voice,

"You two! Prom! Together! That’s an order!" I tried to shield myself from their basilisk stares with Jeannie, but she was too fast for me. Then they looked at each other, clearly weighing their options, and Moose theatrically got down on one knee, took Lydia’s hand and asked,

"Lydia DeWalt, would you do me the honour of accompanying me to Prom?" After pretending to consider his request, she replied,

"Moose Marston, I am honored by your proposal and am pleased to accept." Both looked relieved that the potential disaster had been averted.

Three days later was Saturday, June 21st, the Summer Solstice and Prom Night. High school seniors all over the city spent the day getting themselves primped and prepared for the big night. Our school had booked the Art Gallery for our event, and it was all very classy. Moose and Lydia made a stir when they arrived together, him in a fancy tuxedo with a powder-blue cummerbund and her in a stunning red dress with a well-matched corsage featuring a pink rose surrounded by small white flowers of some sort. They looked great together but seemed somewhat ill-at-ease as they made the rounds of their friends and classmates, including a rather awkward encounter with their exes who had come together as a couple. Jeannie and I were dressed to the nines, of course, with her in a shimmery silver gown and me in the required tux and a purple cummerbund, the same colour that I chose for when we got married a few years later.

"Are you two all right?" I asked when we encountered each other while getting our dinner from the bountiful buffet. "You look a little uncomfortable."

"It’s a stressful time to start a new relationship," Moose replied quietly, and Lydia nodded.

"You’ll be OK," Jeannie replied, helping herself to some salad. "Just relax and have a great time. We’re all happy to see you two together." The food was excellent, and we all ate until there was nothing left to eat. The required speeches and presentations by the principal, valedictorian, and others were enthusiastically received, as was the slide show with various funny pictures taken over the year, many by yours truly. By then, the food stations had been cleaned away and it was time for the dance to begin. The lights were turned down and the music turned up and the dance floor became a wash of every colour you can imagine for the first energetic song. Jeannie and I were there, somewhat awkwardly on the periphery since neither of us could dance all that well, and we noticed that Moose and Lydia had remained at their table, animatedly discussing something that we couldn’t hear. The song ended and another began, with still no movement from them. Jeannie shouted in my ear,

"We have to do something!" I looked at them, thought for a moment, and shouted back,

"You get them out here. I have an idea!" We went our separate ways, with me heading for the DJ’s station. Rod was a good friend of mine, and with a bit of shouted persuasion enhanced by the transfer of a bill to his pocket, he lined up the song I’d requested. Watching Jeannie chivvy the much taller and rather reluctant couple to the floor as the song was winding up made me love her that much more. Then the song came on. It was Chris de Burgh’s newest song "The Lady in Red" that had been released only yesterday and was rapidly climbing the charts. It’s a gentle, sentimental song and was perfect, since Lydia could have been its very subject.

Jeannie joined me and as we shuffled around the floor, we kept an eye on them. It was clear from the outset that both had taken lessons sometime in the past, and after the initial uncertainty, they visibly relaxed and moved like they’d been together all their lives. As the night passed, the full moon rose and shone in through the window onto the dance floor, a full moon on the night of the Summer Solstice, a night with its own form of magic. And they danced together with only a few breaks until we were reluctantly sent out the door in the wee hours of the morning. Jeannie and I last saw them standing at a lookout point over the river with the moonlight reflecting from the rippling waters, arms around each other’s waists and looking into each other’s eyes, then bending to kiss.

After graduation, we all scattered to various places as high school students always do. As the years passed, Jeannie and I occasionally wondered what had become of Moose and Lydia, so I was quite surprised to find him in the lobby of the office tower that winter morning, keeping the riffraff away from the Big Boss. As he professionally propelled me away from the Boss and towards the elevators, he said,

"The elevators are this way, Mr. Reynolds," and it was clear that he’d recognized me even after more than thirty years had passed.

"So, did it work?" I asked him over the noise of the crowd. He examined a gold wedding band on his left ring finger, looked at me and replied,

"Yes. Yes it did. Thank you." I haven’t seen him since the elevator doors closed, but I will always remember his smile.