Ping Pong Diplomacy

     The Bulldogs beat the Tahlequah Tigers Friday night, or at least the boys’ team did, but Tom didn’t go. He thought about going to the games, but it didn’t seem worth the trouble, because he’d run into Natalie, and he didn’t want to deal with her accusing stares. That was the trouble with his next-door neighbor being on the cheerleading squad, he thought – even at basketball games he couldn’t escape. And since his friend Trevor had moved away from Skiatook to somewhere around Chicago about a year ago, there weren’t that many people to be around. Tom had trouble making himself talk to new people. The thing was, though, that Natalie was right – he just didn’t want to admit that.

      She was mad at him for making fun of Svetlana’s reading – she had been adopted by the Maguires about the same time Trevor moved. She was from what had been the Soviet Union - it was now some new country spelled with an unpronounceable jumble of letters, and the encyclopedias in the school library hadn’t been updated with all these new countries yet. And was it his fault that he had always excelled at retaining written information? His mother said that that didn’t give him reason to make anybody feel inferior because they didn’t grasp concepts quite as quickly. That was pretty much what Natalie had said, too.

      So Tom sat on the couch with his younger siblings and watched the latest episode of Boy Meets World, which he found ridiculous and irritating – Corey Matthews was simply too boring to be interesting. But Jenny was obsessed with the show, alternatively attempting to recreate Topanga’s choices in hairstyles and clothing or gushing without end about Corey’s friend Shawn. And Lenny did whatever Jenny told him to, so he always watched the show, but only because his twin did. So the phone ringing gave Tom a welcome excuse to vault off the couch and into the kitchen to answer it.    

      “Curtis residence, Tom speaking. Who is this?”

     “It’s Nat.”

     “Hey. Couldn’t you just walk over if you had to talk?”

     “This feels too important,” she sighed. “Can you meet up tomorrow?”

     “I think so. What time?”

     “How about eleven, by the mailboxes.”

     The Curtises and Phillipses had lived on the same red river-gravel road for as long as either Tom or Natalie could remember, and the cluster of mailboxes near the highway turn-off was the bus stop, and thus  generally the neighborhood gathering place.  

     “All right.”

     “Didn’t see you in the stands tonight,” her tone sounded disappointed.

     “No, I didn’t go.”

     “Pete could’ve let you ride with us, you know.” Pete was the oldest Phillips sibling living at home, two were in Norman studying at OU, and Natalie fell the fifth out of six in terms of birth order.

     “Yeah, I know… I just….thought it would be good to spend some time with the twins.”

     He knew from experience that she would have one eyebrow raised and a hand on her hip right about then, playing with the phone cord.

     “Tom, you NEVER spend time with the twins if you can help it.”

     “So? I wanted to tonight. What’s so wrong with that?” Tom snapped out. His tone was much harsher than he meant it to be. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

     The cli-thunk of the phone slamming down on the receiver cut another another of her sighs.

     The wind was whipping along pretty well, even though the sun was shining, so Natalie and another girl, one with black hair, were wrapped up in coats. Nat was shivering, but the other girl - Svetlana Maguire - looked at ease.

     “Heeeyyy,” Tom greeted them warily.

     “Hello,” Svetlana greeted him back.

     “Hey. Since you’re here, you might as well come over to my place for ping pong,” Nat stated. Pete was by far the best of their family, but the Phillips garage could get noisy whenever there was a match in progress, they were all so competitive.

     The wind whistled by, obscuring the girls’ faces.

     “All right. I guess so,”  he agreed reluctantly.

     “Ah...what is….ping pong?” Svetlana asked.

     “It’s, uh - Shit, what is it called….?” Tom tried to answer.

     “Table tennis!” Nat smiled at the Russian girl. Her face lit up in response.

     “Oh! Table tennis! I know this, how to play.”

     She could, too. As had been Natalie’s plan, showcasing this skill cast Svetlana several rungs higher in Tom’s respect, as since he was a guy, athletic prowess in anything, even something as dorky as ping pong, equalled greater respect. That was part of the reason Nat became a cheerleader in the first place, though she would never admit that to anyone, and barely to herself. At some point through the day Tom apologized for his behavior, and Svetlana graciously accepted the apology.

     Pete drove the three of them and Natalie’s youngest sister Amanda into Tulsa to go see the Michael Jordan movie, since Svetlana needed to be indoctrinated into American pop culture more fully, and she had some knowledge of the Looney Tunes already.,full of sarcastic one-liners.

     “I bet I’m gonna show that to my kids someday,” Pete declared afterwards. 

     "That'd be, like....two thousand and fourteen. Will the world even exist by then?" Amanda asked.

Two People Fell in Love

     If it wasn’t for the pestering of my roommate Eli’s crazy girlfriend Marti, we never would have gotten together. Marti can be obnoxiously persistent when she wants to. All of us were studying at OSU-Okmulgee at the time.

    This is Lee Ann. I’ll try not to interrupt, but when I heard this idea I wasn’t a fan. “Marti! I grew up in Muskogee. In a trailer park. You said he’s a photographer. Like Peter Parker - I don’t think this is a good idea!” “It’s a great idea. Opposites attract, y’know.” Decisive head-shake from me and a dubious snort. “Just once, to meet him?” Marti pleaded. “Fine…”

      “She’s – different but you’ll like her, Mike. And it’s just a date, not like I’m askin’ you to marry her or anything. Please? Pleasepleasepleaseplease?” That finally wore my defenses out eventually, and so I unenthusiastically agreed to go on a blind double date with her and Eli. And so that’s where I first met Lee Ann, in a Braum’s one Friday night.

      The usual amount of older people were there, and a couple of teams from the local YMCA kids soccer league were having their fall-season-wrapup parties at the restaurant, with parents and siblings in tow, so the place was really crowded and noisy. She had darkish hair and her fingernails were painted teal. I noticed that because I’d never seen any girl use that color nail polish before, and because it looked good, like the uniforms of the Charlotte Hornets, San Jose Sharks and Arizona Diamondbacks. Honestly, a dude would compare to sports… She was wearing a black leather jacket, jeans and – I noticed this since it was practical – running shoes. I was hoping she didn’t notice that I’d buttoned my shirt crooked due to nervousness. Yeah, I did notice that. I also thought you were strange. But in an interesting way. She says she was wondering if she was too standoffish. We talked about surface-level things of the likes-and-dislikes variety, somehow the topic of country music came up, which we both enjoyed. We got into a long argument over Taylor Swift; I said she was terrible, Lee Ann liked her.

      I didn’t call her, even though I wanted to. I even picked up the phone a couple times with that intention, but I couldn’t ever quite finish dialing her number. Me? Why would I have cared? I was half afraid he would call. But I was also somewhat disappointed and pissed off that he didn’t.

# # #

      This inability to communicate continued until we ran into each other one afternoon in a shopping center parking lot in Tulsa about two months later. It was a chilly day, and the wind kept slamming her largeish Hobby Lobby bag into her hip.

      “Good day of shopping?” I asked, pointing at the sack.

      “Huh?” she asked, startled. “Oh, yeah. Found some cool scrapbooking stuff on sale.”

      “Cool. You scrapbook?”

      She nodded. “I like to, when I have time. What’re you here for?”

      I pointed my thumb at Guitar Center. “I need to get some cables for my amplifier, browsing around for some other stuff, kind of to get an idea of prices.”

      Her brown eyes sparkled. ”You play?!”

      “Yeah. Learned in middle school. Why?”

      She looked down at her Asics and coughed, self-conscious. “Would you….be willing to teach me? I have an acoustic with one of those funny little plug-things-“

      “Okay, so it’s possible to hook it up to an amp. Acoustic-electric.”

      “- but I don’t know what kind it is. It’s bright orange, if that helps-“

      “Not really,” I smiled a little.

      “-but I don’t really know how to play. The strings are kinda tarnished and grimy, so…”

      “That’s not hard to fix. And sure, I guess I could try.”

       “Do you sing?”

       “Not when people can hear me.”

       “If you’re going to Guitar Center anyway,” she bit her lip. “do y’mind if I tag along? Could use some advice on what stuff to get.”

       “Sure, why not?”

       “Thanks.”

       “No problem.” I held open the door to the store, she walked in. “When do you want to start?”

# # #

      “Ever wonder what the history a guitar’s seen in its previous life?”

       Lee Ann was scowling at her aching left hand, trying to shake the muscles loose, so she wasn’t really paying attention to this comment. “Mm…not really, no. What’d you mean?”

       “I dunno. Like, what happened to yours before it wound up with it?”

       She thought a moment. “I know I’m new at this, but you said guitars usually have names, right?”

       “Most of the time.” 

       “When I bought it, I heard that it-” she gestured at her Ibanez, “was called Steve. So that would mean it belonged to a girl?”

      “Probably. Not sure why, really, but that’s usually the way it goes, the guitar becomes the opposite gender.”

     “And yours is Sophie.”

      I nodded, patting the black Takamine. “Ready to get started again?”

     She shrugged halfheartedly and we began practicing again.

     “Okay, “Never Alone” by Sara Evans is pretty easy. So the chord progression on this one is D-A-Bm-G,” I said. “So to make a D, that’s your first finger on the third string, second fret, second finger first string third fret, third finger second string second fret.”

     “Tell me this gets easier…” she muttered. “And don’t strum the top two?”

# # #

     “Come On Over Tonight to a Brad Paisley concert?” I texted her around New Years.

     I remember it particularly because it was the start of a new decade, too – 2010. And I couldn’t resist the pun of including the title of one of Brad’s earlier songs in there. And she recognized the reference for what it was – a declaration that I cared about her and an invitation to go steady.    

     “She said Yes!” Lee Ann replied after what felt like forever. I wasn’t sure whether she was referring to the Rhett Akins song with that title, or the one-hit wonder “Yes!” (complete with maybe-unnecessary exclamation point) from Chad Brock. Either way, it was good news.

     So that was our first outing as an official couple. The concert was part of the American Saturday Night Tour, at the arena in Oklahoma City where the Thunder play, it was called the Ford Center then. Justin Moore and Miranda Lambert were the opening acts, and they’re both great, too. He’s from Arkansas, and she’s counted as an adopted Oklahoman, since she was married to Blake Shelton. And although a couple songs Brad forget the lyrics to, it was a fantastic show.

# # #

      Eli knocked on the door late one Saturday morning. “Hey, dude? You in there?”

      I shut up quick then, and the sounds of Sophie’s strings stopped abruptly while I opened the door.

      “Whatcha playin’?” Eli’s arms were full of grocery sacks after a run to Wal-Mart. He knew the answer was “More Than a Memory,” but figured it would be better to keep his mouth shut. 

      “Garth. And Keith Urban,” I growled. I didn’t want to talk to anyone, about anything. And so I wasn’t trying not to mope.

     “Don’t let me stop ya.”                            

     Eli began restocking the kitchen cabinets with chili, paper towels and cereal. Pretty soon from the living room he could hear the anguish within “Stupid Boy,” a reproach-filled exercise in self-flagellation. He hummed “Even If It Breaks Your Heart” to himself, spinning around from the open refrigerator to poke his head into the living room. I shushed Sophie and glared at him.    

     “Hey. Whatever happened – just apologize. Love her like she’s leavin’. Don’t mess this up; she’s a keeper. Y’all can meet in the middle somehow.”

     “You do know many song titles you used just then, don’t you?”

     “Uh….more than I meant to? I was thinking Diamond Rio…”

     I flipped him off, and he went back to whatever he was doing.

  “C’mon. You can get through this,” Marti consoled. We were in Marti’s living room, sitting on the uncomfortable faded-blue hand-me-down couch she salvaged from somebody’s driveway, and a pile of feel-good DVDs were on the coffee table, along with several cans of Bud Light and a mostly-empty pizza box. Sleepless in Seattle was playing on the TV.

  “Ooh, maybe I could slash his tires!” I tried to cheer myself up.

  “Nope, you don’t wanna do that.” Marti had previous experience with that form of revenge. It didn’t lead to good things.

  “Yes I don’t,” I huffed in frustration. “How ‘bout…I dunno… go sit in the football field stands at the high school an’ drink a beer?”

  “You think that’d help?”

  “I dunno. But that’s how I process shit. Think about it endlessly. Eventually it makes sense.”

  “Sure, let’s try it,” Marti shrugged.

# # #

     We got back together eventually. Having the other’s presence around to deal with the trials that come up made life a lot easier. And we had our share of disagreements and fights, but gradually got to understand the histories and baggage behind most things the other said and did. She grew up in a trailer park in Muskogee, while I bounced around southern Missouri and eastern Oklahoma. She enjoyed reading Billie Letts novels, and I followed halfheartedly along on the trips to the library. We were squeaking by; she was working at Wal-Mart and I had a shake photography business going.

     One day Marti send me a heads-up text that Lee Ann was leaving for her thinking-place, so Eli and I raced over to Eagle Stadium. It being August by now, the boys of fall were almost ready to shine, and at the moment Morris High was having a scrimmage, maybe against Haskell, I don’t remember. Anyway, other people were there watching, but the atmosphere was pretty relaxed. Eli was born and raised in Morris, so he knew everyone, including the people running the press box. So that part of our plan was easy. I spotted where Lee Ann was sitting in the splintery orange-painted bleachers, tucked away into the bottom-left corner, on the third row. Not many people were nearby, except a second-grader down at the railing in her cheerleader uniform, watching her big brother play.

     “Mind if I sit here?” She shrugged.

     I sat down and called Eli. He was inside the press box, and the CD player was all set up. Somebody started it, and Josh Turner flooded the loudspeakers. There were amused chucklings of approval throughout the stands, first in surprise at the unexpectedness, then as they watched what unfolded. Lee Ann’s foot tapped along automatically to the bluegrassy mandolin-led tune; by this time she’d taught herself how to play the banjo. Then which Josh Turner song it was registered – “Would You Go With Me?” – or maybe that was my being on one knee with a ring I’d improvised out of an old guitar string (because poor college students have to MacGyver things most of the time). .

     She laughed in disbelief, managing to nod her assent, while everyone else in the stands snapped pictures and whooped their congratulations. I think it was a front-page story in the local newspaper that week. Everybody dies famous in a small town, right? Anyway, that’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it.