Croquet Catcall

In the waning days of a college Summer I was compelled, along with my good friends Forrester and Sebastian, to play a game of croquet.  The circumstances surrounding this are a bit involved, but it’s really just this simple: we were led to believe that if we went to a certain place on campus at a certain time, ice cream would be presented to us.  Though we had to overcome a great many obstacles on our journey—mainly of the metaphysical and personal nature, i.e. laziness, forgetfulness, and so forth— we managed to arrive at the proper time, in the proper place.  Despite all this we found our journey was all for naught; there was no ice cream, only croquet.

And so we played, me and good old Forrester and Sebastian and a complete stranger who had a name that sounded like ‘Jerry’ or ‘Terry’ or ‘Larry’ or something.  Now, none of us had ever played croquet in the past, or had any real interest in playing at the present.  Forrester claimed to have once given a speech about how to play croquet, which gave us a general idea of how the game went.  Now, Forrester was very clear in saying that he had only given a speech about the game, he’d never actually played it.  Bullshit, I thought, because he was kicking all of our asses.

If you’ve never played croquet, it goes something like this: everyone takes turns trying to hit their balls through all the hoops in a specific order.  When it’s your turn, you get to hit the ball once, and if it went through the right hoop or knocked somebody else’s ball, then you get to go again and again until you miss.  When it’s not your turn, you run around in circles screaming at each other and pretending to have sword fights with the little hammers.  Jerry wasn’t very good at this part.

The game continued in this fashion, with Forrester’s ball making progress through the course and the three of us all stuck smashing into each other in the vicinity of hoop number two, until it was inevitably interrupted by a woman.  

“Hey you!” Screamed the woman at all four of us.  I continued swinging at Sebastian like I was Thor.

            “You! The one with the floppy hair!”  At this point, Terry was kind enough to nudge my shoulder.

            “Dude”, said Terry, “I think she wants to talk to you.”  He pointed up at a third floor window of a nearby dormitory.  If I shielded myself from the sun, batted the hair out of my eyes and pinched my face into a tight squint, I could barely make out the shape of a face.

            “Give me your number!!” screamed the shape.  This was unusual.

            “You should give her your number”, says Larry. “She looks hot.”

            I looked over to Forrester and Sebastian, but they had apparently decided to be mute on this issue.  They were shuffling around and grinning like idiots, which meant they thought this was funny.

I looked back up at the girl, carefully examined her features.  Only about one third of her face was visible over the windowsill, and she kept turning around to giggle to her friends.  I have to say, I think Larry was letting his hormones get the better of him when he called her ‘hot’.  That said, she was pretty.  She had blonde hair, and I could clearly make out that she had at least two eyes.  I like hair.  I like eyes.

            “Give me your number!!” she demands.  I look around at the people strolling past on the sidewalk.  This was starting to get awkward, I’d better say something.

            “Well”, I begin, trying to be diplomatic. “That’s some awfully private information.”  I limply gesture towards all of the complete strangers that are in the general vicinity, attempting to mind their own business.  “Maybe you could come down here and we could talk about this, in a more civilized—in a more… a more ordinary, private way?”  I state it as a question, which makes me mentally kick myself.  Wincing at my own mistake, I await her reply:

            “No! Give me your number!”

            This is making the both of us look ridiculous.  It’s not fair either, since she has the luxury of acting ridiculous from the privacy of her own dorm room, while I’m being forced to look ridiculous in front of the general public!

            Now, if I was some sort of confident or witty or charming man, I would have kept my head, would have found some suitable way to defuse the situation.  I would have said something to make her laugh while I slipped my kerchief out of my scrupulously smirched petticoat, would have delicately dabbed at the sweat on my brow and convinced her to meet me for a more private rendezvous at a later date.  Or no.

Actually, if I were some sort of confident or witty or charming man then I wouldn’t have trouble meeting women in the first place, and I could have just shut her up by telling her I was seeing someone.

            Of course, I’m me, so all I did was shut out the world and hurriedly lose a game of croquet.  At some point the blonde got bored of screaming at me, and at some point after that, our trio departed.

            Like any good anecdote, this one is hungry for embellishment.  It’s a wonderful little story with absolutely no ending.  Good old Forrester and Sebastian and I didn’t go on to make any profound or humorous or insightful observations about Relationships or Men or Women or their places in Traditional Western Society.  We very deliberately had no such conversation—instead, we went off to go watch a movie about a tire murdering people with its psychic powers.

            Still, it was an interesting experience, being on the receiving end of a bad come-on.  It’s almost as if nobody ever taught that girl how to be a gentleman.