Once the Ball Gets Rolling, Look Out
My wife was having lunch two weeks ago with a girlfriend who told her she had tickets for the presidential inaugural ball. Did Gayle want to go too?
Always ready for a trip back home to Washington, D.C., she of course wanted to go, but not without me. (If she had asked, she’d have learned that I had no trouble seeing her go alone. But I digress.)
No problem, the friend said. She had another friend who had an extra ticket. The price was $150 each (a fact not mentioned to me until days later), and Gayle forked over cash so our names would not appear on any political list.
Understand that I am a native Californian, third generation, and don’t consider trips back East in January weekend getaways. Second, I like my circumstance without the pomp. And third, I’ve never found a tuxedo that didn’t make me look like a waiter.
There was more. Gayle promised her unaccompanied friend that if she saw any cute guys, I would go up to them, chat them up, find out if they were married and, if they weren’t, make the appropriate introductions.
Great. Not only would I lose a weekend of golf, I would have to work the room.
As the list of protests grew in my head, Gayle reminded me that this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. (Hard to argue with that.) She also reminded me that we had air travel vouchers from getting bumped off a flight last summer, making the cost of our plane tickets just $1 each.
We also would not have to pay for a hotel stay but could bunk down at her family’s.
Maybe this won’t be so bad after all, I thought. The momentary elation was punctured as Gayle went on with our itinerary.
After arriving Saturday morning on a red-eye flight, we would go to a rehearsal of the entertainment--Aretha Franklin, Whoopi Goldberg, Kenny Rogers and others--for a gala planned Saturday night. (Again, Gayle’s friend had gotten the tickets, but this time the price was merely the donation of canned goods.) On Monday we would attend the swearing-in ceremony. (We thought we had tickets to the seating area, but it turns out we get to stand--in what could be 25-degree weather and for a president who’s always late and talks too long.) And of course, that evening, the ball.
That would only leave Sunday as a possible day for golf. My father-in-law and I could find someplace to play, but let’s face it, we’d need temperatures at least in the 40s.
I’m not that lucky.
The last bit of news: Gayle spent days shopping for a glamorous evening gown, finally purchasing a slinky, shiny black silk dress with beaded jacket that looks right out of Vegas. She wouldn’t tell me how much that number--which she probably will never wear again--cost. But she did tell me that the first two outfits she really liked but passed on were $2,300 and $3,000.
As I got up off the floor, I thought, why didn’t Colin Powell run for president and make a race out of it?
Then again, if he had won, Gayle would have wanted to go to that inaugural too.
* Mike Terry is a staff writer in Orange County Sports.
