The
Sav & Scully
Show!
This page of my site can be summed up in two words - BEST FRIENDS.
This page, too, is under major construction. So far I've added a bit of a photo album, but the best pictures of Scully and I as kids are in her personal collection, for one major reason: Her father took pictures with ordinary, develop-it-and-stick-it-in-an-album type film. Mine preferred slide film, so every picture he ever took of the two of us is in a box in his garage in Florida and may or may not ever see the light of day again. So Scully and I are going to have to go through her pictures and scan a few for this site.
Now I have a few particular shots in mind out of her collection that I know she's going to oppose me on. When she does, I'll simply mention a certain school picture and threaten to upload it onto this site. After that, she'll likely let me have my pick. Either that or she'll never speak to me again. Only time will tell...
Scully and I met in the early summer of 1975, and we've remained best friends ever since. Our dads were both involved with Optimist International, which is an organization that does a lot of great things for today's youth. We met on the AMS (Alberta, Montana, Saskatchewan) District Convention, which was in Bozeman, Montana that year. (I myself am a little fuzzy on the years this stuff happened, but my father can pinpoint just about any happening by what position he held during a given year with the Optimists.)
Anyway, at one stop along the way, in one hotel or another, the lights in the bathroom weren't working, so one of us had to hold the main door open so the other didn't have to pee in the dark. What can I say, lifetime bonds have been based on less. The first picture Scully and I ever had taken together was on that trip, that's it up at the top. We were about eight at the time. (That's me on the right with the groovy blue wedgies on my feet.) It was also the only time in our lives when Scully was actually taller than me. We've managed to remain friends for 24 years and counting. We've been mistaken as everything from sisters (we're not) to lesbians (we're not) to complete and utter nutcases (which we may well be, but what the hell, it works for us).
The Optimist Conventions were always a blast for us kids, particularly after the adults were finished with their meetings and well on their collective way to being hammered. Now, you leave two pre-teenagers (or teenagers, for that matter) alone in a hotel room, and you're just begging for trouble. Our escapades started on that very first trip, when we discovered a party going on down the hallway, loud music blaring and the door wide open. One or the other of us, I don't recall which, got an idea in her head that's become known to us as the Fruity Pebbles Incident. (Keeping in mind that this was 1975, and life seemed a lot safer back then, and we were about 8 years old,) one of us would grab a handful of the brightly colored cereal, run down the hallway, toss it in the open door and run like hell back to our room. But on one of Scully's turns, she got caught. They were probably waiting for us, to think about it in retrospect. Anyway, one of the partiers scooped her up and took her into the room, then let her go with a warning to cut it out with the cereal tossing. While this was going on, me in my 8 year old bravery had run into our room and locked the door. Scully stood outside screaming and pounding on the door for me to let her in, which I assume I must have done eventually. Still, one wonders that we ever stayed friends after that, but we did. There are times when I think she's never really forgiven me for it, though.
Our personal favorite thing in those days was to go through the floors and flip over the little 'Do Not Disturb' signs. Was, that is, until the convention where they were renovating the hotel we were staying in. Numbers usually firmly attached to the doors had been removed in preparation for painting, and strips of masking tape with the room numbers hand written in felt pen took their places. What mortal could resist? It only took us a few minutes to pull the tape off the doors, switch floors and stick the numbers back on, in random order. (Naturally, we did this on the last day of the convention so even if we did get caught, it wouldn't be us having to sort them out.) And within a few minutes, all the rooms on the 7th floor boasted numbers beginning with 8, and vice-versa. These floors were largely held by our own people, most of whom wouldn't be in very good shape when they finally returned to their rooms that night. Scully recently confessed this to her mother, who laughed like hell and said she remembered wondering why the room key wouldn't work, before they figured out that the numbers had been changed. Of course, by this time Scully and I would have been sleeping like the little angels they all knew us to be...? I guess twenty or so years later we're safe from retribution. We hope!
Another incident that stands out in my mind took place on an International Convention in San Diego. We were roughhousing and generally acting like a pair of idiots when Scully fell and bashed her knee against the metal edge of the hideaway bed that had been folded out for me. And all was fine, until we saw the blood. Blood to an 11 year old is a scary thing, and there likely wasn't as much as I remember. But it was enough to send me tearing down the hallway, banging on doors and screaming at the top of my lungs "Help, help, my friend's bleeding to death!"
There were other incidents, of course, we went on these things for a number of years. I know now, looking back, that we did things that would have gotten us into a lot of trouble if we'd ever gotten caught. Somehow, we never did. Scully's dad once remarked to us that there were two things to consider when we were dreaming up these escapades. One - would we get into trouble if we got caught; Two - could we tell our fathers what we'd been up to. The answers to these were, of course, yes and no in that order, but it never stopped us. We had a lot of fun in those days, the more I write the more I recall. For now, though, it's late and I'm tired.
More to come....
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