Double Post didn't judge potential dates based on race or ethnicity. That's an admirable thing. The problem is, she didn't seem to exercise more crucial areas of judgment, either. For instance, most women wouldn't date a man who seemed to be some kind of gangster. Double Post was more accepting than most. Like that one time...
A large, shiny, low-riding sedan pulled into our driveway one warm summer evening. Out stepped a figure who could easily have served as a Saturday morning kung fu movie villain. Only he was wearing tight disco pants and a polyester shirt.
He had glossy, excessively-coiffed hair and he reeked of cologne. He had a wispy fringe above his lip that was trying desperately to be a mustache. He was 5'2", only his high-heeled shoes made him a towering 5'6". His name was Ramone. He had come for my sister Double Post.
He and a shadowy friend who declined to exit the car (did he pull his collar up to hide his face, or was that my imagination?) were taking my sister and an unsuspecting friend of hers on a double date.
They took them to a nice restaurant, where the conversation began with Ramone waxing eloquent about the loveliness of Southeast Asia and the land of his birth. He sighed longingly.
Double Post asked him if he ever planned to return to a place that filled him with such warm memories, but Ramone's face darkened as he bitterly replied, "I cannot return. I killed someone in the Phillipines."
Double Post and her friend hastily announced a jointly-held need to visit the bathroom. Once safely inside the ladies' room, they hatched an escape plan. They phoned my father, went back to the table to claim a sudden onset of illness that required immediate evacuation on their part. Ramone and his cohort gallantly offered to take them back home, but Double Post declined their kind offer. My father, blissfully unaware he was depriving gangsters the pleasure of their gun molls' company, whisked the girls home.
Later, the telephone rang ominously in our house. A low, sinister voice inquired after my sister's health. Luckily, that was the last we ever heard from Ramone.
