All the Wrong Moves

My father was a practical joker. If he had an opportunity to play a joke on someone, he would. I've already written blogs on some of the crazy shenanigans he has pulled! 

My mom would get so upset with him. 

But did he ever stop? Absolutely not!  

We lived in downtown Charleston close to King Street when I was in elementary school. My mom's best friend, Louise, came from a family of six girls. And when Louise’s younger sister, Annette, wanted to move to Charleston from Kingstree, S.C. - to get a job on King Street - it was suggested that she move in with us for a while to save money. It was settled. She would do just that.  

Annette got a job at one of the dime stores on King Street so all she had to do was walk a few blocks to work. 

At that time, the kinds of jobs that most of the young people would apply for during the summers or before they were getting ready to go off to college were at stores such as Woolworths, Kress, and Silver’s - small mini-department stores, predecessors of today’s Belk’s. 

Annette was a feisty, beautiful, young woman with long dark hair and had no problem attracting the opposite sex. She was fun-loving and she and my mom were always laughing and having a good ole time. 

Like I told you before, my dad was always up to no good; and with Annette living with us, that just gave him another person - another opportunity - to pull off one of his practical jokes. 

Annette had met this gorgeous, tall, blonde, blue-eyed hunk and he had asked her out on a date. Annette, playing hard to get, put him off for a while before she finally agreed to go on a date with him. 

Annette had come home from work to tell my dad that she had accepted a date with this guy. 

“Ed [as she always called my dad] I have a date on Saturday night at 7:00 o'clock. He's taking me to dinner,” she said. 

Big mistake!  

The wheels in my dad's head started turning. 

Saturday night rolled around and Annette had taken all afternoon to get ready for the date. And she really was excited! She had been thinking about it all week. 

7:00 P.M. rolled around - no date. 

7:05 P.M. - no date. Annette was a little antsy but maybe something had just delayed him. 

7:15 P.M. -- 7:30 P.M. -- 7:45 P.M. - by this time, she was boiling mad. 

“If he thinks he can stand me up like this, he's got another think coming.” 

And, my dad was just making everything worse by talking about how wrong it was for her date to stand her up like that. 

7:55 P.M. – knock, knock. 

“Ed,” Annette said to my dad. “Someone's at the door. Ed?” 

No answer from my dad. 

So, Annette had to go to the door. 

She flung the door open and there standing with the biggest grin that you ever saw was her date. 

He started to say how excited he was that she was going out with him. At that point, she slammed the door in his face so hard that the windows rattled. 

In that instant, we heard a little snickering of laughter coming from the entrance to my dad's bedroom. Annette turned around to look at my dad and at that point, he burst out laughing. 

 “Ed,” Annette shouted, “What did you do? What did you do?”  

He confessed to turning the clock back an hour, so in reality, this poor guy was really five minutes early for their date - not an hour late as Dad had led her to believe.  

By this time her face was beet red. 

“Oh, my goodness,” she said as she ran to the door. She threw it open and there standing just where she had left him was her date with the most puzzled look on his face that you had ever seen. 

She grabbed his arm, trying to pull him into the apartment, with him hesitating a little, not knowing what was going on... 

“Ed,” she exclaimed, “you tell him exactly what is going on - exactly what you did, or I'm going to kill you.” 

My dad came over to Annette’s date, shook his hand, and explained everything. At that time, we all had a good laugh. 

What a way to start a date. 

From then on when Annette had a date coming to our house to pick her up, she carried the clock around with her and never let it get out of her sight until time for her date to arrive. 

Would you EVER trust someone who did that to you? 

Who’s got the time?!? 

~ Jeannie Joyner