My Cardboard Balcony

Verboten In The Fifties by Belinda Roddie Here's how the scene is set: You arrive in your pink Mustang, wearing your father's leather jacket, your hair slicked up so high that it's almost touching Heaven. I'll sashay down from my room in my knee-length skirt, craving milkshakes and banana splits that I'll only share with you. We'll tell everyone that Bobby from math class gave me the hickeys, or that Sherman from biology got crazy with me in the drive-thru. Just make sure that you wipe off all the lipstick from your shirt when I'm done with you, and I'll be sure not to dig my nails into the backseat cushions of your car after I've pounced on you like a fan trying to attack Elvis at one of his concerts. If they find out, we'll be institutionalized, I guarantee it. I'm not interested in wearing a white gown in a white room, and I don't think we want lobotomies or to succumb to electroshock therapy. Maybe one day, we...

Three thieves broke into the Lancaster Inn around two o'clock in the morning - only to be chased out of the vicinity by a furious fifty-three-year-old woman brandishing a broken vacuum cleaner like an overgrown club. I would know; I witnessed the whole thing from the lobby, after I had fetched a bucket of ice so my wife and I could enjoy a bottle of champagne. By the time the police arrived, they found the burglars hiding in the parking lot, of all places, as if enormous trucks and vans could block them from everyone else's view.