Mateus Rose, Cathy Fran, A Frog, Debster, Canned Ham & Cheese…and thou.
In February 1970, I took a Greyhound Bus to Boulder, CO to
visit Cathy Fran for a long ski weekend. I slung my backpack over my shoulder
and hiked from the bus station to the Kappa House with the directions I got
from some guy wearing a CU sweatshirt. I found her balled up on a couch in the
den. After drinking several glasses of
the Mateus Rose I had brought with me, she confided that she wanted to share a secret…that it was actually Debby
Catalano who had coined the term, 'Kinetic Boy’.
Cathy recalled that one day in AP-Bio, Bob Hoeller fell
off Bill Crowley's lab table during some
kind of science demonstration. He was holding up Mr. Crowley’s lab frog,
singing to it and dancing some kind of jig when he slipped and fell off the
table, crashing down onto the kids and desks in the front row.
According to Cathy; “When Bob fell on top of us, we were all
just tangled up together on the floor in one big mess. I saw the frog jump out
of Bob's hand and watched it hop up Debby’s skirt! Her face got all queasy looking and she
started to squirm and yelp. And that’s when Bob lunged out to grab it! As it turned out, what he actually grabbed
was...well, let’s just say he didn’t get a handful of frog. And that’s when Deb began yelling and
swinging her fists at him! The last thing I heard was
a god awful growl erupting from somewhere deep inside her, as she screamed at
the top of her lungs; “Get your goddamn hands off me, Kinetic Boy!!” That's when Pam and I bolted out of the room
and ran straight to the Girl’s lav for a smoke.
The next day when Deb wasn’t in class, I asked Mr. Crowley
where she was. He said Deb had gone to ‘The Mound’ for a few days. At the time I assumed he was referring to the
Boy Scout’s Indian Mound camp outside Oconomowoc on Silver Lake — which I only knew about because
Deb and I used to canoe across that lake late at night. Turns out I was waaay
wrong! Bill was actually referring to
the Sinsinawan nuns, “Troubled Girl’s Retreat Center” located at The Mound, which was
their secret nun headquarters. Oops-a-daisy!”
You’d think that’d be the end of the story, but it’s not...
It was many years later that we ran into Bobby Hoeller and Deb at
Ozaukee Country Club. They were relaxing after a round on
the back veranda with Old Fashioneds.
For what seemed like hours, we just sat back and laughed about old times. When we reminisced about Bob's fall from Mr.
Crowley’s lab table, my side was splitting from so much laughter!
Bob suddenly turned very quiet, philosophical
you might say. He looked at me and said, "You know, all the lingering doubts I had about my sexual orientation were resolved
that day thanks to that frog.” Deb shot us a ‘knowing look’ across the table.
Fortunately the cocktail waitress happened to stop by, breaking an awkward silence. “Another round folks?”
“Absolutely”, I said, “Bring us a bottle of Mateus!”
