Bonnie Shell's Life Stories

What was one of the best dates you've been on?

I don't know if I ever had an exceptional date, but I had several dates that were either weird or funny. One I remember was with a guy I met at a dance. He claimed he was a movie star. He took me to see the movie he was in. It turns out he was one of about one hundred cowboys riding in a stampede.

Another was a young man my friends Sue and Marge and I met at a church club we joined. He asked me out, and I realized in about an hour how boring he was. He talked about a vacation he and his parents and his aunt and uncle went on. We had a nice dinner, went to a movie, and had a drink afterward. The next week he called Marge for a date. He had the same conversation, went to the same restaurant, saw the same movie, and went to the same bar for a drink. Marge and I had a good laugh comparing notes.

Once, I was set up on a blind date. His company was having a dinner dance. First, he wasn't sure where the venue was. After some driving around, we found it. There were a lot of people there. When we arrived, I said, "let's find some of your friends." To which he responded that he didn't know anybody there. We had a nice dinner, and I talked with some people at our table. I asked him to dance when the music started, and he said he didn't dance.

When I was in Hawaii, my new friend Arlene and I met some local gents. They made plans to pick us up after our tour show was over. They wanted to take us to some local places for drinks and dancing. Unfortunately, that was the night of the tidal wave warning. Before our show was over, we heard sirens going off but didn't know what was going on. At that point, the show abruptly stopped, and some officials told us to return to our hotel. We were quite a distance from our hotel, and there was no taxi to find. They were all heading to the hills. Fortunately, I had JoJo's phone number, and his friend George had a car. George made several trips but got our whole group back to the hotel.

When Marge and I were in Mexico, we met two nice businessmen. They came over to our table when we were having dinner. They asked us what sights we had seen and we told them about what we had done. They asked us if we would like to go to a show that most tourists did not see, and we agreed. We had a great time. The show was life-sized puppets. The puppeteers were dressed in black, and after a while, we didn't notice that the puppets were not human.

Then there was my first date with my husband, John. We went downtown Chicago to a nice German restaurant for dinner and planned to go to a movie afterward. The theater was within walking distance from the restaurant, so we set out on foot. We saw a large group of pre-teen black boys halfway down State Street. They walked toward us arm in arm and took up the whole sidewalk. When they got up to us, we just stopped. One of the boys pulled out a gun, put it in John's chest, and pulled the trigger. It made a loud bang but did no damage. We think it was a starter pistol. The youngster said, "I got you." John said, "well, now that you got me, what are you going to do with me." They just laughed and walked away. We were to shake up to go to the movie. We went out for a drink, and then John took me home.