The Oddest Person I Ever Met

Back in the days when I was in college – and to give you an idea how long ago that was – the internet and personal computers had not been invented yet. Neither were cell phones or something called a VCR. [Look it up if you don’t know what that is.]

I was taking a folk dance class. In folk dancing, people dance in groups where they switch off with each other – like square dancing but in regular clothes and folk music from around the world. There was a real variety of students taking the class; all ages, all nationalities. The teacher played the music on a record player – there was no such thing as CDs although we did have cassettes and eight-tracks.

Pretty much, each dance involved forming lines and as we danced to the music then pairing off with one person after another as we danced down the line. During these brief moments together, we would have short bits of conversation as we got to know each other. They were usually continued during the breaks in between dances.

One of the people in the class was a man named Stanley*. Stanley was a plump, oval-shaped man in a wool sports coat who looked like he was in his early fifties. He had a smallish round head with gray streaks in his dark hair and round eye glasses. His eyes were small and beady behind the lenses.

Basically, Stanley looked like a beetle in a tweed jacket; something you might see in a children’s book.

And the irony of that image is that Stanley was an entomologist.

The only other person I remember in that class was a woman whose name I have forgotten. She was older than Stanley with short, silvery hair. What I remember about her is that she was thin with a dancer’s body and she wore Calvin Klein corduroys. That’s what I really remember about her were those corduroys. She looked amazing in them. They hung on her hips and floated with her when she moved.

Even though I only weighed about 100 pounds way back then, I have a wide stocky build with muscular [now flabby] thighs. I come from a long line of European plow-pullers. Corduroy adds twenty pounds to my body and they make a weird sound when my thighs rub. I really envied her.

But back to Stanley. Stanley was really quiet and rarely made eye contact. He could execute the dance moves quite well but without a dancer’s grace.

Our teacher shared with me that Stanley used to come and just stand in the doorway watching the class night after night. She invited him in more than once but he was too shy. Finally, she took him by the arm and pulled him into the class and taught him how to dance. I don’t know how many of her classes he attended or if he ever enrolled. I know the teacher didn’t care. In most dance classes, female students outnumber the male students three to one so she was just happy to have another male in the class.

Over the weeks of our class, I learned that Stanley studied ants for the university. He told me all about ants – none of which I can remember except that different species of ants act differently, eat different foods, and live in different types of environments; wood, soil, grasses, etc. He was working on a special project to train hunting dogs to distinguish different types of ants by their unique smell then sniff them so they could be studies. [And yes, that is a thing. They use them to sniff out fire ants now.]

I also learned from Stanley that he was living with a woman who was married to someone else and that she didn’t bathe. I don’t know what their relationship was – I didn’t want to know.

I was always nice to Stanley and always chatted with him. I think I just wanted to know what made him tic. At one point, when Stanley was sharing his “ant knowledge” with me, he said something along the lines of “I should call him sometime.”

Now there are a lot of reasons I wouldn’t want to get together with Stanley. The fact that he was thirty years older than me and that he lives with a woman who is not only married but is quite dirty and smelly from her lack of bathing. [Stanley shared this with me.]

But I couldn’t just say no. And being a cheeky college student, I decided to see how far this conversation would go. Especially knowing that Stanley doesn’t always answer your questions like other people.

So I said, “Well, I don’t have your phone number.”

Stanley replied, “It’s in the phone book.”

For any young people reading this, a phone book was a book the phone company sent to your house once a year with everyone’s name, address and phone number in it in your entire city. Some cities had phone books that were five inches thick like LA and others were barely a quarter inch thick because the city was so small. But you could find anyone in it if you knew their first and last name. Of course, phone books have gone by the wayside now. Everyone wants their privacy and the majority of folks began opting out. Now phone books only have listings of businesses in it.

“It’s in the phone book.” I guess Stanley meant that if I wanted it that badly, work for it.

And I replied, “I don’t know your last name.”

Stanley reached into the front pocket of his button down shirt and pulled out a small 1” x 1 ½” rectangular piece of paper neatly cut from lined notebook paper and a small wooden pencil – the kind you get playing miniature golf. It was as if he kept that single piece of paper and tiny paper in there just for a moment like this. Slowly and carefully, he wrote on the paper then handed it to me.

I assumed it was his phone number. That’s what anyone else would have done.

In neat, block print he had written: Nubbel.

His last name.

Our class ended shortly after that and I never saw Stanley again. I did look him up in the phone book and he was in there; Stanley Nubbel. But I never called him.

*Not his real name.