Courtney

I started off the morning with no blog topic in mind and a third of three discs of “Two and a Half Men”, Season 5, to finish watching so I could send it back to Netflix – and finish season 5 as well.  At this stage in the show Charlie Sheen is still there, playing Charlie Harper, and Alan Harper (Jon Cryer).   Their mother, Evelyn (Holland Taylor) is going to be marrying a rich older man, Teddy Leopold (Robert Wagner), who has an adult daughter, Courtney (Jenny McCarthy), as seductive and provocative as she ever is.  Eventually we learn what’s really going on.

 Her name, though, reminded me of my own first love, Courtney Weller.  This was back at St. Martin’s in Gaithersburg, 1977-78, when we were in fourth grade (Ms. Duffy’s class), and about 9 years old.  There’s not much you can do when you’re only nine, sex obviously being out of the question.  But a date at Shakey’s Pizza in Rockville (now a Miller’s Alehouse) and a brief kiss, were the extent of the romance.  For some reason I got upset with her in fifth grade (fall 1978) and our family moved to Paris in January 1979 (spring semester).  I believe my fifth grade class, including Courtney, gave me a card that spring, but thereafter I lost touch with my St. Martin’s classmates.  For that matter, I don’t know if any of them wound up at University of Maryland College Park, which would have been the most plausible college destination.

 There’s a unique film, “There’s Something About Mary”, in which the protagonist, Ted (Ben Stiller) decides, decades after his prom date goes horribly wrong, to track down the girl, Mary (Cameron Diaz).  He hires a sleazy private detective, Healy (Matt Dillon) who tracks her down to Florida.   For his part, when Healy sees how attractive Mary is, he reports back to Ted that the girl is overweight, etc., and Ted sensibly takes the report as a fraud and goes down to see her for himself.   I think most of us are familiar with this, right?   Well, I can’t say I’m sufficiently motivated to track down Courtney.   Is she married with grandkids?  Or lonely somewhere in Maryland?  If she resembles Jenny McCarthy I’d be highly surprised.   Who knows?